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Integration, Identity and Language Maintenance in Young Immigrants: Russian Germans or German Russians
Edited by Ludmila Isurin and Claudia Maria Riehl
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 44] 2017
► pp. 197–224

Chapter 7
Language attitudes and linguistic skills in young heritage speakers of Russian in Germany

| University of Bochum

The present study analyzes attitudes of young second generation migrants towards Russian as their first language and considers the correlation between attitudes and linguistic skills in Russian. First, attitudinal factors obtained from a questionnaire are analyzed according to the three-component model of attitudes. One main finding is that a loyal and emotional relationship towards Russian was exhibited by the 44 adolescent participants. Second, subjective and objective data for language skills (self assessments and test data) in Russian are presented. Finally, the interplay between the attitudinal factors and language skills is analyzed using Principal Component Analysis. Two main factors are identified: Firstly, the appreciation of Russian as a cultural value and secondly, the importance of Russian as a means of communication between peers. While self-assessments of competence in Russian are correlated to the first and speech rate to the second factor, morphological competence is correlated to both factors.

Keywords: language attitudes, linguistic skills, heritage language, language maintenance
Article outline
  • 1.Method
    • 1.1Participants
    • 1.2Materials and procedure
  • 2.Language attitudes
    • 2.1The affective component of language attitudes
    • 2.2The cognitive component of language attitudes
    • 2.3The behavioral component of language attitudes
  • 3.Language skills
    • 3.1Methods for measuring Russian language skills
    • 3.2Self-assessments of linguistic skills
    • 3.3Story-telling of a picture book
    • 3.4Grammaticality Judgments
    • 3.5Correlations between the types of linguistic data
  • 4.Relationships between attitudes and linguistic skills in Russian
  • 5.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.44.07ans
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