Taikomoji kalbotyra, 20: 9–27 eISSN 2029-8935
https://www.journals.vu.lt/taikomojikalbotyra DOI: https://doi.org/10.15388/Taikalbot.2023.20.3
Anna Verschik
Tallinn University
annave@tlu.ee
Reili Argus
Tallinn University
reili.argus@tlu.ee
Abstract. The article discusses family language policy in a family of ethnic Russians in Estonia where the father speaks Russian, and the mother speaks Estonian. This is the case of internalization of Estonian among ethnic Russians, a novel phenomenon in the post-Soviet countries. The data come from family conversations (6 h) and the semi-structured interview with the parents (1.5 h). There are discrepancies between the declared ideologies, management, and practices. The declared policy is OPOL and, as the father rendered it, purism because of the concern that the children will be confused otherwise. During the interview the father switched between Estonian, Russian, and English. In family conversations the mother’s speech (539 turns, of which 50 % are directed to the child) contained code-switching (7% in Russian and 8% switches within one turn in speech directed to the child). The parents claimed to speak Russian to each other, yet the mother occasionally switched to Estonian while talking to the father. In general, both family conversations and the interview proved to be linguistically more diverse than expected.
Key words: family language policy, code-switching, early bilingualism, Estonian, Russian
Santrauka. Straipsnyje analizuojama šeimos kalbų politikos (ŠKP) tema šeimoje, kurioje abu tėvai yra etniniai rusai, tačiau motina su vaikais kalba estiškai. ŠKP sudaro trys sudedamosios dalys: kalbinė ideologija, kalbų vadyba ir kalbų vartojimas. Paprastai ŠKP tyrimai yra orientuoti į tėvų tikslus ir nuostatas, o duomenys renkami imant pusiau struktūruotus interviu. Tačiau šio tyrimo tikslas yra ne tik pasikalbėti su tėvais, bet ir išanalizuoti vaikams skirtą kalbą, siekiant išsiaiškinti, ar yra skirtumų tarp įsitikinimų, priemonių, kurių imamasi vaikų dvikalbystei ugdyti, bei natūralaus kalbų vartojimo.
Atsižvelgiant į sociolingvistinę situaciją, šis tyrimas yra aktualus ne tik Estijai, bet ir kitoms posovietinėms šalims. Rusų kolonizatorių palikuonių, kurie turėjo teisę išlikti vienakalbiais, pavyzdžiai ir atvejai, kai rusakalbės šeimos nusprendžia vartoti estų kalbą namuose, neturėtų būti painiojami su tais atvejais, kai daugumos kalba yra vartojama mažumų šeimose. Apsisprendimas namuose kalbėti ir estiškai rodo rusakalbių bendruomenės Estijoje pokyčius.
Tyrimo duomenys buvo renkami dviem būdais: imti pusiau struktūruoti interviu (1,5 val.) bei įrašyti šeimos pokalbiai (6 val.). Pastebima tam tikrų neatitikimų tarp deklaruojamos ideologijos, kalbų vadybos ir kalbų vartojimo. Nors deklaruojama ideologija yra „vienas tėvas – viena kalba“, per interviu tėvas pakaitomis vartojo estų, rusų ir anglų kalbas. Kalbų vadybą šeimoje lemia praktinės priežastys, t. y. jeigu tam tikroje situacijoje patogiau vartoti tam tikrą kalbą, taip ir yra daroma. Motinos kalboje per šeimos pokalbius, kurių pusė skirti vaikui, taip pat esama kodų kaitos. Tėvai teigė, kad tarpusavyje (dviese) kalbasi rusiškai, tačiau motina kartais vartojo ir estų kalbą. Rezultatai rodo, kad, nežiūrint į deklaruojamą kalbų politiką šeimoje, iš tiesų kodų kaita yra neišvengiama.
Raktažodžiai: ankstyvoji dvikalbystė, šeimos kalbų politika, kodų kaita, estų kalba, rusų kalba
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The research was supported by the Ministry of Education and Research of Republic of Estonia, grant EKKD33 “Data and corpora of Estonian children and youth multilingual communication”.
Copyright © 2023 Anna Verschik, Reili Argus. Published by Vilnius University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The scope of the article is an overlapping area between family language policy (FLP) research and code-switching (CS) research in early bilingualism. FLP research concentrates on the parents’ beliefs about language, their goals, expectations, and particular actions, while the field of early bilingualism looks into production of bilingual speech, code-switching, emergence of bilingual constructions, morphosyntactic characteristics, and other related aspects. The present case study on an Estonian-Russian bilingual family demonstrates that the two approaches are complementary and should be combined in order to better understand the whole picture of bilingual communication at home. It also sheds light on the discrepancy between the declared FLP goals and the real linguistic behavior of the parents.
The family in question uses the principle “one parent, one language” (OPOL), when the father speaks Russian, and the mother speaks Estonian to the children. In family conversations, there is occasional CS in the mother’s and child’s speech, but nothing significant from the point of view of morphosyntax like bilingual constructions. Our attention was caught by the fact that the mother, who is “responsible” for Estonian, switched to Russian and back in her speech directed to the child, and the language of interaction between the mother and the father was mostly Russian with some Estonian insertions, mostly on the mother’s part.
