It has been established that the family is a discursive space for multilingual language learning, use, and in cases of heritage language (HL), also a space that supports language maintenance (Lanza, 2021; Said, 2021b; King, Fogle and Logan-Terry, 2008; Curdt-Christiansen, 2009). Additionally, much of the focus has always been solely on parental beliefs, ideologies, and language management efforts. However, more recently studies on child agency and children's roles within the discursive family space have emerged (Smith-Christmas, 2022; Wilson, 2020; Said & Hua, 2019; Revis, 2019; Fogle & King, 2013). These studies illustrate that children are not passive vessels (Lanza, 2007) who only receive and are filled with language and socialised appropriately; but that they in fact effectively contribute to the learning (or not) of multiple languages, the maintenance of HLs, and the family's socialisation into multiple ways of being.
This sociolinguistic ethnographic paper hence presents important diversifying data on the role young multilingual Arabic speaking children (aged between 6 and 14) play in shaping their families' language learning, language practices, and general socialisation norms. Data is derived from projects carried out in the UK and the UAE in 2018 and 2020 and lasting 12 and 7 months respectively, with a total of twenty-two families taking part. ESRC (2015) and families were purposively recruited through WhatsApp groups messages as well as email campaigns to Arabic speaking parent groups and Facebook posts on relevant group pages. Data was collected through demographic forms, monthly recorded interactional data, researcher field notes, parental interviews, children's interviews, and short parental diary entries. Data was analysed thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2006) for the interviews and parental dairy entries, the interactional data was analysed through the lens of interactional sociolinguistics (Rampton, 2019) and field notes and demographic data were used to contextualise the data set.
The data is based on four children's experiences and the findings suggest first, and as expected, that children are aware of parental (parental aspirations) and family wide preferences with regards to language use and learning. Second, that children view themselves as active members of the multilingual family unit who 'choose', negotiate, and often refuse to engage with family language preferences. Third, that children form language beliefs in early childhood and are aware of holding such beliefs and finally, that children recognise their own capacity to affect change within the family unit. The data also highlights that emotions, perceived emotionality (Pavlenko, 2004), and family cohesion play foundational roles in children's language experiences.
In all, the findings elucidate that multilingualism is a vehicle through which children form their own views of themselves, those around them, and what they aspire to become. Children seem to depend on this discursive family space as an important dialogical context through which the experiences of the next generation of multilingual speakers are shaped.
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