Language Choice Patterns of Young Cross-Cultural Couples

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SUMMARY

Development of transport and communications contributed to intensification of the contacts of all kind among the members of different cultures. Raising numbers of cross-cultural relationships is one of the consequences of this internationalization of life. The communication of cross-cultural couples is important for both scientific and societal reasons. The research on this kind of unions could contribute to the knowledge about the international communication in general as well as it could serve as a basis for a system of counselling for the growing number of this kind of couples.

This area of study remains until now, largely unexplored, mainly due to the difficulties with the data collection. The existing research concerns mostly married couples having children. Thus, I decided to examine the communication patterns of young unmarried couples. In this study, my aim is to find of which languages the young people use as a means of communication and in which contexts they use particular languages. Furthermore, I would like to find out which factors influence this choice. Finally, I wanted to know if the couples from my sample elaborate any strategies concerning their language practice.

The research in the form of an online survey was conducted on 18 heterosexual couples between 21 and 30 years old. It revealed that majority of partners use English as lingua franca while communicating with each other. Habit and high proficiency in this language have the biggest impact on this choice. However, while communicating with relatives having no skills in English, they tend to use the mother tongues. The mother tongues are used to express emotions as well: the couples see a foreign language unsuitable for sharing the feelings....

... middle of paper ...

...iller, Ingrid. 2008. ‘I always wanted to marry a cowboy:’ Bilingual couples, language and desire. In T. A. Karis & D. K. Killian (Eds.), Intercultural couples: Exploring diversity in intimate relationshipos. London: Routledge.

Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2005. “Key Concepts in ELT- English as a lingua franca”. ELT Journal 59, 339-341.

Takahashi, Kimie. (2010). Multilingual Couple Talk: Romance, identity and the political economy of language. In D. Nunan and J. Choi (Eds.), Language, Culture and Identity: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity. Routledge, 216-224

Walters, Keith .1996. “Gender, Identity, and the Political Economy of Language: Anglophone Wives in Tunisia”. In: Language in Society, 25 (4), 515-555

Yamamoto, Masayo. 1995. “Bilingualism in International Families”. In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16 (1&2), 63 – 85

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