We decided to look into the family background, and it became clear that the family in question is not mixed in the classical sense (one parent speaks language A as L1 and the other language B as L1, and they are of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds). Both parents are ethnic Russians, and this is not just an instance of internalization of the majority language among minority language speakers as the sociolinguistic situation in Estonia and other post-Soviet countries differs from the Western immigrant/minority settings. During the Soviet era (1940–1941, 1944–1991), Estonian was becoming a minoritized majority language (see details in Rannut 2008) as the central authorities implicitly encouraged migration of Russian-speakers, who had a right to remain monolingual. The situation started changing after Estonia regained her independence in 1991 and Estonian became the official language of the country. The internalization of Estonian among some ethnic Russians, the speakers of a “big” language, deserves more scholarly attention, and this case led us to the idea to interview the family and to learn more about their FLP, using Spolsky’s (2004) FLP model with some modifications proposed by Curd-Christiansen (2018).
We pose the following research questions:
The article is organized as follows. First, a brief overview of FLP research is presented, and a summary of the sociolinguistic situation in Estonia and the position of Estonian and Russian is provided. In this contribution, we rather look at CS from the point of view “who speaks what language, to whom and when” (to use the famous question asked by Fishman 1965) in the speech directed to the child and in the interviews rather than on grammatical properties of CS, so we will not review the growing body of literature on child CS in early bilingualism. In the analysis of CS, we use Muysken’s (2000, 2013) typology, which distinguishes insertions (prototypical one-word CSs), alternations (autonomous phrases, longer stretches in another language), and congruent lexicalization (when the structures of both languages are the same or similar and can be filled up with the lexicon from either language). This is followed by the methodology and data, analysis of the interview and family conversation data, the discussion, and conclusions.
The field of FLP emerged in the 2000s as a result of realization that language policy does not boil down to top-down activities and measures that are aimed at formulating and regulating relations between society and various languages (see early studies by King and Fogle 2006; King, Fogle and Logan-Terry 2008, Okita 2002, and Schwartz 2010). In fact, any action that involves language, be it individual language choice in a particular communicative situation or decision to bring up multilingual children, is an act of language policy. The latter are examples of bottom-up policies, including FLP. Since then, the field has become more diverse (see the overview in Schalley and Eisenchlas 2020).
The field has been largely influenced by Bernard Spolsky’s (2004, 2012) model of language policy (later adapted for FLP; see Kopeliovich 2006 and Schwartz 2008, 2020) that envisages FLP as an interplay between three components: language beliefs (or ideology), language management, and language practices. As summarized in Curdt-Christiansen (2018), language ideology is what family believes about language as such and particular languages; management refers to the efforts made for the implementation of beliefs (for instance, with a goal of language maintenance), and practices are “de facto language use, what people actually do with language” (Curdt-Christiansen 2018: 421).
This model outlines very broad contours of FLP and has been modified by various scholars. It is essential that the three components do not exist separately from the larger society, and even if the policy in a given family may be unusual in a particular community, the wider sociolinguistic context is reflected in one or another way in FLP. Thus, Curdt-Christiansen and Huang (2020: 176) talk about external and internal factors; also, Schwartz (2020: 196) refers to internal and external control particularly in language management.
Complex relations between the three components of FLP, parental background, home environment, socioeconomic resources, and language socialization are viewed against the background of more general societal factors, such as sociolinguistic, sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic context by Curdt-Christiansen (2018: 422; see Figure 1 below). This modification has been used in FLP research in the Baltic sociolinguistic situation in a study on Russian-speaking families that prefer Latvian-medium education for their children (Ladziņa and Marten 2021: 245). The current case study is related to the one analyzed by Ladziņa and Marten (2021) because it is still novel among ethnic Russians/Russian-speakers to introduce Estonian/Latvian at home or via educational system; the relevance of the interplay of various extra-linguistic factors in our case will be discussed below.
The interdisciplinary framework of family language policy (FLP).
The topics of FLP research include (but are not limited to) the analysis of parents’ narratives about languages at home and upbringing their children in more than one language (see contributions in Schalley and Eisenchlas 2020 or Scwartz and Verschik 2013, to name just a few), communication in mixed families (Seppik and Zabrodskaja 2022), differences in FLP in different generations (Bezcioğlu-Göktolga and Yağmur 2022), harmonious bilingualism (De Houwer 2015, 2017), transnational families, including those from the Baltic countries (Bissinger 2019, 2021, Jakaitė-Bulbukienė and Gudavičienė 2021, Hilbig 2022, Ramonienė 2013, 2019), young adults’ reflections on growing up as multilinguals (Fogle 2013, Verschik and Doyle 2017), child agency (Schwartz 2020), choice of language of instruction at school (Ladziņa and Marten 2021), and comparison between FLP in different communities (Karpava, Ringbom and Zabrodskaja 2019 on Russian-speaking mothers in Sweden, Estonia and Cyprus; Soler and Zabrodskaja 2017).
