TY - JOUR

T1 - In the Language of Their Hearts:

T2 - Emotions and Language Choice in Child-Parent Interaction, Insights from a Yupik village

AU - Schwalbe, Daria Morgounova

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - In studies of language choice and minority language shift and maintenance, attention is frequently given to factors other than emotions: social context of contact, language politics, linguistic competence and attitudes, educational policies, and political agendas in a society. Yet human language is ideologically saturated, aesthetically experienced empirical phenomena, characterized by complex dynamics and linked to group and personal identities, morality, aesthetics, and epistemology. While negative moral emotions (e.g., shame) may lead people to abandon their first language, heritage languages may still be perceived as “more emotional,” and their loss and maintenance is a deeply emotional matter. Drawing on Pavlenko, Cavanaugh, and Ahmed, I discuss the role of emotion-related factors—affective repertoires and perceived language emotionality—in language choice of native Chukotkan parents, as a way of understanding human interactivity and the potential of the local environment for children’s acquisition of their heritage languages. Perceived language emotionality, I argue, is an important yet often overlooked aspect of heritage language sustainability and learning. The focus of this article is not on how bodies are transformed into objects of emotions (e.g., “the shamed one”), but on interplay between emotions and multilingual phenomena: how language and wordings are used to move people, to produce affects, attachments, equalities, and authenticities.

AB - In studies of language choice and minority language shift and maintenance, attention is frequently given to factors other than emotions: social context of contact, language politics, linguistic competence and attitudes, educational policies, and political agendas in a society. Yet human language is ideologically saturated, aesthetically experienced empirical phenomena, characterized by complex dynamics and linked to group and personal identities, morality, aesthetics, and epistemology. While negative moral emotions (e.g., shame) may lead people to abandon their first language, heritage languages may still be perceived as “more emotional,” and their loss and maintenance is a deeply emotional matter. Drawing on Pavlenko, Cavanaugh, and Ahmed, I discuss the role of emotion-related factors—affective repertoires and perceived language emotionality—in language choice of native Chukotkan parents, as a way of understanding human interactivity and the potential of the local environment for children’s acquisition of their heritage languages. Perceived language emotionality, I argue, is an important yet often overlooked aspect of heritage language sustainability and learning. The focus of this article is not on how bodies are transformed into objects of emotions (e.g., “the shamed one”), but on interplay between emotions and multilingual phenomena: how language and wordings are used to move people, to produce affects, attachments, equalities, and authenticities.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - inuit

KW - language and emotions

KW - emotionality

KW - affect/emotion

KW - yupik

KW - language learning

KW - heritage language

KW - indigenous peoples

KW - Codeswitching

KW - language mixing

KW - multilingualism

KW - language maintenance

KW - shame

KW - guilt

KW - Russia

KW - inuit emotions

KW - stigmatisation

KW - human interactivity

KW - situated interaction

KW - parent-child interaction

KW - Traditional knowledge and practices

U2 - 10.7202/1090315ar

DO - 10.7202/1090315ar

M3 - Journal article

VL - 45

SP - 177

EP - 205

JO - Etudes / Inuit / Studies

JF - Etudes / Inuit / Studies

SN - 0701-1008

IS - 1-2

ER -