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Language Maintenance and Family Language Policy
Abstract
One of the most significant contributions of this book to the field is bringing together various interdisciplinary perspectives on the same topic to gain a deeper insight into the role of families in the acculturation process, language maintenance and shift. Using evidence from sociology, sociolinguistics, educational linguistics and cross-cultural psychology, we examine the outcomes of language and cultural contact in minority-majority settings.
This paper investigates family language policy reported by Gagauz migrant mothers using a qualitative approach. The Gagauz language, the native language of the participants, is one of the languages which is at risk. Data were collected from 14 Gagauz mothers who were living in Turkey. Semi-structured interviews were held with the participants to examine family language practices, beliefs and management strategies. Although language beliefs about family language policy differ from each other, generally Gagauz mothers expect their children to speak Russian due to its status as a lingua franca in trade, education and employment in the post-Soviet context. Moreover, it was found that the Gagauz mothers employed a wide range of family language practices. Majority of participants reported that they spoke mainly Russian whereas others stated that they preferred Turkish at home. As for language management strategies, the lack of educational and audiovisual materials in the Gagauz language affected the Gagauz mothers’ family language management strategies in a negative way. Additionally, the Gagauz language has a symbolic function which is considered a part of Gagauz identity. The findings also revealed insights about Gagauz language maintenance and a shift in heritage context.
This study investigated the Family Language Policy of second- and thirdgeneration
Turkish parents in Melbourne, Australia. Earlier research has
shown that the family home is a crucial site for language maintenance
[Fishman 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical
Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters]. The family, and the family home, remains for most
migrant groups and their younger generations the main domain for
heritage language use. The presence of heritage language speakers,
especially those with lower majority language (English) proficiency
levels in the family, is conducive to language maintenance. However, in
the case of second and third-generation, particularly Australian-born
parents, communication in English with their children becomes more
dominant. As there has been no earlier study on Family Language
Policy of Turkish-speaking parents in Australia, data were collected on
the language beliefs and practices of 45 bilingual families. The findings
show that Turkish maintenance is a symbolic part of cultural identity of
the families studied. Findings reveal the challenges faced by families
concerning heritage language maintenance within the family home,
particularly as children become more fluent in English and as further
generations become more intertwined within other cultures and an
expectation to assimilate towards Australian culture and the English speaking
mainstream.
Even a cursory look at conference programs and proceedings reveals a burgeoning interest in the field of social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development. To date, however, research on this topic has been published in piecemeal fashion, subsumed under the more general umbrella of ‘bilingualism’. Within bilingualism research, there has been an extensive exploration of linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives on the one hand, and educational practices and outcomes on the other. In comparison, social and affective factors – which lead people to either maintain or shift the language – have been under-researched.
This is the first volume that brings together the different strands in research on social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development, ranging from the micro-level (family language policies and practices), to the meso-level (community initiatives) and the macro-level (mainstream educational policies and their implementation). The volume showcases a wide distribution across contexts and populations explored. Contributors from around the world represent different research paradigms and perspectives, providing a rounded overview of the state-of-the-art in this flourishing field.
In talking about family language policy in the Turkish immigration context in the Netherlands, teachers emerged as the key actors in shaping parental language choices and practices. Previous research has shown that teachers take a central role in the implementation of school language policy but there is not much research on the influence of mainstream teachers on language practices of minority parents in the home context. In this paper, we will combine the evidence derived from observations on 20 families, interviews with 35 parents and with 5 classroom teachers in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Findings show that there is a serious degree of mismatch between parental aspirations regarding teachers’ professional advice for parents and teacher expectations regarding parental role in the schooling of immigrant children and the use of home language. The interaction between parental beliefs and teachers’ opinions show diverging attitudes towards the value of heritage language, schooling and parental participation.
