| Eagora

Social integration is one of the key elements shaping immigrants’ and their descendants’ language use pattern in their new community. This study examines the potential effects of social integration/segregation on English use of immigrants’ descendants to see whether they show a similar English use pattern when compared to people with the majority background. Recent studies have shown that English has become a second language in Sweden which is used as commonly as Swedish in some domains of life. To assess the relationship between the social segregation of immigrant descendants and their English use, a questionnaire has been conducted with 24 people (14 Turks and 10 Swedes) who participated in the education system only in Sweden and at least graduated from high school.The results presented some support to the argument that social segregation impacts language practices of the descendants of Turkish immigrants who interact with the Swedish people less in public domains and in their personal relations. Socially segregated participants found to be using English less frequently than Swedes. This use is explained by Blommaert’s (2007) sociolinguistic scales theory which claims that the language practices depend on the values assigned to the languages in a context together with multiple other factors. The results showed that the Swedish control group and the descendants of Turkish immigrants base different scales for their language use and preferences which could be interpreted as a result of the distinctions in language exposure in their micro environments when descendants of Turkish immigrants are segregated from Swedes.