Linguistic Intermarriage in Australia: Between Pride and Shame

This book examines the experiences of couples with different language backgrounds and different cultural origins as they negotiate love, partnership and parenting. It is based on the author’s doctoral research into the attitudes and experiences of the English-speaking background (ESB) partners of non-English-speaking background (NESB) migrants in Sydney, Australia. In particular, it seeks to understand how these English speakers negotiate being in a romantic relationship with someone who has a different first language. It explores how those from an ESB reconcile the negative perspectives of Anglophone culture towards ＂other＂ languages, with their desire to be a good partner who respects the linguistic differences in their relationship. The book is organised into six chapters, which move from a focus on the language of the individual, to the languages of the couple, and then to the wider family. The main finding is that although ESB partners had very different beliefs and attitudes towards language learning to their migrant partners, they attempted to compensate for these differences in various ways. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of language education, minority languages, and language policy and planning.

Hanna Irving Torsh is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics in the Faculty of Human Sciences at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She won the 2019 Michael Clyne Prize for her doctoral thesis and was awarded a Macquarie Research Excellence Scholarship in 2012. Hanna contributes to the peer-reviewed sociolinguistic research site, Language on the Move.