Immigrant multilingualism is a very complex topic. It is at the crossroads of multiple disciplines that have fundamentally different perspectives on the topic. Depending on the ideological approach taken, immigrant multilingualism is seen either as a deficit or a resource. Immigrant minority (IM henceforth) languages are most often associated with problems of poverty, underachievement in schools, social and cultural problems, as well as lack of integration into the society of residence. Even though policy makers make a sharp distinction between national, regional minority, and immigrant minority languages, these languages have much in common. Depending on the status of national and minority languages, there are rigid boundaries between them. On their sociolinguistic, educational, and political agendas, we find issues such as their actual spread; their domestic and public vitality; the processes and determinants of language maintenance versus shift toward majority languages; the relationship between language, ethnicity, and identity; and the status of minority languages in schools, in particular in the compulsory stages of primary and secondary education. In line with the aims of this volume, issues surrounding immigrant multilingualism will be discussed in this chapter. The focus will be on societal and educational aspects of immigrant multilingualism in a number of national contexts ranging from Australia to the EU.
This chapter is about the role of statistics in the shaping of policies regarding migration and migrant integration. In the nineteenth century already states began to feel a need to register their residents so as to find out who qualify for certain entitlements and who do not, for example because they originate in another country. Population statistics were crucial in symbolically achieving this goal. Soon the need was felt for an international harmonisation of population statistics, particularly those related to international migration. It took very long, however, to achieve this goal at a European level, and even more so at a global level. Actually, major steps forward were not made until the 1990s, when intra-European migration increased rapidly after the end of the Cold War. The EU took on a coordinating role in this field, which led, in 2007, to the publication of the Statistics Regulation. In 2010, member states also reached an agreement on indicators for immigrant integration. Yet, this chapter argues that, in spite of increased harmonisation of statistics, a comparison of migration data between EU member states remains complicated, for example because of conceptual differences, differences in registration practices and in policies. This is even more so for a comparison of data on migrant integration. The available sources continue to be quite diverse, and differential policy objectives lead to persisting differences in what is actually being registered and what is not.
The Netherlands was one of the first countries in Europe to formulate a coordinated national policy on migrant integration, in the early 1980s. In the 2000s, it was again among the first to make a sharp assimilationist turn away from the multicultural model. Much of the extensive ethnic monitoring structure set up in the 1980s and 1990s still exists, but the positivist belief in the role of scientific research as a tool for societal engineering in this area has clearly declined. Formal research-policy dialogue structures have been largely dismantled, and dialogues that continue to exist have become strongly politicised and mediatised. Knowledge use has become more selective and largely instrumental, mainly dictated be the needs of politicians. The analysis in this chapter also suggests that the combined politicisation and mediatisation of research-policy dialogues on migrant integration may have created a new boundary, one between mediatised and non-mediatised research-policy dialogues. Consequently, the old boundary between the two worlds of research and policy may have lost some of its relevance. At the same time, the growing apart of policymakers and the academic world has also facilitated the development of a more varied, and therefore much richer research landscape.
This article aims to deepen our understanding of the dynamic interaction between language policies, school characteristics and teachers’ beliefs about monolingualism. The study takes place in Flanders (Belgium), a region characterized by educational policies which are based on a stringent monolingual ideology. Based on a survey of 775 teachers from across 48 secondary schools, we examined how these policies affected teachers’ beliefs, whether and how teacher beliefs vary between schools, and what the consequences of these beliefs are. The results of our multilevel analysis indicate that teachers strongly adhere to monolingual policies, while there are also significant differences across schools, which are related to the ethnic composition of those schools. Furthermore, a stronger adherence to monolingualism was found to trigger teachers to have lower expectations about their students but not about their ability to teach. Finally, implications for policymakers are discussed.
