The Role of the Mother in Lithuanian Heritage Language Maintenance

Abstract

The paper explores the pivotal role of mothers in maintaining the Lithuanian language within the Lithuanian diaspora, drawing upon Spolsky’s family language policy theory and Curdt-Christiansen’s dynamic family language policy model. Analyzing data collected in 2011–2013 and 2015–2017, the study investigates various factors shaping family language policy, with a particular focus on the mother’s influence. It examines the interplay between the mother’s role, emigrants’ language ideology, Lithuanian identity, language acquisition, proficiency, and language usage across different domains and emotional dimension of language attitudes. Quantitative analysis, considering respondents’ parents’ ethnicities, reveals that respondents with Lithuanian mothers exhibit stronger connections to Lithuanian identity, more frequent acquisition of Lithuanian as their first language, higher proficiency, and increased usage of Lithuanian within the family and as an inner language. Moreover, positive language attitudes towards the heritage Lithuanian language are more pronounced among those with Lithuanian mothers. However, emotional attitudes towards language did not significantly differ based on parental ethnicity. The paper concludes by discussing the heightened responsibility of mothers in language maintenance within the diaspora and the challenges they face in fulfilling this role.