Author: Wei Wei
Wei, Wei, 2022 Perceptions among the young adults of Chinese second generation on home language maintenance: multiple case studies from South Australia, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Terms of Use: This electronic version is (or will be) made publicly available by Flinders University in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. You may use this material for uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material and/or you believe that any material has been made available without permission of the copyright owner please contact copyright@flinders.edu.au with the details.
Home language maintenance (HLM) supports bilingualism, well-being development and family harmony. However, research indicates that the Chinese second generation (CSG) has the lowest HLM rate among all the language communities in Australia. Although the CSG is the key to a successful HLM, their voices are often ignored due to a traditionally hierarchical family structure. Therefore, the research aims to investigate the perceptions among young adults of CSG on the importance of HLM in South Australia (SA). Towards achieving this aim, the research seeks answers to the questions about how young adults of the CSG perceive the importance of HLM in SA and what key factors have influenced their perceptions. Two case studies were conducted to collect data from two young adults of the CSG in SA. Each participant was asked to complete a structured questionnaire and then had a semi-structured interview, followed by an informal interview. A two-stage analysis and a constant comparative method were utilised to analyse the two case studies’ data. The findings indicate that the two participating young adults perceived the importance of HLM in SA differently. Furthermore, the family factors contribute significantly to their perceptions of the importance of HLM, while social and individual factors’ contributions were perceived to be less influential. Despite its limited scope, this research makes contributions to both practices and research on HLM. Further research using a larger number of case studies and more rigorous mixed research methods could be conducted to provide a richer picture of HLM in SA and beyond.
Keywords: home language maintenance, Chinese second generation, perception, family factors, social factors, individual factors
Subject: Languages thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2022
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Mai Ngo