Albanian Heritage Language Learning in Canada: Understanding Language Maintenance and Identity Development among Second-Generation Immigrants
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation contributes to heritage language (HL) research by exploring identity development among second-generation Albanian adolescents in Canada. Heritage Albanian remains an understudied area, with most existing scholarship concentrated in Europe, while research in the Americas is extremely limited, with only one known study in the U.S. and none in Canada. This ethnographic case study investigates how second-generation Albanian HL learners position themselves and are positioned by others in relation to their language and cultural identity. It also examines the social and cultural forces shaping their language practices and identity development amid processes of language shift. The study was conducted in Alberta with eleven Albanian-Canadian participating families. Data collection involved classroom observations at a community-based heritage language school, individual interviews with adolescents and their parents, and an online workshop for digital language portraits with adolescents. Descriptive and collaborative methods were used to analyze observations, thematic analysis was applied to interviews, and narrative positioning analysis was used for the digital language portraits. Berry’s (1997) acculturation theory and Kayi-Aydar’s (2021) positioning analysis framework informed the interpretation of findings. The findings reveal that while both adolescents and parents used similar identity labels (i.e., Albanian, Canadian, or Albanian-Canadian), they often attached different meanings to them. Adolescents’ self-positioning reflected a mix of inherited identity, personal experience, and parental expectations, while parents primarily focused on cultural preservation. The study emphasizes the vital role of family language policies, exposure, and community involvement in maintaining HL. Inconsistent HL use at home led to lower HL proficiency as well as weaker cultural ties, while strong connections with extended family, trips to the homeland, and engagement in cultural or HL school programs fostered heritage connections. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that language and identity are closely intertwined and shaped through daily interactions within families and communities. Adolescents who developed a strong Albanian identity were often more motivated to retain their HL. These findings highlight the importance of recognizing hybrid identities and ensuring sustained support for HL programs in fostering multilingualism and educational equity.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".