Academic literature on the topic 'Bilingualism; family language policy; transition'

Abstract Challenges of heritage language maintenance and benefits of bilingualism have been widely acknowledged. Heritage language maintenance research most oft en focuses on heritage languages in English-dominant societies. This paper presents a case study on family language policy experiences, strategies, and outcomes led by an American-born mother in her effort to maintain and promote English, her heritage language, within the home in the Hebrew-dominant environment in Israel

This paper focuses on the micro-level of language policy and aims to point out the critical role of family language policy (FLP) in language maintenance/shift of minority/heritage home language(s) and childhood bilingualism. FLP could resist broader language ideologies by transforming parents’ language ideologies and attitudes into language practices and language management that support the development of active or additional childhood bilingualism. Through a research into the interdisciplinary components of FLP, this paper aims to illustrate aspects of multilevel and dynamic relationships between each of these core components. An introduction to FLP as a research field is included as well as some of the studies that spotlighted the way parental agency in regard to each of the three FLP components could shape, explicitly or implicitly, language use and planning for the minority/heritage home language(s).

The paper focuses on the micro-level language policy where parents are the primary ‘actors’ to socialize language(s) to their children in the family circle. This small-scale study aims to find out 1) parent’s language attitudes towards bilingualism; 2) how the attitudes contribute to the decision making on language policy in the family; 3) and what efforts or strategies for maintaining the heritage language (HL). Data were collected from questionnaires to 28 Indonesian parents (from diverse ethnic backgrounds). To gain deeper insights, interviews were also conducted to investigate individual perceptions, feelings, and experience over bilingualism. Based on the analysis, it is found that although most of the families are bilingual with 3-4 languages being spoken at home, there is a limited context where interaction is carried out in HLs. The majority of respondents reported that it is only used to close relatives. The maintenance of HL is symbolic rather than strategic; it is perceived as important because of the sense of family hood to the language. This is confirmed in the following finding that parents feel that national language is far more important (65%) than the heritage language (34.6%) which is slightly below parents' aspiration for the children to learn a foreign language (38.5%). Also, there is little evidence showing parents’ explicit language policy which may be affected by familiarity and the status of the language, social institutions, community relations, and family structure.

A family has a role in supporting bilingual or multilingual children. In acquiring English for instance, family language policy is likely to shape the development of children bilingualism or multilingualism. Through a qualitative study in a case study design, the language ideologies of two bi-/multilingual families in Palembang were investigated and explored. The participants of this study were the Zahra and the Najwa families who brought up their children in more than one language including English. The data were collected through ethnographic interviews with the parents, grandmother, and children. Thematic analysis was used in analyzing the data of this study. The raw data were coded and classified into categories to derive big major themes regarding ideological factors that shaped language policy. The derived themes were then interpreted descriptively. The results indicated that there were some ideological factors found that contributed to the shaping of the language policy of those two families, such as social values, economical values, political values, cultural values, parents' knowledge toward language acquisition, and bi-/multilingualism. The findings of this study suggest that families need to provide support for their children in their bilingual or multilingual journey. Furthermore, stakeholders and professionals should play a role in the choice of language used in education as well as provide considerable support and assistance for language policy in family domain

AbstractBilingual partnerships (Piller & Pavlenko, 2004) and transnational families (Hirsch & Lee, 2018) are on the rise. With mothers spending more time with their children at home, even in dual career partnerships (Hochschild & Machung, 1989), the labor of family language policy (FLP) implementation often falls on them. While increasingly more new hires in academia are women (Finkelstein, Seal, & Schuster, 1998), only 31% of them are mothers (Perna, 2003). In this work, we examine the dominant discourses regarding bilingualism and FLP among academic mothers who find themselves at an intersection of multiple and often competing social positions. Data was collected from 46 academic mothers residing in linguistically-different host societies but all whom gather in an online community they have co-created. Data collection procedure included 22 open-ended questions exploring bilingualism and FLP orientations. Iterative and recursive content analysis was performed, yielding thematic patterns centering around language ideologies, practices, and bilinguality.

This article examines the language ideologies of the lead teacher and of five Mexican mothers of Spanish-speaking, emergent bilingual children in a Head Start program in Arizona. Data from semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, and participant-observation field notes were analyzed using the interrelated concepts of language ideologies and family language policy. The teacher and mothers adhered to ideologies that benefit children’s emergent bilingualism such as expressing pride for the children’s bilingual skills and the view that parents should use Spanish with their children to maintain the children’s bilingualism. However, some of their notions were more in line with ideologies of language separation where linguistic labor and instruction was divided in such a manner that children developed their English skills at school and Spanish abilities at home. The findings highlight the important role of the mothers’ and teacher’s positive and negative lived experiences with language and bilingualism.

