[Family language policies and immigrant language maintenance. Lithuanian in Sweden. Frederik H. Bissinger]

ENThe book focuses on family language policy (FLP) among recent Lithuanian immigrants in Sweden. The abstract in the beginning is written in four languages: English, Lithuanian, German, Swedish, and it is not just one or two paragraphs long but 1.5-2 pages in each language. This conveys the spirit of the whole book: the author is fluent in all these languages, and this gives him significant advantages in research on maintenance of Lithuanian in the new diaspora in Sweden. This sounds as something selfevident that a researcher should have at least a working proficiency in the languages of the community they study, yet this condition is not always fulfilled. In Lithuanian linguistics, the field of FLP and language attitudes studies (including diaspora) has been rather popular recently and, quite naturally, as a rule, the researchers are speakers of Lithuanian as L1. The fact that the author has mastered Lithuanian to a degree that allows him to interview Lithuanian speakers is impressive. The footnote on p. 55 informs us that the Lithuanian participants tended to complement the researcher’s command of Lithuanian and in this way put (in)direct pressure on their Swedish spouses who had not made any efforts to learn Lithuanian. [...].