For more than a century in Lindsborg, Kansas (USA), Heritage Swedish has been acquired and learned in various ways. In oral history interviews carried out in the town and in surrounding farming communities in the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s, many residents explained that Swedish was the language spoken in their childhood homes. Their acquisition of Swedish was also supported by Swedish-language Sunday Schools and “Swede Schools” in the summer. Some residents who moved to the community first as young adults could learn Swedish at Bethany College, an evangelical Lutheran liberal arts college founded by Swedes and Swedish Americans. So learning opportunities could and did vary, as did the motivations for having fluency in Swedish, which this paper explores.
This investigation applies the analytical framework of verticalization (Warren 1978) to understand the interplay between Heritage Swedish, the community structures, and views on educational opportunities. As articulated in Brown (ed.) 2022, when the verticalization model is applied to language shift, “it attributes shift to a change from local control of tightly interconnected [‘horizontal’] institutions to more external or ‘vertical’ control of those increasingly interdependent institutions [outside the community]” (Brown & Salmons 2022: 20; emphasis added; see also Salmons 2005a, 2005b).
Lindsborg, founded in 1868/69, was influenced by English-language verticalizing structures, including the Kansas State Board of Education, early in its settlement history. Yet there were decades of sustained horizontal support of Swedish. In addition, vertical ties—in this case for Swedish—were maintained by the Augustana Lutheran Synod (headquartered in Illinois) and influenced the Kansas town. A stream of Swedish teaching materials published by the Synod reached the local community in the 1890s (possibly earlier), and at least some of these materials were distributed by Sunday School teachers to children.
The aims of the investigation are the following:
· to establish a timeline showing when learning opportunities in Swedish were available to children and young adults;
· to collate information from oral history data on how, when, and why the respondents explained that they grew up speaking Swedish in their homes;
· to determine how vertical and horizontal ties appear to have influenced the acquisition and learning of Swedish, and
· where possible, identify the ideologies linked with learning Swedish.
The analysis in the investigation is qualitative and focuses on findings from the historical materials that are currently known and accessible to the researcher:
TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEWS of speakers born between 1888 and ca. 1930.
RECORDS from Bethany Lutheran Church, mainly data on confirmation and Sunday School classes.
PRINTED SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOKS in Swedish, published in Illinois.
BETHANY COLLEGE CATALOGS and YEARBOOKS indicating courses and extra-curricular activities in Swedish.
LINDSBORG HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOKS indicating (some) courses in Swedish.
The methods used to analyze the materials are close readings and content analyses of the historical materials and the interviews.
Selected Secondary References
Brown, Joshua R. (ed.) 2022. The Verticalization Model of Language Shift: The Great Change in American Communities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Joshua R. & Joseph Salmons. 2022. “A Verticalization Theory of Language Shift.” In Joshua R. Brown (ed.), The Verticalization Model of Language Shift: The Great Change in American Communities, 1–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horner, Kristine & Andrew F. Bradley. 2019. “Chapter 25. Language Ideology.” In Jeroen Darquennes, Wim Vandenbussche & Joseph Salmons (eds.), Contact Linguistics, 296–307. Berlin: de Gruyter Handbooks. doi/10.1515/9783110435351-025/html?lang=en#Chicago
Salmons, Joseph. 2005a. “The Role of Community and Regional Structure in Language Shift.” In Lothar Hönnighausen, Marc Frey, James Peacock & Niklaus Steiner (eds.), Regionalism in the Age of Globalism: Volume 1: Concepts of Regionalism, 129–138. Madison: Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures.
Salmons, Joseph. 2005b. “Community, Region and Language Shift in German-speaking Wisconsin.” In Lothar Hönnighausen, Anke Ortlepp, James Peacock, Niklaus Steiner & Carrie Matthews (eds.), Regionalism in the Age of Globalism: Volume 2: Forms of Regionalism, 133–144. Madison: Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures.
Warren, Roland. 1978. The Community in America, 3rd ed. Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing.