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Abstract

The capacity of narratives to reflect broader ideologies has been well documented (e.g., Tannen, 2008), but the role of narrative (Labov, 1972) in this process has received less attention. This study showcases how narrative evaluation can serve as a central arena for ideological work. I examined personal stories about the issue of native language maintenance in the next generation offered by three multilingual caregivers from former Soviet states residing in the United States. This examination illustrates how the caregiver-narrators effectively employed all three narrative evaluation types (, and ) to surface a range of beliefs about the issue and to favor belief in as the key to maintaining a native language in the next generation. This favoring, in turn, reflects a broader , according to which mothers must be agentive to meet unrealistic expectations of with the goal of avoiding societal blame.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
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2026-06-29
2026-07-17

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/content/journals/10.1075/ni.25159.kul
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: post-Soviet states ; language ideologies ; research interview ; personal narratives ; external evaluation ; immigrant mothers ; blaming culture ; narrative evaluation ; internal evaluation

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