scholarly journals Transnational experiences, language competences and worldviews: contrasting language policies in two recently migrated Greek families in Luxembourg

Multilingua ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudine Kirsch ◽  
Nikolaos Gogonas
Keyword(s):  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
Trilingual Education ◽  
Family Language

AbstractAgainst the backdrop of the ongoing crisis-led migration from Southern to Northwestern Europe, the present paper reports on a case study of two families who have recently migrated from Greece to Luxembourg. Luxembourg has a trilingual education system and many pupils of migrant background face difficulties on this account. Drawing on the framework of Family Language Policy, this paper explores the language ideologies and management strategies of two families as well as factors influencing their policies. This qualitative study was based on interviews, observations, and videos recorded by one of the families. The findings show that the families have contrasting language ideologies and management strategies that are informed by their differing transnational experiences, competences and worldviews. This study can contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which migrant families use their language resources in their new country.

scholarly journals Lithuanian language discourses and family language policies of Lithuanian families in Sweden: A case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 126-142
Author(s):  
Frederik H. Bissinger
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Ethnic Language ◽  
The Family ◽  
External Threat ◽  
Discourse Strategies ◽  
Family Language

Lithuanian language discourses and family language policies of Lithuanian families in Sweden: A case studyThis case study shares first insights of the family language policy of a Lithuanian family in Sweden. It identifies Lithuanian language discourses that might affect this policy and analyses discourse strategies applied by the family members. The aim is to shed some new light on the negotiation processes of family language policies that either support the maintenance of an ethnic language as the means of intra-family communication in immigrant contexts or, conversely, work against it. Applying a linguistic ethnographical approach, the study indicates that in this case the family language policy is mostly shaped by the mother in a protective and monolingual way in order to foster the maintenance of the Lithuanian heritage in anticipation of an external threat for Lithuanian language and identity. Litewskie dyskursy językowe a polityki językowe litewskich rodzin w Szwecji. Studium przypadkuNiniejszy artykuł przedstawia wstępne uwagi analityczne dotyczące polityki językowej litewskiej rodziny mieszkającej w Szwecji. Autor identyfikuje litewskie dyskursy językowe, które mogą mieć wpływ na jej politykę językową, i analizuje strategie dyskursu stosowane przez jej członków. Celem studium jest nowe spojrzenie na procesy negocjacji rodzinnych polityk językowych (family language policies), które mogą być pomocne w utrzymaniu ojczystego języka jako środka komunikacji w rodzinach emigrantów lub temu nie sprzyjać. Przedstawione badania opierają się na metodach etnografii lingwistycznej (linguistic ethnography) i wykazują, że w tym przypadku rodzinna polityka językowa jest kształtowana głównie przez matkę, jest jednojęzyczna i ma charakter ochronny – jest nakierowana na zachowanie litewskiego dziedzictwa kulturowego w związku z przewidywanymi zagrożeniami zewnętrznymi dla języka litewskiego i tożsamości litewskiej.

scholarly journals Investigating Ideological Factors in Family Language Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 295
Author(s):  
Rani Septi Sapriati ◽  
Soni Mirizon ◽  
Sary Silvhiany
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Case Study Design ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Family Language ◽  
Considerable Support

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

scholarly journals ‘Ikke snakke norsk?’ – Transnational adolescents and negotiations of family language policy explored through family interview

Multilingua ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 653-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Antonina Obojska
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Interview ◽  
Family Language ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract Multilingual families and their language policies have attracted considerable attention in recent sociolinguistic work. Adding to this line of research, this article focuses on a case study of a transnational Polish family living in Norway and investigates the role adolescent children may play in the formation of family language policies. To this end the article analyses stances towards language practices at home taken in an interaction between the father and one of the adolescent daughters of the family. The article argues that the perspectives of adolescent children may be of crucial importance for the establishment of family language policies and thus deserve scholarly attention. Methodologically, the article draws attention to family interviews as a useful tool in generating sociolinguistic data for studies of Family Language Policies and advocates an interactional approach to interview data.

scholarly journals Intersections of official and family language policy in Quebec