Knowledge of teachers’ beliefs is central to understanding teachers’ decision-making in the classroom. The present study explores Norwegian language teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism and the use of a multilingual pedagogical approach in the third-language (L3) classroom. This study analysed data collected via focus group discussions with 12 teachers of French (N = 4), German (N = 2) and Spanish (N = 6) using qualitative content analysis. Three main themes emerged from the analysis. (1) The teachers view multilingualism as a potentially positive asset. Although they think that multilingualism has benefited their own language learning, they do not conclude that multilingualism is automatically an asset to students. (2) The teachers claim to make frequent use of their students’ linguistic knowledge of Norwegian and English when teaching the L3. However, the teachers rarely focus on the transfer of learning strategies because they believe that learning an L3 is completely different from learning the second language L2 English. (3) The teachers think that collaboration across languages could enhance students’ language learning; however, no such collaboration currently exists.
This article examines views of Albanian immigrant parents regarding home-language maintenance in Greece. It aims to reveal language ideologies in relation to broader ideologies about schooling and education. Following a qualitative interpretative approach, we conducted semi-structured individual and group interviews with 19 parents of bilingual students. Parents express a range of ideological stances from total resistance to the dominant school monolingual ideology to passive acceptance and could be grouped into three categories: (a) the “fighters,” who make a conscious claim for home-language use and education; (b) the “probilingualism” parents, who partially consent to the dominant discourse of monolingualism in the Greek school; and (c) the “indifferent” parents, who appear not to be concerned about the future of the Albanian language. Data from interviews suggest that dominant school-language attitudes and practices play an important role in shaping the language views and practices of immigrant parents.
This paper compares results of two studies examining L2 English and L2 Dutch-induced syntactic changes that occur in L1 Turkish grammars of speakers living in North America and in the Netherlands, respectively. We examine potential restructuring in the L1 knowledge of binding properties of overt and null subject pronouns in first and second generation immigrants. The results of the L2 Dutch-speaking groups in the Netherlands are found to be similar to those of the L2 English-speaking group in North America, as reported in Gürel (2002), in the sense that all bilingual groups diverge, to some extent, from monolinguals in their judgments of pronoun binding. In line with our predictions, findings suggest that L2 English and L2 Dutch can influence L1 Turkish syntactic judgments in a similar fashion and that an L2 can induce inter- as well as intra-generational L1 change.
The authors examined acculturation and language orientations among Turkish immigrants in Australia (n = 283), France (n = 266), Germany (n = 265), and the Netherlands (n = 271). They expected that the countries with the least pluralistic climate (France and Germany) would show the lowest level of sociocultural adjustment and the highest level of ethnic orientation and language use; the opposite was expected in Australia, as the country with the most pluralistic climate; and the Netherlands would have an intermediate position. The predictions were largely borne out. The language orientation measures yielded a (symbolic) language value factor and a (behavioral) language preference factor. In all countries Turkish identity was a positive predictor and mainstream identity a negative predictor of both the language value and preference factor. Mainstream and Turkish identity showed stronger negative correlations in the less pluralistic countries. It is concluded that immigrants showed the least maintenance and the most adjustment in Australia, which is the country with the least pressure to assimilate.
The paper examines the position of the mother tongue in the proposed additive bilingual programmes in South Africa. It is argued that since the teaching and use of African languages, particularly as media of instruction, is less than adequate, their use in additive bilingual programmes, the official South African language in education policy, is unlikely to be successful. The paper is divided into three parts. First, the sociolinguistic, cultural, and political factors are examined. Here, apartheid education and its legacy are discussed. Second, using data from De Klerk (1996) and Smit (1996), language use and attitudes of South Africans to language and education are discussed. In this section, the pressures on standard African tongues by urban varieties and English are highlighted in relation to the pedagogical and theoretical underpinnings of additive bilingualism. Third, the practical possibilities for the implementation of mother-tongue medium of instruction given the 11 official languages, as well as...
