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To Know A Bāthā: Family Language Socialization Among Buddhist Immigrants From Myanmar In New York City, Chu M. Paing

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

While there is a rising number of research on Heritage Language Maintenance among East Asian immigrants, there have been very few research done on Southeast Asian minority heritage language maintenance. The purpose of this paper is to shed the light on the practices and ideologies towards heritage language maintenance in two Buddhist immigrant families from Myanmar residing in New York City. This paper approaches the topic of heritage language maintenance by employing Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin’s (1984) theoretical framework on language socialization, i.e., socializing U.S. born Burmese children to become competent members of both their heritage and American societies. …