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and patterns from different cultural sources be acquired and become more meaningful, other aspects may be retained and continue to have significance. Similarly, at a certain point, an individual’s ethnic background or group experience may acquire new meaning and be objectified in fresh, visible ethnic patterns; this is the process of identity reconstruction. It is likely that over the generations, some highly selective old patterns will be recovered and given new significance. These two processes are the ways in which individuals in their everyday living come to modify the meaning of their own identity and change at least some of their ethnic behavior patterns without necessarily divesting themselves of all of them. For example, low retention and little use of ethnic language as mother tongue and low incidence of feelings of obligation to marry within one's own ethnic group, would be indicators of ethnic identity deconstruction. A high incidence of ethnic food consumption, a high incidence of some knowledge of ethnic language expressions and words - are indicators of ethnic identity reconstruction.

In our study, although a high overall retention was achieved, we saw examples of both reconstruction and deconstruction of ethnic identities, which reflect the changing nature of ethnic identity. For example, ‘the family values domain’ clearly demonstrated ‘ethnic deconstruction’ specifically in terms of the disagreement that the father has the final ‘say’ and the son should have more freedom than the daughter. The most obvious phenomenon of ‘ethnic reconstruction’ we find in the transformation of the Greek Orthodox Church from a pure religious to a ‘multifunctional’ ethno-religious institution in the Hellenic diaspora.

Factors contributing to the difficulties of preserving Greek ethnicity

Clearly, we can see that the broad forces that have contributed to intergenerational erosion in Greek American ethnic identity in the past are still at work. At least, four inter-related factors have contributed to the difficulties that Greek Americans have encountered in their efforts to preserve their distinctive ethnicity.

First, despite concerted efforts and an express desire to transmit knowledge of the Greek language to their children, there has been a continuing intergenerational loss of Greek language fluency and usage (Costantakos, 1982: Demos, 1988; Panagakos, 2000). English had replaced Greek in most Greek Orthodox Churches, professional Greek-American organizations and other ethnic organizations, especially in those organizations mostly composed of second and third generations (Kourvetaris, 1999a). According to the American Community Survey Reports (Shin and Kominski, 2010), Greek, along with Italian, Yiddish, German and Polish, was spoken at home by fewer individuals in the United States in 2007 than in 1980. In 1980, 401,443 people spoke Greek at home, while in 2007, only 329,825 people spoke Greek at home, which is a large proportionate decrease (17.8%).

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