Asia is a ‘homeland’ for bilingualism research in regards to its diversity. It is considered as a vivid research site where there is significant growth of academic areas of exploration. Yet, there are very few scientific attempts to map bilingualism research in an Asian context so far. Thus, I bring the idea of mapping previous works through this literature study by specifically scrutinizing (a) bilingualism research in Southeast Asia, (b) bilingualism research in other parts of Asia, and (c) lessons to learn as a stepping stone to define the future of Indonesian bilingualism. The general data mapping I have explored includes Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam) and other parts of Asia (China, India, Israel, and Kazakhstan. The findings from the 33 previous works can be considered as empirical evidence that I will use to portray the research trends in Asia’s bilingualism. The trends show that 19 (55%) works have approached bilingual data from sociolinguistics perspective, whereas the other 14 (45%) have framed their analysis under psycholinguistic approach. Based on the methodological concerns from these works, I propose two major areas of exploration: Family Language Policy (FLP) and trilingual acquisition. FLP in Indonesian is a promising ground, as it brings together issues in language maintenance and shift that instigate a wider aspect of investigation; these aspects include bilingual language dominance, cross language influence, and so forth. Trilingual acquisition, the situation most Indonesian children are growing with, has a potentially significant impact on education, especially where a language curriculum is carefully planned and implemented. In conclusion, this mapping will hopefully shed a light on how bilingualism has academically been very appealing and will continue to fascinate more researchers.

Although bilingualism is generally appraised and supported by society, many more doubts arise when it comes to children suffering from neurodevelopmental disorders. The concern that the exposure to two languages might deteriorate the linguistic development of children, together with the advice to simplify the linguistic environment and to adopt a monolingual approach, leads many families to abandon their home language and sacrifice bilingualism. Scientific research, however, has shown that this fear is ungrounded and that children with developmental disorders can become successful bilingual speakers, if they are provided with appropriate linguistic exposure. The aim of this paper is that of providing a state-of-the-art of the literature on this topic, by reviewing studies conducted on the interaction between bilingualism and neurodevelopmental disorders, focusing in particular on the interaction between bilingualism and developmental language disorder (DLD), developmental dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder. We discuss issues related to the early identification of DLD and dyslexia among bilinguals and we report the results of studies showing that bilingualism does not exacerbate the difficulties of children with developmental disorders, but on the contrary it can be beneficial for them, at the cognitive, linguistic and socio-cultural level. Finally, we provide some recommendations for parents, educators and practitioners, focusing on the importance of supporting the family language in all of its components, including literacy, for a complete and harmonic bilingual growth.

Using transcribed data from six Spanish-English bilingual children (1;8 to 3;3) from the Perez corpus in the CHILDES database, this thesis examines Parental Discourse Strategies (PDS) used to influence child language use in a minority language context (Spanish in the United States). PDS (Lanza, 1992; 1997) are situated within a language socialization framework (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2011) and can be viewed as part of the emerging field of family language policy (King & Fogle, 2013; Schwartz, 2010). This study looked at the overall language use, including the frequency and complexity, of English, Spanish, and mixed utterances by each parent and child in the corpus. The presence and rate of use of the PDS was calculated, as well as their successfulness in encouraging the children to use the minority language, as measured by the language of response to each PDS found. These strategies have been placed on a monolingual to bilingual continuum (Lanza, 1992) based on their expected success in influencing a child to use the language preferred by their parent. Results from a descriptive quantitative analysis of the data at the group and individual levels generally support the Parental Discourse Hypothesis, that is, the claim that certain strategies are more effective than others. Interestingly, it was found that the more successful strategies were used less frequently by the parents, while the less successful ones were more common. This apparent contradiction can be explained by conflicting pressure on parents to promote minority language use while also keeping fluid communication and preserving family harmony. This is discussed and further supported by some qualitative observations of child responses within discourse samples, highlighting children’s role as agents capable of negotiating their own linguistic socialization.

Thesis advisor: María Estela Brisk
Linguistic assimilation has been historically regarded as a cornerstone for nationalistic sentiments in the United States. Schools have been utilized as influential filtering sites where non-English languages are marginalized, and then assimilated into the dominant American English ways of languaging (Crawford, 1992; Flores, 2014; Heath, 1976; Nieto, 1999; Wiley & García, 2016). Drawing on theories of language policy (Spolsky, 2004) and governmentality (Foucault, 1991), this dissertation examined the links between family language policies and educational language policies at two public elementary schools in the state of Massachusetts during its final year of enforcing an English-only educational policy (Chapter 71A of Massachusetts General Laws). The participants were four fourth grade children, four parents, and eight school staff at two public elementary schools in two different districts (one urban and one suburban). The families spoke Cape Verdean Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish as their heritage languages. The study was designed as a qualitative multiple case study to conduct a multi-sited analysis of language policy. The data for the case studies were collected through surveys of parents, language logs filled by the children, interviews with the children, the parents, and the school staff, as well as weeklong school observations of each child. The units of analysis were family and school as two main language policy contexts the children regularly navigated. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The findings indicated that although the families and the schools seemed to appreciate bilingualism, they were still strongly influenced by the historical monoglossic ideologies of the society that convinced them to eventually conform to English in the name of ensuring success for the children. These ideologies were communicated between schools and families as “unspoken dialogues” through children who navigated language policies in both contexts. The findings highlight implications for teacher preparation, curriculum development, language policy research on schools and families, and educational language policies that impact children of immigrants
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education
Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction

Purpose: The present thesis aims to gain insight into parents’ perceptions of their children’s agentic role while raising them in Greek-bilingual families. The study was conducted within the field of family language policy and family bilingualism. Methods: A small-scale, qualitative study was designed, which included semi-structured interviews with parents of bilingual preschoolers, residing in Patras, Greece. Six participants were interviewed and audio-recorded. Then, the transcriptions were translated into English and finally analysed using thematic analysis. Parents were interviewed regarding their children’s use of languages concerning to the possibility to influence changes in their everyday lives as bilingual families. Results: According to the findings of this study, parents within Greek-bilingual families argue that their children negotiate their own language acquisition and the language use of the adults around them. Specifically, parents think that their children a) influence parents’ confidence in the chosen language policy, b) resist to inconsistent language use, and c) influence the parents’ language use. Conclusions: The present thesis highlights what parents within Greek-bilingual families think about their children’s agentic role regarding influencing changes in the family language policy and the socialization of members of the family. The small-scaled study entails that the results give the readers an insightful account, instead of absolute truth. Results of the study motivate further research on the agentic role of children in Greek families and its implementation on how childhood is experienced.

Recent language policy and planning research reveals how policy-makers endorse the interests of dominant social groups, marginalise minority languages and perpetuate systems of sociolinguistic inequality. In the Castilian-dominated Galician linguistic landscape, this study examines the rise of grassroots level actors or agents (i.e. parents, family members, and other speakers of minority Galician) who play a significant role in interpreting and implementing language policy on the ground. The primary focus of this study is to investigate the impact of top-down language policies inside home domain, it looks at how the individual linguistic practices and ideologies of Galician parents act as visible and/or invisible language planning measures influencing their children’s language learning. However, these individual linguistic ideologies and language management decisions are difficult to detect because they are implicit, subtle, informal, and often hidden from the public eye, and therefore, frequently overlooked by language policy researchers and policy makers. Drawing from multiple ethnographic research methods including observations, in-depth fieldwork interviews, focus group discussions and family language audits with thirty-two Galician parents, this study attempts to ascertain whether these parents can restore intergenerational transmission of Galician and if their grassroots level interrogation of the dominant discourse could lead to bottom-up language policies.

Cette recherche en sociolinguistique étudie les rapports entre langues et vie sociale à partir d'un cas d'étude particulier : celui de l'actuelle place de la langue bretonne dans le paysage linguistique breton, et plus précisément, celui du bilinguisme scolaire breton-français du jeune enfant. Apprendre et parler une langue résulte de choix - familiaux, personnels, sociétaux, politiques, économiques, etc.) directs ou indirects, plus ou moins conscients qui interviennent, en fonction des individus et des situations, à différentes périodes de la vie. Les paramètres qui président à ces choix sont nombreux et d'une grande complexité : parmi eux, les représentations que les individus ont de la langue choisie. Pour le jeune enfant breton, l'apprentissage de la langue bretonne ne découle donc pas d'un choix personnel au départ. Les parents sont les acteurs principaux de ces choix linguistiques. Aussi, ce travail a envisagé les représentations de cette langue et de son apprentissage et leurs influences, présentes dans les discours de ces parents et enfants, comme révélateurs des origines d'une pratique linguistique particulière. 42 entretiens semi-directifs (individuels ou en couple) avec les parents et 9 entretiens collectifs avec leurs enfants, retranscrits, servent de bases de données aux différentes phases d'analyses. Elles ont permis de caractériser des registres discursifs parentaux, associés à des types de profil caractéristiques et de mettre en lumière des effets d'influences sur les représentations enfantines. Cette approche à partir d'un matériau discursif vient confirmer l'intérêt de l'étude des représentations pour la compréhension des pratiques linguistiques et permet d'envisager Ia complexité d'un phénomène
This research in sociolinguistics examines the relations between languages and social life from a particular case study: the actual place of Breton language in the Breton linguistic field, and more specifically, young child's educational bilingualism. Learning and speaking a language results from choices -familiar or personal ones, or social, or political, or economical ones, etc.-, direct or indirect, more or less conscious that intervene, in relation to individuals and situations, at different periods in life. Many parameters lead these choices and they are highly complex: among them, individual representations of the chosen language. For the young Breton child, learning Breton language does not stem from a personal's choice. Parents are the principal actors of these linguistic choices. Therefore, this work has considered the representations of this language, of its learning and their influences, present in parents' and children's discourse, as revealing the origins of a particular linguistic practice. 42 semistructured (individual or couple) interviews with the parents and 9 collective interviews with their children, transcribed, are used as a database for the different phases of the analysis. They allowed characterising parental discourse regime, linked with characteristic profile types, and they highlighted influences effects on children's representations. This approach, coming from a discursive material, confirms the interest of studying representations for the understanding of linguistic practices. It helps to consider the complexity of the phenomenon

