Silja Ang-Tschachtli - Bilingual Couples in Conversation

Claire appreciates the fact that she does not have to speak German at home, as she uses the language at work all day. Meanwhile, Simon feels that he profits personally and professionally from speaking English with his wife. He later claims that some of his fellow English teachers even envy him a little, because he is able to practice English at home, while they only use the language at school (787). Indeed, many of the Swiss participants express very positive attitudesattitudes towards their partner’s mother tongue, which are rarely matched by the Anglophone participants despite their generally positive views on bilingualism, biculturalismbiculturalism, and their host country (see chapter 7, “‘This uh foreign girl with a great accent’: Attitudes and attraction”, for an extensive discussion). The Swiss participants appear to have a very high level of motivation to maintain English as their relationship language, partially owing to the high prestigeprestige of English and its status as a world language. Consequently, the couples are inclined to continue communicating in English, even if some of the Anglophone partners have reached a fairly high level of proficiency in (Swiss) German over the years. This underlines that, as the partners’ relationship progresses and their L2 skills develop, language proficiency becomes less of a constraint, while habit, attitudes, and motivation gain in importance.

Motivation and attitude also play a crucial role in the language choice of the only couple who did not start out speaking English, Joshua Eand Deborah SG. Their situation differs from the other nine couples’ in many ways. For one, they met in Switzerland, and Joshua already spoke Standard German fairly fluently when they began a relationship. Moreover, he had personal and professional motivation to speak German due to his work as a missionary and his involvement in the church. In contrast, Deborah reports that, while she has always liked English, she also has some hesitations about speaking the language, as she did not get along at all with her grammar school English teacher, who was American. She therefore preferred to speak Standard German to Joshua when they first met. In the first few years of their relationship, Joshua and Deborah took a number of conscious decisions to change their mode of communicating, based on what was most suitable to their life situation at the time. First, Joshua decided that he wanted to learn the local variety, and Deborah started speaking Swiss German to him, until he became fluent enough to use it himself. Later on, Joshua wanted Deborah to overcome her inhibitions about speaking English, and they started speaking both languages to each other, and also mixing them. Occasionally, they would also speak dual-linguallydual-lingual, i.e. in their respective mother tongues (see Piller 2002a: 150). This meant that Deborah would speak Swiss German and Joshua would respond in English, a manner of communicating that was often considered odd by those around them. When they became parents, the couple decided that each of them should make an effort to use solely his or her mother tongue, in order to raise their childrenchildrenraising bilingual according to a “one parent, one language” strategyone parent, one language strategy. Since then, they have reduced their code-switching considerably, at least when their children are present, though Joshua occasionally still finds it difficult to use English exclusively. As a matter of fact, he found both of their attempts at shifting towards English challengingchallengeslinguistic, despite that fact that these were made on his own initiative, and that English is his native tongue. He attributes these difficulties to the force of habithabit:

Despite these challenges, Deborah and Joshua have been effective in their language planning and have managed to implement their ideas to a great extent. Their example shows that, while habit is an important factor, couples can successfully change their mode of communicating if they are determined enough to do so. Moreover, it demonstrates that English is not necessarily the default language, even if it is spoken fluently by the non-native partner, as long as both partners are motivated to communicate in the other language and have a positive attitude towards it.

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