Although several new case studies on FLP in the Baltic states have appeared during the recent decade (for instance, Bissinger 2021, Jakaitė-Bulbukienė and Gudavičienė 2021, Hilbig 2022, Ramonienė 2013, Doyle 2018), to the best of our knowledge, the internalization of Estonian (or any other local language) in families where both parents are ethnic Russians and speakers of Russian has not been addressed. Russian speakers in the former Soviet Republics are not a minority comparable to indigenous minorities (like Livonians in Latvia or old-timers like Tatars in Lithuania), nor to immigrant minorities in Western Europe. A small group of Russian speakers, Old Believers, can be considered as an indigenous minority, but it is not relevant for the present case. During the Soviet dominance in the Baltics (1940–1941, 1944–1991) the central policies favored migration of Russian speakers, creating jobs for them by the means of Soviet-style industrialization. Russian speakers had a right to remain monolingual, while for speakers of other languages Russian was a compulsory subject at school, and the propaganda emphasized the importance of the Russian language and culture (for more detail, see Rannut 2008). As suggested by some scholars (for instance, Druviete 1997 and Ozolins 2003), Russian in the non-Russian republics can be labeled as majoritized minority language. Elsewhere (but not in the Baltic countries), it has still maintained its prestige and dominance.
After the restoration of the independence of the Baltic states, the sociolinguistic situation has changed, Estonian became the official language, and the proficiency in Estonian among Russian speakers increased: during the last Soviet census of 1989, only 13.7 % of Russians declared proficiency in Estonian (Raun 2001: 235, Statistika Teataja 1990). It has been attested that Russian speakers in Estonia do not constitute a uniform group as far as their language attitudes are concerned, and already in the 2000s Vihalemm and Masso (2002: 185) described bi- and monolingual Russians, while Ehala and Zabrodskaja (2014) outlined five types of identity among ethnic Russians, ranging between a complete separation from all things Estonian to the total identity change and internalization of the Estonian language and culture. Some studies on Russian-speaking students in Estonian-medium schools demonstrate a certain shift in identity and change in language use (Moisejenko et al. 2019). However, not much is known about the introduction of Estonian as one or the only home language in families where both parents are Russian speakers. It is a relatively new phenomenon, and, given the socio-cultural history of Russian speakers in Estonia, cannot be considered the same as usage of the majority language as one of home languages among minorities in the Western context. Therefore, the present analysis of FLP would shed light on such cases that illustrate the changes in language attitudes among Russian speakers of Estonia.
Description of FLP, combined with the self-description of the sociocultural background and linguistic profiles of the parents can be treated as a type of linguistic biographies (see Franceschini 2022 for more detail on the exploration of linguistic biographies). In this connection, Pavlenko observes that certain types of linguistic phenomena such as language shift and attrition (in fact, we believe that not only those) are “best examined through triangulation of linguistic, observational and interview data” (2007: 169). We followed this idea in our research, which combined observation and spontaneous speech recording, linguistic analysis of language choices, and the interview with the parents.
First, approximately 6 hours of spontaneous speech in everyday situations (such as playing, eating together, and other family activities, usually with both parents involved) was recorded by the observer (a family friend, an Estonian-speaking female) or by the mother between October 2021 and January 2022 (five sessions, three of them recorded by the mother). The observer was present during the first recordings; she was a family friend whose child attends the same kindergarten as the son of the family and with whom the whole family was familiar. She took an active part in the conversation and participated in the family’s daily activities (e.g. going to the playground). All recordings were transcribed using the chat-system (CHILDES, https://dali.talkbank.org/clan/), and instances of CS were detected. As described in the introduction, we felt that without background information, CS in the family conversations could not be explained, so we conducted a semi-structured interview with both parents (recording approximately 1.5 hours) in March 2022. In the interview, first, we asked the parents to describe their sociolinguistic background and provide a short linguistic biography (i.e. what languages they acquired, what languages they use, where, with whom, and other relevant details); then we asked about FLP. Both parents spoke eagerly and freely, and it appeared that they were pleased with the opportunity to talk on the topic.
As both parents come from Russian-speaking families and both have a proficiency in Estonian, we left the language choice open and told the parents in the beginning that we can talk in either language and switch back and forth between Russian and Estonian if necessary. Since the first author is a balanced Estonian-Russian bilingual and the second author has some command in Russian, both authors were able to converse in both languages whenever needed. The conversation gravitated towards Estonian with some CS. Methodologically, it is essential that researchers know the languages of the informants (see Pavlenko 2007). Both authors are proficient in Estonian and Russian and were able to adjust to the language choice of the parents and code-switched as well. The interview was also transcribed using the chat-system (https://talkbank.org/manuals/CHAT.pdf).
The family in question lives in Tallinn, and its socioeconomic status can be described as wealthy. The family runs its own IT business; both parents have higher education and some experience of living and working abroad. However, they grew up in different linguistic environments. According to Rannut (2005) and Ehala et al. (2014), there are four types of linguistic environments in Estonia: bilingual Tallinn where the share of Estonian and Russian speakers is more or less equal; Russian-dominant urban environment (Ida-Virumaa as the target for the Soviet industrialization that relied on imported workers); Estonian-dominant urban environment, and Estonian-dominant rural environment.
