Second-Generation South Asian Britons : Multilingualism, Heritage Languages, and Diasporic Identity

Second-Generation South Asian Britons: A Narrative Inquiry into Multilingualism, Heritage Languages, and Diasporic Identity uses the narratives of seven high-professional, second-generation South Asian Britons to explore issues related to Heritage Language learning and maintenance, discourses of identity and the practices of multicultural families in the UK. Through semi-structured interviews conducted in English, the participants of the study provide articulate and reflective accounts of the language dynamics in the families they grew up in, the communities and environs of their childhood, their young adulthoods and their current lives as parents of dual-heritage children. By investigating both the stories that they tell and how they tell them, this study offers insights into how monolingual narratives can be used to comment on multilingualism.