Exploring Socio-Political Dimensions of Heritage Language Maintenance: The Case of Vietnamese Speakers in Montreal

Research on heritage language (HL) development often focuses on immigrants identity and social network as predictors of HL maintenance. However, an important and overlooked factor is the socio-political circumstances that trigger emigration, such as whether immigrants relocate due to economic hardship or political turmoil. This study examines if the pattern of HL maintenance and its association with immigrants ethnolinguistic identity and social engagement differ for families of political versus economic immigrants. Participants were 38 parent-child pairs from Montreal s Vietnamese diaspora. The parents identified their reason for immigration and completed an ethnolinguistic questionnaire, their children provided a HL communication profile, and all participated in interviews. To determine participants Vietnamese speaking skills, short interview excerpts were rated for accentedness, comprehensibility, fluency, and global knowledge. Participants were generally successful at maintaining their HL, but there was a decline in the children s Vietnamese, especially for the economic immigrants. Several ethnolinguistic variables (desire to preserve a HL, pride in heritage culture) and social network properties (network size, intimacy, communication-related stress) appeared to contribute to HL maintenance. However, these relationships were different (and sometimes opposite) in the groups of political versus economic immigrants, suggesting that HL development and maintenance are subject to various contextual influences.La recherche sur l acquisition de la langue d origine (LO) porte souvent sur l identite et le reseau social des immigrants vus comme la base du maintien de celle-ci. Les circonstances sociopolitiques qui ont provoque l emigration constituent cependant un facteur important mais neglige - par exemple, si les immigrants ont fui en raison de difficultes economiques ou de troubles politiques. La presente etude cherche a savoir si le maintien de la LO et son association avec l identite ethnolinguistique et l engagement social des immigrants different selon qu il s agit d immigrants politiques ou d immigrants economiques. A cette fin, 38 paires parent-enfant de la diaspora vietnamienne de Montreal y ont participe. Les parents ont indique le motif de leur immigration et ont rempli un questionnaire ethnolinguistique, leurs enfants ont fourni un profil de communication en LO, et tous ont participe a des entrevues. Pour determiner la competence des participants en vietnamien a l oral, de courts extraits d entrevues ont ete evalues en fonction de l accentuation, de la comprehensibilite, de la fluidite et de la connaissance d ensemble. Les participants ont generalement reussi a maintenir leur LO, mais avec un declin du vietnamien chez les enfants, en particulier chez les immigrants economiques. Plusieurs variables ethnolinguistiques (desir de preserver la LO, fierte de l heritage culturel) et caracteristiques du reseau social (taille du reseau, intimite, stress lie a la communication) semblent avoir contribue au maintien de la LO. Toutefois, les relations entre ces facteurs etaient differentes (et parfois en opposition) dans les groupes d immigrants politiques et d immigrants economiques, ce qui porte a croire que l acquisition et le maintien de la LO sont soumis a diverses influences contextuelles.