The mother was born in 1987 in Rakvere, the center of the Lääne-Virumaa county, which belongs to the Estonian-dominant urban linguistic environment. She is of Russian-Ukrainian ethnic origin with no knowledge of Ukrainian. Her formative years took place in the predominantly Estonian-language environment. She attended an Estonian-medium school. Russian was used at home with her parents and older brothers, and Estonian was employed with her younger sisters. At home, language use was never explicitly discussed or regulated. School friends were mostly Estonian speakers, and only one friend spoke Russian. She knows English, German and some Spanish. According to the self-reported data, she speaks Russian to her husband and Estonian to her children. She prefers reading in Estonian and English because she reads in Russian rather slowly.
The father was born in 1992 in Tallinn and has Russian (and probably some Jewish) roots. The home language was Russian, and it remains his dominant language. He is fluent in Estonian although speaks with an accent and not without grammatical errors. Rather typically for this linguistic environment, the first encounter with the Estonian language occurred at school at the age of 8. He graduated from a Russian-medium school and had no opportunities to use Estonian except for reading and Estonian language classes. His parents encouraged him to improve his command in Estonian and hired a private teacher. The opportunity to communicate in Estonian appeared during his university years because higher education institutions are predominantly Estonian-medium. According to the statement given during the interview, he speaks Russian to his children.
There are two children in the family, a boy and a girl. At the time of the first recording, the boy was exactly 3 years and the girl 11 months old. The girl was able to produce the first syllable- or word-like vocalizations. During the recording period, the boy attended an Estonian-medium kindergarten, and the girl was at home with the mother. Therefore, it did not seem reasonable/possible to record any child-to-child interaction.
As we noticed differences between what the parents declare as their beliefs and actions and the actual linguistic behavior in family conversations, we subdivide the analysis into two parts: first, we consider the statements made by the parents during the interviews concerning their identity, linguistic repertoire, and providing an environment appropriate for the upbringing of bilingual children, and after that we turn to the linguistic aspects of the family conversations.
During the interview, we asked about the parents’ beliefs and plans concerning FLP as well as about their identity (going beyond the socio-demographic data). In the quotations and examples provided in the analysis, the following abbreviations are used: F = father, M = mother, A1 = first author, A2 = second author, C = child, and G = guest. Estonian is in italics, English is represented in bold, and Russian is underlined.
Father opts for a fluid identity and reacts to the question about his language(es) and ethnicity with a series of statements as the ones in as examples (1), (2), (3) and (4):
(1) F
Ütleme nii, et olen Eesti venekeelne juut, midagi taolist
‘let us say, I am a Russian-speaking Estonian Jew, something like that’
(2) F
Ma arvan, et kõik oleme juudid mingil määral
‘I think we are all Jews to some extent’
(3) F
A1: Net, kak tšelovek čuvstvujet ‘no, that is how a person feels’
F: Tak tšto kultura russkaja u menja, ponjatno naverno ‘so that my culture is Russian, probably, this is clear’
A1: A éstonskaja? ‘What about Estonian?’
F: Ja ponimaju, možno skazat’ tšto… to jest’ to Estonian Russian ‘I understand, one can say that… that is that Estonian Russian’
(4) F
Me oleme nagu… oskame optimeerida nii vastavalt situatsioonile, aga noh…
‘We are like… we can optimize it [language, identity] according to the situation but well…’
As stated in Section 3, Father does not know any Jewish language and has no relation to Jewish tradition or culture (in whatever language), and, in fact, it came out that only some distant ancestors were of Jewish origin. He is aware of terms like first language and uses them in the discussion about the mother tongue. The authors suggested, without using technical terms or different criteria for defining one’s mother tongue such as inheritance, expertise, and affiliation (as discussed in Rampton 1990), that one can have several mother tongues, and there is no right or wrong answer:
(5)
M: Ei no lihtsalt et igapäevaselt on emakeeleks eesti ja vene mõlemad
‘But well just in everyday life both Estonian and Russian are mother tongues’
A1 (turning to F): Ja teil? ‘What about you?’
F: No te mõtlete seda nagu first language? ‘Do you mean it just, like, the first language?’
Mother identified herself as an ethnic Estonian, which somewhat contradicts her self-description of her ethnic origin as Russian and Ukrainian. There is a chance that she confused citizenship and civic identity with ethnicity. Example (5) above demonstrates that her understanding of mother tongue is based on language usage (both Russian and Estonian) in everyday life. Compared to Father, her identity is more clearly defined.
Raising bilingual children appears logical and beneficial to both parents. On the surface level, they opt for OPOL. They try to provide input in both languages (e.g. speaking, reading, and peers speaking both languages). On a popular level, this is believed to be the “right” policy in bilingual families because in laypeople’s opinion languages should be separated: Father claims to be a purist (he knows and uses this particular word) and declares that the use of languages should be proper.
When asked whether they alternate between languages, the parents provide conflicting answers: the father believes that they do not alternate, while the mother asserts the opposite. It is unclear though whether their respective remarks pertain to their own language behavior or if they are making statements about language use in general.
However, further on both parents emphasize the usefulness and necessity of certain notions, their decisions and linguistic behavior. The Estonian words kasulik ‘useful’ and tuleb ‘has to, needs to’ appear several times:
(6)
F: Ja ne znaju, kak nado. Kasulik
‘I don’t know how it is supposed to be [referring to ethnicity]. Useful’
(7)
F: No kui nüüd rääkida nagu erinevaid keeli, noh siis termin nagu ei ole väga kasulik, on ju?
