Exploring the micro-social dynamics of intergenerational language transmission: a critical analysis of parents's attitudes and language use patterns among Ndamba speakers in Tanzania

Abstract

The study has several implications; for general theoretical traditions it highlights the point that ambivalent attitudes and incomplete language use are responsible for gradual language decline. Previous studies while acknowledging the role of community based, intuitive conditions on language maintenance and shift, did not show how the process occurred. For policy the study aims toward sensitizing policy makers and raise their awareness about the dire situation in which minority languages currently are in. This would ensure that politicians, bureaucrats, and other state authorities could implement policy decisions that guarantee protection of minority languages and enhance their vitality. One policy strategy that could ensure revitalization of minority languages would be to include them in the school curriculum as supplementary approach to the effort of the home and the community, as McCarty (2002, quoted in Recento, 2006) observes that schools; […] “can be constructed as a place where children can be free to be indigenous in the indigenous language - in all of its multiple and everchanging meanings and forms” (p. 51).