Minority language maintenance and childhood bilingualism have attracted attention and generated a significant number of publications over several decades. As an emerging and increasingly critical domain which provides a microscopic view of daily interactions, family language policy (FLP) is still a relatively new field of study in Sociolinguistics in France. Very little research, in which field studies are included, has been carried out since 2000. This short article attempts to analyse first-hand data collected in 2019 from ten Chinese families living in the Île-de-France region. A mixed approach, including quantitative, qualitative and sociolinguistic ethnography, was adopted. Four of the ten families were selected for study in greater detail. Surveys, interviews, recordings and onsite observations are the main methods used to collect data for this paper. This FLP case study tries to gain an insight on how Sinitic languages are maintained and handed down in the Parisian Chinese diaspora; the results of this study are also compared to FLP studies carried out in other Chinese diasporas.

The paper is based on research on the role of Latvian in families where the parents’ mother tongue is not Latvian, carried out as part of the sub-project 8 “Latvian Language Acquisition” in the framework of the National Research Programme “Latvian Language”. The aim of the article is to explore the main reasons that have stimulated families of the Russian-speaking minority to educate their children at schools with Latvian as the medium of instruction and the impact of this decision on the language environment in these families. The study is based on interviews with three families in which they reveal narratives about their choices of pre-school and school education programmes. The narratives are analysed in the context of theories of family language policy, focussing on the model by Curdt-Christiansen (2018). The main research questions are: what has been the motivation of parents when choosing educational institutions with Latvian as the medium of instruction for their children; what attitudes from other family members and representatives of the educational institutions do these families face; and how have the children’s educational paths in Latvian influenced language practices at home. Family language policy research as a part of sociolinguistics falls within the context of broader research on language policy and planning. In the development of this subfield, attention was initially mostly paid to the languages used in bilingual families, their choices, language practices, and linguistic attitudes. Recently, however, the social dimension has become more important in family language policy research, e.g. when analysing the impact of the micro and macro environments on the decisions taken in families, or with regard to language management processes in the implementation of these decisions. The investigation of Latvian families in this paper shows that all contexts considered important in Curdt-Christiansen’s model have an impact on the decisions made in these families. The sociolinguistic context is reflected in the respondents’ comments on the polarisation between Latvians and Russophones in Latvian society, which implies that attitudes towards the choice of schools with Latvian as the medium of instruction are not always supportive. The interviews also clearly articulate reasons for the decisions taken and thereby confirm the impact of the socio-political context in Latvia since the re-establishment of independence. In turn, the socio-economic aspect is revealed at least implicitly in the interviews, when the respondents comment on the potential futures of their children, in which value is assigned to Latvian, Russian, and foreign languages. Mostly, however, the narratives of the interviewed families reveal the impact of the socio-cultural context. In all families, respondents are aware of the importance of Latvian for the integration of their children into the Latvian society, but at the same time, they emphasise the roles of the home languages and the heritage culture for preserving individual identities. Further, the interviews reveal that the families believe that, compared with many other minorities, the choice of schools with Latvian as the medium of instruction is rather an exception. The families also emphasise their views that the linguistic attitudes of families promote or hinder the children’s learning of Latvian. According to the interviews, one of the problems is that many other families generally expose their children to too little cultural input (e.g. books, theatre performances, or participation in other events), and they generally criticise attitudes to upbringing children, not only with regard to the Latvian language. Finally, the respondents’ decisions to expose their children to Latvian and their self-awareness as citizens of today’s Latvia can be interpreted as a wish to link one’s personal (cultural or linguistic) identity to civic identity. The families wish to preserve and develop both the Russian language and culture and the Latvian language and culture in their children and thereby try to avoid seeing the acquisition of Latvian as a replacement of one’s mother tongue. The families feel like keeping Russian as their family language, but at the same time accept the bilingualism brought home by their children. This attitude is met by criticism from close family members, colleagues, and friends, who believe that the families abandon their identities and follow pressure to assimilate to Latvian culture.