‘But if one speaks, like, several languages, well, then the term [first language] is kind of not very useful, is it?’
If one has to use a certain language, the level of proficiency is irrelevant:
(8)
F: Mis tähendab “oskab”, siis tuleb suhelda
‘What does it mean “knows” [a language], one has to communicate’
Another notion that kept up appearing was “logical/natural”, i.e. the language choice in the family is considered as natural, and it felt natural to send the children to a better kindergarten regardless of the medium of instruction (this happened to be an Estonian-medium kindergarten). Extracurricular activities are chosen according to the instructors’ expertise and closeness to home rather than the language of instruction. The choice of languages and the division of labor between the parents concerning Russian and Estonian is also described as loomulik ‘natural’, although the parents’ reminiscences about how FLP was decided differ to an extent:
(9)
A1: Kas teil oli algusest peale nagu mingi plaan, et kuidas ta lastega räägite, mis keeles?
‘Did you have a sort of plan from the beginning how you speak to the children, in what language?’
F: Ma arvan küll oli. ‘I think yes, there was one’
M: See oli pigem loomulik, et no, me lihtsalt ühe korra mainisime, et mina räägin eesti keeles, sina räägid vene keeles
‘It was more like natural that, well, we just mentioned once that I speak Estonian and you speak Russian’
Also, the choice to consume press in Estonian is described as logical because the local Russian-language media seems to rely on translations from Estonian:
(10)
F: See vene Delfi on eesti Delfi vaene sugulane, tegelikult, palju asju on tõlgitud nagu aja… ajakirjanduse kvaliteet on selline, nagu ta on, seega mõistlikum on nagu lugeda eesti keeles nagu from the source
‘This Russian Delfi [media portal] is a sad copy of the Estonian Delfi, actually, many things are translations like the quality of journ… journalism is as it is, thus, it is more logical to read it like in Estonian, like from the source’
According to the parents, the language choice in the family has not changed after the birth of their children. Mother mentioned that she uses more Russian than before because she speaks Russian with Father and now there are some Russian-speaking friends. They believe that the combination of Estonian, Russian, and English is optimal for Estonia. The parents try to maintain a balanced input in both languages and state that their children should have both Russian- and Estonian-speaking friends.
In this section, we analyze the actual interaction in the family (that is, recordings of everyday spontaneous speech) and the interview with a focus on CS. As apparent from the examples below, both insertional and alternational CS are present.
In child-to-mother and child-to-father interaction, the child primarily uses the language in which he had been addressed, that is, mostly Estonian with his mother (example 11) and mostly Russian with his father (example 12):
(11)
M: muidu läheb liiga paljuks. ‘otherwise it would be too much’
C: lähme tuppa. ‘let’s go inside’
(12)
F: da da da da drugoje delo, a tšto vot éto takoe? Mark, znaješ tšto éto?
‘yes yes yes yes something else, but what is this? Mark, do you know what it is?’
C: ne znaju ‘don’t know’
Alternations occur sporadically (examples (7)–(8)) and mostly when speaking with Mother (examples (13) and (14)) or other participants of a conversation and only in one case when speaking with Father (example (15)):
(13)
M: mis see on, Mark? ‘what is this, Mark?’
C: éto mitlo [: metro]. ‘it is the metro’
(14)
M: võta veel kaks ampsu siis on korras või üks amps mis sa pidid võtma
‘take more two bites then it’s ok or one bite that you had to take’
C: vsjo. ‘finished’
(15)
F: raz dva raz dva raz dva raz dva raz dva. ‘one two one two …’
C: tahan. ‘(I) want’
F: davai. ‘okay’
C: ei taha. ‘(I) don’t want’
The child’s speech contained only few instances of code switching (see Table 1), but still some examples of insertions can be found in his speech, as in example (16):
(16)
C: see on petšen’ka? ‘is it a little cookie?’
M: mhmh. ‘yes’
The child’s language use was not corrected by the parents; even in the conversation taking place in Estonian in the presence of a guest (G in the examples), the child uses Russian with his mother, and the mother provides her feedback in Russian (example (17)).
(17)
M: jah no võta siit klots Mark võta klots Ülle käib ja siis pärast saad sina. ‘yes take here a block Mark take a block Ülle’s turn and after that you can’
C: a potom možno postavit’. ‘but later can be put (board game button)’
G: a hobuse vä? ‘so (to put) a horse or what?’
M: potom možno postavit’, da. ‘later it can be placed, yes’
C: hobuse. ‘the horse’
The guest has a limited proficiency in Russian; she communicates with the mother in Estonian.
The number of turns in the mother’s speech in the recordings is 1 151, of which approximately 50 % are directed to the child. Of all the child-directed turns, 12% are in Russian, and 8% contain either insertional code-switching or alternational switching within a single turn. The mother speaks mostly in Estonian with her children, as in example 18:
(18)
M: no aga mida sa näed tühja kõhuga lasteaias täna süüa ei saa Mark sest me jäime magama kauaks ja
‘but what do you see on an empty stomach you will not be fed in the kindergarten today because we slept for too long today’
C: ma ei lähe täna lasteda [: lasteaeda]. ‘I will not go to the kindergarten today’
M: no lähed küll. ‘you will’
C: ei lähee. ‘will not’
CS in mother’s speech is not dense, i.e. there are very few instances of congruent lexicalization. This is likely due to the fact that her utterances are not long because the children are rather young, and these are everyday conversations where utterances tend to be short. Example (19) is a series of longer utterances where the mother refers to her Estonian-speaking guest Ülle, who is present during the conversation. The switch to Russian and then back to Estonian may be considered as congruent lexicalization.