The focus of this paper is on the relationships between Turkish speakers’ ethnolinguistic vitality (EV) perceptions and their language maintenance (LM), language use, and choice patterns. The theoretical framework of the study is based on Giles, Bourhis, and Taylor's (1977) EV theory. In line with the model, a subjective EV vitality questionnaire, a Language Use–Choice Questionnaire, and a language rating scale have been applied to 25 Dutch-born Turkish and 64 Turkish-born immigrants in the Netherlands. Subjective EV questionnaire was administered to 104 Dutch informants. The findings of this study contribute further evidence into the role of education for LM and shift. Birth country turns out to be a significant factor for Dutch language skills of Turkish immigrants. While both the Dutch speakers and Turkish immigrants agree upon the vitality of the Dutch, there is significant difference concerning the Turkish vitality ratings. Turkish immigrants seem to compensate for their lower vitality in the mainstream institutions by establishing their own institutional support structures, which partly explains higher LM rates among them.
This article employs ethnographic data gathered from one Belgian (Flemish) secondary school to explore the meaning Belgian and Turkish‐speaking minority pupils enrolled in technical and vocational education attach to teacher racism and racial discrimination, and to explore variations between pupils in making claims of teacher racism. A symbolic interactionist framework is employed to explore how pupils define teacher racism and how a particular context and interactions between pupils and teachers informs pupils' perceptions of racism. This article builds on a strong research tradition in British sociology of education on racism and discrimination by focusing the analysis on pupils' perceptions of such incidents and by investigating how racism is experienced by a generally neglected group of Turkish minority pupils in a particular Belgian education context.
After a brief introduction on regional and immigrant minority languages across Europe (1), we will deal with multilingualism and language rights (2). Next, we will go into the European discourse on foreigners and integration (3). Against this background, we will offer cross-national perspectives on community language teaching, derived from the findings of the Multilingual Cities Project on current practices in this domain in six major European cities and countries (4). In the final section, we will offer a reconciliation of the MCP outcomes with the current European discourse on trilingualism (5).
This article reports on a study that addresses the following question: why do some children exposed to two languages front early on fail to speak those two languages'? Questionnaire data were collected in 1.899 families in which at least one of the parents spoke a language other than the majority language. Each questionnaire asked about the home language use of a family consisting of at least one parent and one child between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. The results show that the children in these families all spoke the majority language, but that minority language use was not universal. Differences in Parental language input patterns used at home correlated with differences in child minority language use. Home input patterns where both parents used the minority language and where at most one parent spoke the majority language had a high chance of success. The "one parent-one language" strategy did not provide a necessary nor Sufficient input condition. Implications for bilingual families are discussed.
A year-long ethnographic study conducted in a British multiethnic primary school examined the influence of teacher perception of Pakistani ESL parent involvement and interest in their children's education on teacher expectation of Pakistani ESL children's language and literacy achievement. Results revealed that the ESL parents were very interested in their children's learning. They demonstrated their interest in their children's education in a culturally different way than middle class parents which was misinterpreted by the teachers as lack of interest. Consequently, the children's learning and achievement was frequently underestimated. Several implications for teacher practice are discussed.
Without even considering the 150 Aboriginal languages still spoken, Australia has an unparalleled mix of languages other than English in common usage, languages often described by the term 'community'. Drawing on census data and other statistics, this book addresses the current suitation of community languages in Australia, analysing which are spoken, by whom, and whereabouts. It focuses on three main issues: how languages other than English are maintained in an English speaking environment, how the structure of the languages themselves changes over time, and how the government has responded to such ethnolinguistic diversity. At a time of unprecedented awareness of these languages within society and a realisation of the importance of mutlilingualism in business, this book makes a significant contribution to understanding the role of community languages in shaping the future of Australian society.
It is our hope that this volume will inform the three major ways in which language is related to culture: language itself is a part of culture, every language provides an index of the culture with which it is most intimately associated, and every language becomes symbolic of the culture with which it is most intimately associated. Language and ethnicity relationships, the central concern dealt with in this volume, provide revealing insights into each of these three links between language and culture in general. © 1985 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. All rights reserved.
