The article overviews the Lithuanian language of returning emigrant children. It is based on the project “Linguistic Integration of Returning Emigrant Children: Proficiency in Lithuanian and its Development” (RCL Agreement No. S-REP-21-1), implemented in 2021–2022. The data were selected from two Lithuanian language children’s corpora (returning emigrant children (KG) and permanently residing in Lithuania children (KL)) collected during the project at eight Lithuanian schools. The corpora consist of the Lithuanian language production by children aged 8–12 who returned to Lithuania from English-speaking countries 1–2 years ago and by their peers in Lithuania. The article aims to identify differences in the linguistic expression of KG and KL by comparing the word frequency lists and overviewing verb, noun, and adjective. The quantitative findings show no significant differences in the use of the selected parts of speech. The results suggest that according to the available language skills and competences, the returning emigrant children can communicate on everyday topics quite freely, and their linguistic expression is similar to the language of their peers in Lithuania.

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The family, school, and the general field of public culture affect the formation of pupils’ attitudes towards the value of the Lithuanian language. Studies into linguistic attitudes of different age pupils allow observing the trends of pupils’ values regarding the Lithuanian language and the factors affecting them. The aim of the article is (1) to analyse the prestige of the Lithuanian language in groups of schoolchildren and teenagers based on the 2018–2019 survey of pupils’ language and attitudes towards the Lithuanian language in Lithuanian schools and (2) discuss the trends in the policy of Lithuanian language teaching as one of important factors shaping the language prestige. In order to analyse the attitudes of Lithuanian schoolchildren and teenagers towards the Lithuanian language, a comparative study was carried out in the 2018–2019 academic year. In order to guarantee the reliability of the data, the study involved the major part of Lithuania; schools from six municipalities – those of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, Panevėžys, and Druskininkai – took part in the survey. The article presents the analysis of questionnaire data obtained from 360 respondents: 105 third-formers, 128 fifth-formers, and 127 eighth-formers. Respondents of these particular ages were not selected randomly: they were primary school pupils, pupils in the first year of the basic school, and pupils completing the progymnasium. Responses obtained from the representatives of different age groups allowed observing shifts in their attitudes towards the Lithuanian language. Thus, the study material consisted of questionnaires completed by pupils in 2018–2019 and of the legal acts forming the Lithuanian language education policy. The survey was based on qualitative analysis, while the trends, correlations, and interfaces of the survey results were assessed using the quantitative method. The work is synchronic, analytical-descriptive. The study into the pupils’ attitudes towards the Lithuanian language and its prestige shows that as a deep motivating belief, the perception of language as a value is formed at younger school age. The third-formers already demonstrate a strong attitude towards the Lithuanian language concerning its usage and social value, and the impact of family, school, and teachers on the prestige of the Lithuanian language. The family has the strongest impact on the attitudes of primary school pupils’ towards the Lithuanian language, the general cultural field influences the attitudes among basic school pupils, and school influences pupils of all ages. The study revealed that the older the pupils were, the more dominant the English language they use online was. As for the after-school activities, reading books fills the major part of the Lithuanian language experience – regardless of their age, the majority of the respondents read books in Lithuanian. Thus, literature has a great impact on the development of pupils’ language and their linguistic sense. The survey results suggest that positive attitudes towards the value of the Lithuanian language of most of the pupils, especially the younger ones, are formed by parents: in the opinion of over a half of the third-formers and fifth-formers, families pay attention to the Lithuanian language used for communication. The survey results show that the pupils’ most sustainable linguistic attitude is the relationship of identity with the language: the majority of the pupils (three-fourths of the survey participants) are proud of the Lithuanian language and consider it a part of their identity regardless of their age. The comparison of the data of different-age respondents shows that the social prestige of the Lithuanian language decreases with the respondents’ age – the higher the form is, the fewer pupils think that it is necessary to know the Lithuanian language in order to enter a good gymnasium, university, or to find a good job. The analysis of educational documents regulating the process of education, the assessment of academic achievements, and the requirements for teachers’ qualification and competences shows that the provisions of the Law on Education to guarantee the quality of Lithuanian language education are not implemented through the legal acts that regulate Lithuanian language education, assessment of academic achievements, and the requirements for teachers. To sum up, it is evident that the state’s attitude to the sustainability of the Lithuanian language, the guarantee of its continuity, and the enhancement of its prestige is insufficient. It is worth noting that the pupils’ attitudes towards the Lithuanian language are influenced not only by education policy but also by the attitude of the society. Their linguistic attitudes reflect those of their families and the general public. Thus, the prestige of the language also reveals society’s attitude to itself: the status of a linguistic community closely correlates with the prestige of its language.

This article aims to analyse ethnolinguistic vitality of pupils from schools where they are taught in the Lithuanian language in terms of the Lithuanian language usage, proficiency and language assessment. The survey was aimed at assessing the following ethnolinguistic vitality indexes of the analysed group of respondents: (1) language use and domination,(2) language proficiency and motivation to learn, (3) the attitude to the Lithuanian language, and (4) creative powers of language. Ethnolinguistic vitality of different age group pupils is analysed on the basis of an empirical study on the impact of other languages on the Lithuanian language of third- and fourthformers conducted in 2018–2019. The relevance of the study rests on the fact that ethnolinguistic vitality, as ethnic vitality of the Lithuanian linguistic community, has never been analysed before. For the first time, the article sequentially and systematically analyses ethnolinguistic vitality of a group of pupils through the aspects of the relation to language, which allows predicting perspectives of sustainability and continuity of the Lithuanians as an ethnic community. The study data show the tendency that, according to all the aspects studied, as the pupils become older, their vitality as members of an ethnolinguistic group decreases. Moreover, a foreign (English) language is becoming more and more dominant in the pupils’ language as they grow older. When assessing the pupils’ ethnolinguistic vitality in terms of language proficiency, it turned out that the pupils’ learning achievements decreased from the fifth form. As the data show, the majority of the pupils (more than 70 per cent) claim that they are proud of the Lithuanian language as their language, they indicate the connection between the Lithuanian language and their ethnic identity, and they relate the sustainability of the ethnic identity to the language strength – its usage in the ethnolinguistic community. However, the data also reveal the following tendency: the older the respondents are, the fewer of them have an opinion about the significance of the language to the identity of an ethnolinguistic community (from 7.3 per cent in the fourth form to 26 per cent in the eighth form). It can be assumed that a part of the respondents, especially the ones in senior forms, have weak ethnic identity self-concept and linguistic identity, and therefore the native language is being assessed only as the instrument of communication, the same as any other language. Assessment of the pupils’ ethnolinguistic vitality in terms of their linguistic powers and linguistic potential revealed that only a half of the respondents assess the Lithuanian language as a modern language. Weak linguistic self-awareness of pupils is observed in their attitude towards the strengthening of the Lithuanian language powers: less than a half of the respondents agree that the Lithuanian language resources must be expanded. The study data reveal that pupils’ ethnolinguistic vitality in terms of trust in the creative powers of their language, their attitudes to the expansion of the Lithuanian language resources, and giving priority to the use of the Lithuanian language decrease with age.

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