(19)
M: Varsti saad oma Thomast vaadata, aga praegu veel sa pead tädi Üllega olema, kui sa tahad, sa võid vaadata Thomast ja siis… aa, noh [unclear] jemu i togda budeš’ rasskazyvat’ tädi Üllele
‘Soon you can watch your Thomas (cartoon) but for now you still have to be with aunt Ülle, if you want, you can watch Thomas and then… mhm [unclear] to him and then will tell aunt Ülle’
In (19), the word order in Russian and Estonian coincide (the slash marks the point of the switch): cf. Russian i togda budeš rasskazyvat’/tjote Ülle and Estonian ja siis jutustad/tädi Üllele ‘and then you will tell/ aunt Ülle’. The words for ‘aunt’ sound similar in both languages (Russian tjotja and Estonian tädi), which facilitates the switch (see Clyne (2003: 162) on facilitation) and enables congruent lexicalization.
Still, there are instances where the mother addresses her child in Russian or when the child speaks Russian and she responds in the same language or repeats the child’s utterance, as in example (20):
(20)
C: porosenka. ‘piglet’
M: porosenka xotšeš’ postavit’, nu, stav’. ‘you want to put the piglet, go on’
M: no see teebki keeruliseks ju. ‘but it makes (things) complicated’
C: jobot [: robot] upal. ‘robot fell down’
M: robot upal. ‘robot fell down’
The mother tends to code-switch within the same conversation with the same participants and in some cases, she answers the child in Russian even when the child had used Estonian in the previous turn, as in example example (21):
(21)
C: ei ol-le [: ole]. ‘no it is not’
M: davai u Lidy sprosim, da. ‘let’s ask Lida, yes’
The amount of the father’s speech is smaller in quantity when communicating with the children even in situations where both parents are present. The father speaks mostly Russian with his child (example 22) and does it also in situations where the child uses Estonian (example 23).
(22)
F: možno Mile rybu davat’ takuju? ‘can (I) give this kind of fish to Mila?’
C: nelzja ona ešjo malinkaja. ‘no, she is too little’
(23)
C: ma tahan vett juua. ‘I want to drink water’
F: seitšas nalju. ‘(I) pour now’
Sometimes the father uses a “wrong” language, i.e. Estonian with the child; this cannot be considered as CS, yet such cases are important in the context of the declared FLP. In example (24), it is just a short reaction to the child’s utterance:
(24)
C: mõmmi sööb mänguputlu [: putru]. ‘teddy-bear is eating play-porridge’
F: jah. ‘yes’
C: mitte pälise [: pärise] putlu [: putru]. ‘not real but play-porridge’
Example (25) is that of alternation: the father starts in Estonian and switches to Russian while trying to recall a certain saying that is being used in the kindergarten during the meals:
(25)
F: sööma sööma, tšto tam dal’še bylo. ‘(let’s go) to eat to eat, what was there further’
In Example (26), the father’s utterance is in Estonian, but the Russian discourse marker da ‘yes, do you, don’t you’ is added:
(26)
F: oskad neid kokku lugeda, Mark. lugeda, da? ‘can you count them, Mark, count, don’t you?’
In Example (27), the father seems to need more time to react to the child’s question and fills the pause with the Estonian discourse marker jah ‘yes’:
(27)
C: tšto éto? ‘what is it?’
F; jah ‘yes’
C: tšto éto? ‘what is it?’
In general, the father produced only 211 turns altogether, and there were only a few examples with CS occurrences.
There are not many utterances from the mother directed towards the father in the dialogues.. In recorded situations, both parents mostly spoke with their children and only occasionally with each other. Although the parents declared that they speak Russian to each other, the mother switched to Estonian from time to time while addressing the father. The father tends to answer in Russian even when the mother speaks with him in Estonian; consider examples (28) and (29):
(28)
F: jego netu, jego netu, u nego net imeni
‘he is not here, he is not here, he does not have a name’
M: see on nagu Rajiv. ‘This is like Rajiv’
F: xxx1 poxož. ‘xxx is similar’
(29)
M: skazali s obeix storon i škura dolžna tože byt’ krõmpsuv, a kogda v duxovku kladjoš, tože škura že kladjotsa vverx
‘they said that from both sides and the skin.has also to be crispy and when you put it in the oven, the skin has also to be on top’
Estonian krõmpsuv ‘crispy’
An overview of the number of code-switched utterances is presented in Table 1.
|
NUMBER OF ALL UTTERANCES |
INSERTIONS |
ALTERNATIONS |
CONGRUENT LEXICALIZATION |
|
|
MOT |
1151 |
15 |
39 |
4 |
|
FAT |
211 |
2 |
5 |
|
|
CHI (boy) |
874 |
8 |
14 |
On the basis of the recordings of spontaneous speech, it can be concluded that the mother uses mostly Estonian with the children but switches quite freely to Russian, especially in situations where the child’s turn is in Russian. It is also important to consider that the mother’s language is more abundant than the father’s, which may impact the obtained results. The father sticks more closely to his language, Russian, but still uses some Estonian. The child’s speech contains alternations when speaking to the mother and only occasionally when speaking to the the father.