European discourse on linguistic minorities reflect the construction of inter-ethnic boundaries between national (such as Dutch or French), indigenous minorities (such as Basque, Catalan or Frisian), and immigrant minorities (Arabic, Berber or Turkish). In the European public discourse on immigrant minority groups, two major characteristics emerge: immigrant minority groups are often referred to as foreigners ( étrangers, Ausländer ) and as being in need of integration. It is common practice to refer to immigrant minority groups in terms of non-national residents and to their languages in terms of non-territorial, non-regional, non-indigenous, or non-European languages. This conceptual exclusion rather than inclusion in the European public discourse derives from a restrictive interpretation of the notions of citizenship and nationality. Based on the empirical evidence derived from Language Rich Europe project, a phenomenological perspective on ethnic minorities and inter-ethnic boundary construction will be presented in this paper.
Immigrant integration dominates the social, political, and scientific agendas of immigrant-receiving countries. Integration requires mutual co-ordinated efforts of both the host and immigrant groups. This book presents a macro level perspective on language maintenance, shift and acculturation orientations of Turkish immigrants in major immigration contexts, namely, Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The findings show a close relationship between the integration ideology, policies and practices of the receiving societies and the acculturation outcomes of immigrants. Intergenerational differences in language use and choice as well as acculturation orientations of Turkish immigrants in the four national contexts have serious implications for policy makers and researchers. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2016 All rights reserved.
Immigrant multilingualism is at the crossroads of many academic disciplines. Educational specialists, policy makers, linguists, social psychologists and immigration researchers are equally interested in immigrant multilingualism. In this paper, immigrant multilingualism is discussed from a variety of perspectives. Discussions surrounding language maintenance/shift, language loss, bilingual language acquisition, the relationship between school achievement and bilingualism, social inclusion and exclusion of immigrant groups are presented. As shown in the paper, a change of focus in the study of immigrant multilingualism is needed. Research on immigrant multilingualism needs to contribute to a better understanding of the language dynamics that take place in the contact between majority and minority languages in contexts of migration. Applied linguists and critical sociolinguists often argue that multilingualism ought to be seen as the norm. However, there is little discussion on how immigrant multilingualism should or could be accommodated in education. The paper presents a number of suggestions for future work on immigrant multilingualism.
Nowadays, pupils bring a variety of languages to school. This study focuses on how school teams perceive the linguistic composition of pupil populations and how this influences their teaching practices regarding multilingualism. The mixed-method design combines a multilevel regression analyses (of data from 1255 teachers in 67 schools) with focus group discussions amongst teachers and headmasters in ten schools. Our findings indicate that school teams distinguish between schools with different pupil populations. Differences in the linguistic composition of the pupil population results in different levels of tolerance towards multilingualism. Teachers' perceptions are fed by both negative and positive motivations.
Immigrant integration dominates the social, political, and scientific agendas of immigrant-receiving countries. Integration requires mutual coordinated efforts of both the host and immigrant groups. This book presents a macro level perspective on language maintenance, shift and acculturation orientations of Turkish immigrants in major immigration contexts, namely, Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The findings show a close relationship between the integration ideology, policies and practices of the receiving societies and acculturation outcomes of immigrants. Intergenerational differences in language use and choice as well as acculturation orientations of Turkish immigrants in the four national contexts have serious implications for policy makers and researchers.
This volume provides a state-of-the-art treatment of research on language attrition, the non-pathological loss of a language through lack of exposure. It combines a review of past and present research with in-depth treatments of specific theoretical and methodological issues and reports on individual studies. Special prominence is given to the identification of problematic areas in attrition research, with a view to pointing out possible solutions. The book specifically addresses itself to those who wish to acquaint themselves with the research area of language attrition, providing them with both a thorough overview of the field and a basis on which to build their own research. The combination of experience and an innovative outlook present in this collection, however, make it a valuable source for those familiar with attrition as well. Especially useful to both beginners and veterans is the extensive annotated bibliography.
