The Researched Exploratory Essay.
Many families and parents make the decision to move to America with the aim for a better future, but often experience the disadvantages that come with not being able to speak English properly. Because their original goal is to provide a better life for their families, this may scare parents into pushing their children to assimilate into US culture faster than they did. This “push” can be seen in a widespread fear among immigrant parents who believe that learning two languages is detrimental to their child’s learning ability and development, and in turn may refuse to teach their children their native language or neglect teaching them it. So, in the US, there exist children of immigrants who know how to speak their native language and those who don’t. In the US, where your ability to speak English impacts your opportunities—where not knowing English can set you back, how does not knowing a parents’ native language set a child of immigrants back?
In “Acculturation and Latino Family Processes: How Cultural Involvement, Biculturalism, and Acculturation Gaps Influence Family Dynamics” written by Paul R. Smokowski, Roderick Rose, and Martica Ballaco, they explore and try to prove four hypotheses dealing with acculturation, family dynamics, and social identity. One of their hypotheses is centered on how increased involvement in their culture of origin and biculturalism is directly related to positive family dynamics and inversely related to parent-child conflicts, while another surveys how differences in a parent and their child’s acculturation is inversely relate to positive family dynamics. Their experiment involves 402 immigrant Latino families from Arizona and North Carolina. Smokowski is currently the Executive Director for the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center and has published more than 120 works on adverse childhood experiences, acculturation, adolescent mental health, and family stress. Alongside Ballaco, they’ve created the Parent-Teen Biculturalism Project, addressing how to prevent youth violence in immigrant families.
Children who cannot speak their parents’ native language can feel like an outlier in their own family, regardless of the other elements of their culture they may be exposed to. In the investigation, one hypothesis was fully supported by the data, “According to both adolescents and parents, culture-of-origin involvement and biculturalism were positively related to family cohesion, adaptability, and familism. These findings extend the prior research on culture-of-origin involvement and self-esteem by showing that culture-of-origin involvement is also connected to positive family dynamics” (Smokowski et al., 304). The relationship between ones’ culture of origin involvement and familism can be simply stated as the more involved a child (and in turn, their parent) was in their culture of origin, the better the bond and unity between their families were. Similarly, it can be said that the less involved a child was in their culture of origin, the worse the bond between them and their parents and other family members was. Language plays a huge part in culture, so a lack of fluency in one’s native language can cause disharmony amongst others who are fluent, especially family members.
Certain immigrant families, once they realize their children can’t speak the native language, despite involving them in other culture elements, will have a harsher attitude towards children who lack fluency. In the study, they recall observations from other social experiments to help develop their hypotheses, “Latino families’ external boundaries may become rigid to preserve the cultural roles and patterns of their culture of origin. In turn, it appears that this rigidity elicits intergenerational conflicts when parents react to the rapid assimilation of children” (Smokowski et al. 297). Essentially, the finding was that children are more able to adapt to country the family immigrated to (referred to as the host country) faster than adults. The more attuned a child was to the host country’s culture, the more they favored the host country’s values over their home country’s values. In Latino families, “family cohesion, familism, and parental control” are emphasized, but because their children don’t hold these values to the same significance as they do to America’s individualism, parents will try to combat this emerging culture gap by becoming stricter, often resulting in conflicts and alienation between parent and child. A child who cannot speak their parents’ native language, but can speak English, will obviously feel like an imposter in their country of origin’s culture, so they will turn to their host country’s (in this example, the host country being the USA) culture and try to further assimilate there to grasp any semblance of belonging. However, a child who “rejects” their parents’ native culture will obviously be seen as rebellious, thus the child will be further singled out from the family. All of this will eventually contribute to a child who feels solely removed from their culture and the people who participate in that culture.
G. Yamazawa is a Japanese American writer and hip-hop artist. He started off as a spoken word artist and successfully transitioned to rap music as his current artistic outlet. His poem, “The Bridge,” contrasts his father’s Japanese accent when speaking English and Yamazawa’s own flimsy Japanese. While his father’s accent is a proud mark to carry—a testament to his roots, Yamazawa’s Japanese is his shame that he is mortified to pass down his descendants. Hannah Song is a student at Georgetown University, studying linguistics and computer science. Her article on the university’s associated news magazine website, “Carrying On: Learning to Speak My Family’s Language,” briefly details her experience as a biracial kid wanting to feel more connected to her Korean roots by learning Korean.
When an immigrant child grows up, from their stagnant fluency in their parents’ native language emerges a fear of the future: How will their fluency directly impact their child’s connection to their country of origin’s culture? In “The Bridge,” Yamazawa shares his dread of passing down his lack of language to his future children, “I am afraid that my rusty Japanese is the broken chain link that can’t hold my lineage together. I am afraid of passing down my lack of language to my children and their grandpa’s accent will sound more foreigner than family.” Yamazawa understands the importance of language in culture and in turn fears that it will be his fault if he is the last in his family to feel truly connected to his Japanese heritage. If he has children, he worries they won’t even be able to consider themselves having a Japanese identity because he is not fluent in Japanese. In Hannah Song’s family, Yamazawa’s future fear is Song’s reality—she is the “children” that he is so afraid of passing down his lack of language to. After recalling her dad’s generation’s experience of being a second-generation immigrant, who, to this day, can only speak Konglish and small sentences in Korean, she states, “I wish that I were fluent in Korean. I wish that I grew up in a bilingual household, and that I didn’t have to learn my family’s language like an outsider. I wish that being American didn’t prevent me from being Korean, and vice versa…” (Song). Song can never fully be just American, nor can she just be Korean (as she is half American and half Korean, she explains that Americans see her as Asian, while Koreans see her as American, so she has never once felt accepted in either community); she is both at the same time, but she yearns for that connection to her Korean identity as her family is more accultured to America. Her wish to not have to learn Korean like an outsider fulfills Yamazawa’s prophecy borne from the fear of blood ties being “more foreigner than family.”
Immigrant children who are not fluent in their native language do not feel confident enough to associate themselves with their parents’ country of origin. To them, it is shameful that they can never fully connect to the culture because of their language skills. It hinders their familial and social relationships and sense of self because they cannot fully connect to their parents’ culture—they cannot confidently make a connection with the community that identifies with their parents’ country of origin because the language barrier makes them feel like an outsider to the culture, and even worry that the same fate awaits their future children. Though identity struggles and self-confidence issues come with not being able to speak their parents’ language fluently, that doesn’t make a person any less than their cultural identity, nor should it stop a person from identifying with that identity. While language plays a huge part in integrating into a culture, it is not the only way to involve oneself in it, nor should it be the defining reason that causes one to separate themselves from their culture.
Works Cited
Smokowski, Paul R., Martica L. Bacallao, and Roderick Rose. “Acculturation and Latino Family Processes: How Cultural Involvement, Biculturalism, and Acculturation Gaps Influence Family Dynamics.” National Council on Family Relations, vol. 57, no. 3, 2008, pp. 295-308.
Song, Hannah. “Carrying On: Learning to Speak My Family’s Language.” The Georgetown Voice, georgetownvoice.com/2019/02/01/carrying-on-learning-to-speak-my-familys-language/
“G. Yamazawa – The Bridge.” YouTube, uploaded by Button Poetry, 23 March 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6gFNpChKKk.