4.2.5 Interaction during the interview
Finally, let us consider the interaction during the interview. We did not classify CS instances in the interviews because our goal here was to observe the parents’ discourse about language and FLP and their actual linguistic behavior. Father switches several times during the interview despite his claim about being a purist. As mentioned earlier, the language choice during the interview was free, and the authors started the conversation in Russian.
The mother uses mostly Estonian during the entire interview. Code alternation occurred only twice: when responding to her husband, she used Russian even after he had used English and Estonian in his previous utterance, as in example (30):
(30)
F: it dependends ütleme niimoodi. ‘it depends, let’s put it this way’
M: v kontraktax, skažem tak, russkij. ‘in the contracts, let’s say, [it is] Russian’
F : kontrakty. ‘contracts’
A1: ahah. ‘yes’
M: tvoji tol’ko. ‘yours only’
The father also mostly uses Estonian during the interview (8 out of 149 total utterances were in Russian in his speech). Interestingly, during the interview, code-switching in the father’s speech mainly appears when the base language is Estonian or in response to a preceding utterance in Estonian. After the introduction provided in Russian and Estonian by interviewer A1, the father answers in English, as in example (31):
(31)
A1: možno na ljubom jazyke, možno jazyk menjat’, täiesti ükskõik. ‘ you can speak in any language, you can switch, it doesn’t matter at all’
F: understood.
Only once during the interview the the father switches from Russian to Estonian (which is an instance of alternation), as demonstrated in example (32):
(32)
F: no u menja net estontsev vaat alluvad keelega, kui oleks, siis ma tõenäoliselt kasutaksin, nad kõige paremini saavad aru
‘But I don’t have Estonian employees so with the language, if I had, I would probably use for their best understanding’
To sum up, albeit the parents exhibit a degree of linguistic awareness and live a multilingual life, the linguistic reality is much more complex than they imagine and describe.
Based on the data from family interactions and the interviews, one may claim that there is a certain discrepancy between the declared OPOL principle, the declared principles of practicality, and the actual linguistic behavior. Of course, there are cases where parents adhere more or less to the OPOL policy and yet consciously switch for certain purposes (e.g. to attract attention or to reprimand), but the present case is different.
The discrepancy between parents’ beliefs about language and actual practices has recently gained some scholarly attention. For instance, the paper by Curdt-Christiansen (2016) is a longitudinal study on conflicting language ideologies, contradictions between ideologies and practices, and contradictions between practices and expectations among families in Singapore (such as caregivers’ different ideas about children’s identity, unrealistic expectations, and lack of commitment to bilingualism policy). Ghimenton (2015) discusses the incongruence between the preferences given by the parents to Standard Italian and the de facto usage of Veneto dialect.
However, the discrepancy between declarations and reality in our case is of a different nature. The goals and expectations of the parents are rather realistic: unlike in many minority language communities, it is rather easy to maintain Russian in Estonia (as well as in other post-Soviet countries) where Russian-speakers often form a self-sufficient monolingual community. Both languages are available, and access to them does not depend on economic factors (probably, with the exception of cities and towns in Ida-Virumaa, a Russian-dominant urban environment where the exposure to Estonian is limited). Rather often, problems arise not because of the impossibility to create enough input but the lack of motivation of Russian speakers to acquire Estonian and to ensure that their children are proficient in the language. In our case, the strict OPOL, the father’s claim of being a purist, and the strive towards a balanced input are in conflict with their linguistic behavior (CS) and practical considerations discussed during the interview (e.g. it is practical to raise bilingual children and to choose extracurricular activities based on their quality and availability rather than on the medium of instruction). In family interaction, the mother is the most active code-switcher (but the number of her utterances is higher than that of the others), while during the interview it was mostly the father who switched between Estonian, Russian and English.
Coming back to what was labeled as natural linguistic behavior and a natural choice during the interview (i.e. the mother being “responsible” for Estonian), one may argue about the relativity of “naturalness”. Quite often, lay people have an essentialist definition of ethnicity and the mother tongue (“Russians speak Russian”), and one might argue that it is natural to raise your children in your first language. However, language loyalty is rather high among those who identify as having Russian ethnicity: according to the 2011 Census, 94% of the Estonian population (across all ethnic groups) claim the language of their ethnicity as their mother tongue (Tiit 2015: 48). Russian has to some extent maintained its position as a majoritized minority language, and voluntary segregation is still present, especially in some regions with the dominant or substantial Russian-speaking population.
This brings us to the modified FLP model by Curdt-Christensen (2018b) where various extra-linguistic contexts that affect parents’ socialization and language beliefs, management and practices are introduced: sociolinguistic, socioeconomic, sociopolitical, and sociocultural contexts.
