The Importance of Language Acquisition by a Young Migrant in the Ambiguous Contexts of a New Social Environment
Abstract
People are living in the contexts of specific social and cultural environment. It might be easier to find a place in this world and a way of living when you know only patterns of a culture you are born into.
However, modern society and globalization bring about intensive migration processes. Migrants coming to a new country have to adapt and learn a completely unknown system of social and cultural rules.
Thus, they might come across a lot of confusing and ambiguous situations during their socialization. One of the crucial aspects of migrant's integration is acquisition of the language of the majority.
In this paper, I argue that the process of learning the language of the target country is very individual often influenced by the settings migrants are disposed in a new society. The way how migrants adapt and learn the language depend on various factors such as the reason of language acquisition, individual determination, family support and status, their age or the target country's social environment they contribute to.
All these circumstances have a great impact on how migrant will be able to socialise and function in a new environment. The aim of this paper is to present the results of the research focused on the importance of language acquisition under various family and social settings on migrants' integration.