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Ballinger ◽  
Melanie Brouillard ◽  
Alexa Ahooja ◽  
Ruth Kircher ◽  
Linda Polka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Family Language

The current paper describes a study that sought to determine the beliefs, practices, and needs of parents living in Montreal, Quebec, who were raising their children bi/multilingually. The parents (N = 27) participated in a total of nine focus group and individual interviews in which they discussed their family language policies (language ideologies, practices, and actions taken to maintain a language). Through rounds of deductive and inductive coding and analysis, family language policies regarding English and/or French were compared with policies regarding heritage languages. The participants’ family language policies were further examined in light of Quebec’s official language policy of interculturalism. Findings indicate a complex co-existence of family and official language policy in which parents both support Quebec’s official language policy by converging towards French as a common public language and questioning the policy’s stance on official institutional support for heritage languages.

scholarly journals Academic Mothers’ Definitions of Bilingualism, Bilinguality, and Family Language Policies

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Tijana Hirsch ◽  
Orly Kayam
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Transnational Families ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Family Language ◽  
New Hires ◽  
Data Collection Procedure

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.

Transnational Sri Lankan Sinhalese family language policy: Challenges and contradictions at play in two families in the U.S.

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-498
Author(s):  
Ronald Fuentes
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
Family Language ◽  
Global Citizenry ◽  
Heritage Language Development ◽  
The U.S

AbstractThis study examines how the transnational lives of two Sinhalese-speaking Sri Lankan families in the rural U.S. influenced family language policy (FLP) and how they (re)positioned themselves in response to their transnational lives. Employing an ethnographic design, including interviews and observations, this study explores the families’ language ideologies and management strategies and the factors that shaped their policies. Both families held similar language ideologies but contrasting management strategies that were informed by a differing socioeconomic status and eventual home country return, and which in turn led to different ways of FLP formation and implementation. FLPs were aimed at accruing capital and social prestige to facilitate the navigation of spaces in family members’ present and (imagined) future lives in Sri Lanka and the U.S., and possibly beyond; yet, these same policies created a sense of ambivalence in regards to transnationals’ cultural and linguistic identities and attachments. The findings show the competing and contradictory forces at play in transnational bilingual children’s heritage language development. This study draws attention to how transnationals navigate global citizenry and how they make decisions about language as they reimagine and refashion their membership into multiple communities in an interconnected world.

scholarly journals Building expectations: Imagining family language policy and heteroglossic social spaces

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 724-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Purkarthofer
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Family Language

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The article examines the language expectations of three couples with different language backgrounds – each expecting their first child. The study addresses three related questions: In what ways are linguistic resources imagined by the future parents? What social spaces and relations do they envision themselves and their child moving in, and how is this relevant for their family language policy? Design/methodology/approach: Situated within an ethnographic framework, speaker-centred qualitative methods (language portraits, biographic narratives) are combined with the analysis of multimodal tasks to analyse the parents’ construction of spaces of interaction, drawing on Lefebvre’s triadic concept of the production of space. Data and analysis: Co-constructed narratives of the three couples were elicited; starting with individual language biographies, the couples then constructed their family’s future in the form of visual representations of the spaces that they are about to inhabit. Recordings and pictures of the constructions were analysed jointly to understand how parents assign relevancy to their language resources, social spaces and family language policies. Findings/conclusions: The analysis shows how the parents construct the child as a multilingual self in her/his own right, subject to a biography that will develop, and who is influenced but not controlled by the parents. The multimodal data provide a window into the negotiation of language policy between the future parents. Originality: The innovative character of this paper comes from its combination of speaker-centred biographical methods with the interactive construction of three-dimensional future family spaces. Methodologically, this contribution renders theories of the construction of social space relevant for research on family language policy and practices. Significance/implications: While the study deals with the very specific situation of approaching parenthood, the findings, together with its original methodology and analytical framework, shed light on the construction of family language policy as an on-going process, starting before birth.

scholarly journals Socialization of Language Through Family Language Policy: A Case Study

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orly Kayam ◽  
Tijana Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Heritage Language Maintenance ◽  
Family Language ◽  
English Dominant

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

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