The sociolinguistic context favors at least bilingualism (Estonian and English) or, in some regions, trilingualism (Estonian, English, and Russian). In the capital, all public information is available in either Estonian and English or Estonian, English, and Russian. According to the 2021 Housing and Population census, 48% of the population knows English (https://rahvaloendus.ee/en/news/population-census-76-estonias-population-speak-foreign-language ). Since many, especially among those who are younger than 30, use English on an every-day basis and tend to code-switch (see especially Kask 2021 on ethnic Estonians), the fact that the father switches into English from time to time is not surprising. The family is well integrated into Estonian society. In Estonia, even now multilingualism is more spread among Estonian speakers than among Russian speakers (i.e. the restoration of independence did not lead to monolingualism among Estonians; see Tammaru 2016 and Ehala and Koreinik 2021); being multilingual provides more socioeconomic opportunities (for example, more choices, better jobs, and higher salaries).
Speaking of the socioeconomic context, the family is well-off and can afford extracurricular activities, travelling and longer stays abroad (for instance, two months in Spain; yet, Spanish is not used in the family although the mother claims to have some proficiency in it.), as well as books and games in both languages. The sociopolitical context in the country “continues to be difficult”, as Ladziņa and Marten (2021: 273) describe it in the Latvian case, and this applies to Estonia as well because the consequences of the majoritized minority status of Russian-speakers and the existence of two separate education systems have not yet been entirely overcome. The change in the status of Russian may be perceived by some as a threat to their identity (as in some cases the identity may be linked to Russia itself and not only to the language). Still, in this particular family, there are no fears that introduction of Estonian at home would have a negative impact on the children’s development or would affect their identity in a negative way. As far as sociocultural context is concerned, the parents revealed fluid (hyphenated) identities and Estonian civic identity.
The language socialization of the parents, particularly in the case of the mother, who received educationion in Estonian and grew up in the Estonian-dominant region of Lääne-Virumaa, has straight implications for FLP. To date, there have been no studies on regional factors in FLP in Estonia, with the exception of Kostap’s (2017) qualitative research which discovered that for Russian speakers in Estonian-Russian families in Lääne-Virumaa, the maintenance of Russian is not a high priority. Although the parents share a similar ethnolinguistic background, with their parents speaking Russian and having Russian or mostly Russian ethnic backgrounds, their language socialization differs exactly due to growing up in different linguistic environments.
It has been demonstrated that the declared OPOL policy is not strict. CS may be used as a parental discourse strategy in parents-to-children communication: Lanza (1997) describes five strategies, such as minimal grasp, expressed guess, repetition, move on and CS (for an overview, see Schwarz 2020: 198). As Schwartz (2020: 206) suggests, CS as a strategy is goal-directed, which means that parents may depart from the strict OPOL/minority language at home policy and code-switch for specific pragmatic goals. Clearly, however, this is not the case in our study, where CS appears unintentionally and unconsciously.
The answers to the research questions can be summarized as follows. As far as Question 1 (What are the goals, beliefs, and actions of the parents?) is concerned, the parents’ goal was stated rather clearly during the interview. They want to raise multilingual children and believe that living in Estonia, the combination of Estonian, Russian and English is the most beneficial language repertoire. The adherence to OPOL was explained both by the idea of “pure” languages (i.e. language separation) and by practical considerations (namely, by what seems reasonable, convenient or natural). The parents have enough resources and time in order to provide diverse input in both Estonian and Russian, and they act accordingly. In general, both family conversations and the interview proved to be linguistically more diverse (i.e. more CS) than expected.
As for Question 2 (How does the actual linguistic behavior of the parents (both in the interview and the family conversations) correspond to their declared FLP?), the actual linguistic behavior does not exhibit a strict separation of languages but rather smooth CS. During the interview, the contrast between the father’s statement concerning purism and his speech was the most striking. CS in family conversations is not one of the parental discourse strategies but rather occurs unconsciously. The children’s language use is not corrected as they address the parents in a “wrong” language. There are no hesitation pauses before switches, and it seems that the language choice is pretty much free: when the child addresses the mother in Russian, she may reply in Russian, and when the father participates in the conversation, the mother may use more Russian.
What makes this case different from other studies on FLP is the internalization of Estonian. Russian cannot be considered as a minority language in the traditional sense because of the Soviet-era heritage, which includes a previous majoritized position, attitudes towards Estonian, self-sufficient monolingual communities, and Russian being a “big” language). Moreover, the introduction of Estonian at home by ethnic Russians is not the same as a shift to the majority language. We concur with Kopeliovich (2013), who mentions that in some sociolinguistic situations the majority/official language such as Hebrew in Israel) cannot be maintained without parental efforts.
Generally speaking, the current study has demonstrated the necessity of a juxtaposition of actual linguistic behavior and parental narratives about FLP and their identity construction. This study supports observations that the group that is often labeled as the Russian-speaking community in Estonia is becoming more diverse in their linguistic behavior, their attitudes towards Estonian, and language beliefs (cf. Zabrodskaja 2014). The study suggests that among educated and upwardly mobile ethnic Russians there are cases of internalization of Estonian. That is, not only a high proficiency in Estonian for children is desired, but Estonian is also being treated as one of “our” languages and not just a societal language. In future, it would be instructive to collect more spontaneous conversation data and more balanced data (i.e. more utterances from the father) in order to investigate the family’s naturalistic bilingual communication.
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1 All word-length unintelligible units have been transcribed as xxx.