In this memorial volume for A. Ronald Walton, cutting-edge scholars interrelate two normally separate domains: the formation of language policy and the improvement of language teaching. Bernard Spolsky, Elana Shohamy, Joshua Fishman, and Kees de Bot address theoretical aspects of national language policy. John Trim relates the historical development of the Council of Europes international language policy. Richard Lambert, Ronald Walton, Richard Brecht, and Xueying Wang deal with structural issues in language instruction in the United States. Eleanor Jorden, Galal Walker, Myriam Met, and Gilbert Merkx discuss the special problems of providing instruction in the non-Western languages. And Michael Long, Ross Steele, Ralph Ginsberg and Laura Miller are concerned with specific pedagogical issues: task-based language teaching, the role of culture in language instruction, and what is learned during study abroad. These articles stand both as definitive statements on their individual topics and, taken together, as a fresh amalgamation of policy and pedagogy.
The past decade has seen an unprecedented growth in the study of language contact, associated partly with the linguistic effects of globalization and increased migration all over the world. Written by a leading expert in the field, this much-needed account brings together disparate findings to examine the dynamics of contact between languages in an immigrant context. Using data from a wide range of languages, including German, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Croatian and Vietnamese, Michael Clyne discusses the dynamics of their contact with English. Clyne analyzes how and why these languages change in an immigration country like Australia, and asks why some languages survive longer than others. The book contains useful comparisons between immigrant vintages, generations, and between bilinguals and trilinguals. An outstanding contribution to the study of language contact, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics, bilingualism, the sociology of language and education.
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In France, most teachers still receive scant training in how to support plurilingual children in their learning of and through the language of instruction. In the absence of relevant, in-depth knowledge about language, we believe that many teachers are practising language policies based on beliefs rooted in ideologies unsupported by research findings.
In this paper, we will present and analyse data from interviews with head teachers (n = 46) from a variety of schools in the Strasbourg area, north-east France. Critical, interpretive analysis of the reported discourse reveals evidence of linguistic hierarchies, separate spaces for different languages, a profusion of bilingual myths and a persistent monolingual habitus at school. Our findings underline the importance of uncovering and analysing teachers’ language ideologies in a bid to better understand the influences and obstacles preventing them from practising informed language policies with respect to plurilingual language development.
Turkish as spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) sounds (unconventional) to Turkish speakers in Turkey (TR-Turkish). We claim that this is due to structural contact-induced change that is, however, located within specific lexically complex units copied from Dutch. This article investigates structural change in NL-Turkish through analyses of spoken corpora collected in the bilingual Turkish community in the Netherlands and in a monolingual community in Turkey. The analyses reveal that at the current stage of contact, NL-Turkish is not copying Dutch syntax as such, but rather translates lexically complex individual units into Turkish. Perceived semantic equivalence between Dutch units and their Turkish equivalents plays a crucial role in this translation process. Counter to expectations, the TR-Turkish data also contained unconventional units, though they differed in type, and were much less frequent than those in NL-Turkish. We conclude that synchronic variation in individual NL-Turkish units can contain the seeds of future syntactic change, which will only be visible after an increase in the type and token frequency of the changing units.
Introducing a pioneering series of studies of family language policy and management, this paper points out that classic language policy dealt almost entirely with the nation-state, although it did recognise the critical role of the family in determining natural intergenerational transmission of a variety. After arguing for the need to look at each of the levels, or, rather, domains making up a speech or political community, it shows how these studies deal with internal pressures (such as ideology or grandparents) and external domains (especially the school) which aim to influence the family domain. More studies of these domains, including the family, are needed to provide a clear understanding of language policy.
The present study was developed to assess teachers’ beliefs on (1) the role of prior language knowledge in language learning; (2) the perceived usefulness of language knowledge in modern society; and (3) the teaching practices to be used with multilingual students. Subjects were 176 secondary schoolteachers working in Italy (N=103), Austria (N=42), and Great Britain (N=31) who taught subjects ranging from languages to science, literature, or physical education. Teachers were asked to rate a series of statements on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree) Likert scale. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal–Wallis distribution-free test to identify differences in responses in the three countries. Overall results suggest that teachers in Italy, Austria, and Great Britain tend to share similar views on the three topics examined. The article discusses the need to introduce modules on multilingualism and language learning as a regular feature of teacher training programs as many teachers show beliefs that suggest little awareness of the cognitive benefits of multilingualism and of the usefulness of home language maintenance for students and their families.
