Taza Qazaqsha” or Translanguaging? Exploring heritage language maintenance strategies among Central Asian Kazakh immigrant families in California

Bibliographic Data

ID6013535
AuthorsMunira Kairat (0009-0002-6931-3534, University of California, Santa Barbara), Amy Kyratzis (0009-0008-2009-2973, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Year2025
Volume27
Issue6
Pages1050-1069
Publication date2025-10-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4456 • E-ISSN: 1461-7080
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614456251373009
OpenAlexW4415649617
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

This study applies Conversation Analysis to examine heritage language maintenance among Central Asian Kazakh families in the United States. The study analyzes naturally occurring conversations between a parent and toddler drawn from two Kazakh immigrant families from China and Kazakhstan. While both parents aspire to teach their children Taza Qazaqsha (“pure/clean Kazakh language”), both integrate translanguaging into their daily interactions, designing them around children’s interests and linguistic competencies to elicit children’s orientation toward learning Kazakh. Children exert agency in derailing the mothers’ Kazakh-learning communicative project, both implicitly, through responding almost entirely in English despite exhibiting understanding, as well as explicitly, through derailing the project of “saying” things in Kazakh when the mothers explicitly orient to this. Results point to children’s agency and the realities of maintaining Indigenous heritage languages in transnational settings

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