Turkish immigrant adolescents' adaptation in the Netherlands: the impact of the language context

• Autores: Paul Vedder
• Localización: Estudios de sociolingüística: Linguas, sociedades e culturas, ISSN 1576-7418, Vol. 5, Nº 2, 2004, págs. 257-276
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The language assimilation model represents the notion that immigrant y u t h 's p r o fi c i e n cy in the national language (L2) predicts adaptation irrespective of their ethnic language proficiency (L1). We studied the context dependency of this model using Lerner's notion of "goodness of fit". Lerner contends that if personal resources or competencies do match the demands posed by particular activity settings, e.g., the school, then the person experiences reward and this positively affects adaptation.

    Two hypotheses guided the study: 1) when a context demands the use of Dutch language a more fluent proficiency is rewarding and thus is positively related to adaptation outcomes, irrespective of the level of ethnic language proficiency; 2) the more proximal the context is in terms of the need to use the national language, the stronger the moderating effect of the language context is on the relationship between national language proficiency and adaptation outcomes. The study was conducted in the Netherlands. Participants were 160 Turkish second generation immigrant adolescents (13-18 years). We found support for the first hypothesis, but not for the second.