The theory and practice of assistance to speech communities whose native languages are threatened are examined. The discussion focuses on why most efforts to reverse language shift are unsuccessful or even harmful, diagnosing difficulties and prescribing alternatives based on a combination of ethnolinguistic, sociocultural, and econotechnical considerations. The first section looks at reasons for trying to reverse language shift, whether it is possible, where and why shift occurs, and how it can be reversed. A typology of disadvantaged languages and ameliorative priorities is presented. The second section contains a number of case studies from different continents, including those of: Irish; Basque; Frisian; Navajo, Spanish, and Yiddish (secular and ultra-orthodox) in America; Maori in New Zealand; Australian aboriginal and immigrant languages, Modern Hebrew and French in Quebec; Catalan in Spain; and the unique situation of non-transmission of "additional" (parents' second) languages. The third section addresses the related issues of language planning for reversal of language shift, dialect standards and corpus planning, intergenerational transmission of "additional" languages, and limitations on school effectiveness in connection with native language transmission. Chapters include bibliographies. (MSE)
Much Australian work on immigrant languages has revealed that the family is a crucial site of language maintenance (LM). The family remains for most immigrants and their offspring the main domain for community language (CL) use. At the same time, there is no doubt that positive language, education and migration policies strengthen the maintenance of CL in Australia as described in Fishman's (1991) model of LM, "Reversing Language Shift." However, as Fishman (1991) has observed, supportive policies and educational provisions will only be of value if the family initiates CL acquisition and provides a practice ground for its continued use. I consider the main favourable factors, challenges and strategies for successful CL maintenance in the family, as gleaned from case studies, and conclude with suggestions for greater attention to the role of adolescents and of technology in CL maintenance.
This ethnographic inquiry examines how family languages policies are planned and developed in ten Chinese immigrant families
in Quebec, Canada, with regard to their children’s language and literacy education in three languages, Chinese, English, and
French. The focus is on how multilingualism is perceived and valued, and how these three languages are linked to particular
linguistic markets. The parental ideology that underpins the family language policy, the invisible language planning, is the
central focus of analysis. The results suggest that family language policies are strongly influenced by socio-political and
economical factors. In addition, the study confirms that the parents’ educational background, their immigration experiences
and their cultural disposition, in this case pervaded by Confucian thinking, contribute significantly to parental expectations
and aspirations and thus to the family language policies.
This study is an in-depth investigation of the perspectives of Turkish immigrant parents on their children's early schooling in the United States (PreK-3). It specifically explores how these parents connect themselves or are disconnected from school culture, and how their socio-cultural understanding of education and teachers influence their relationships with schools. Using a qualitative research format, data were collected through in-depth interviews with 18 parents from 10 families. Findings suggest that Turkish parents negotiated the ways curriculum and instruction is constructed in American schools such as their assumption of the lack of academic rigor while they embraced sound pedagogies the teachers practiced. Through their experiences with schooling in the United States, Turkish parents reconsidered their sociocultural perspectives on role of the teacher in their children's lives based on their experiences with their children's teachers. The parents also reported they had challenges in understanding the school culture and curriculum, and described how they negotiated their access to the school culture. The results indicate the need for a stronger partnership between home and school. Teachers could support parents in their struggle to access to the culture of schooling by establishing an eagerness for communication and a reciprocal personal connection with families, who already socioculturally assume the teacher’s role as part of family.
Family language policy: Dynamics in language transmission under a migratory context
- J Blommaert
The handbook of language socialization
- A Duranti
- E Ochs
Handbook of home language maintenance and development: Social and affective factors
- A De Houwer
Handbook of home language maintenance and development: Social and affective factors
- A Tseng
German American language maintenance efforts
- H Kloss
Immigration and Australia’s language resources
- S Kipp
- M Clyne
- A Pauwels