Abstract Summary
For the present study, an extended notion of LL (Landry & Bourhis, 1997), “homescape,” is adopted, together with the discursive constructions of its inhabitants and designers, children and parents. This inquiry examines the family language policy in transnational (Chinese-French and Chinese-German) families with a focus on the ways homescape contributes to children’s Chinese literacy development.
Both researchers observed the families’ language practices during their family visits and took pictures of the families' environment during a homescape walking tour guided by the family members. During and after the homescape walking tour, parents were invited to share their aspirations and expectations for their children’s education and their opinions about the design of the family’s material environment.
Based on analysis of the pictures gathered from the walking tours and transcribed interviews, we conclude that homescape is represented as important literacy resources for children’s literacy development. In terms of the ways the homescape is designed and family members interact with it, we investigate how 1) highly visible, 2) semi-visible, and 3) multimodal homescapes serves as literacy resources for the learning of the home language.
Argument :
Family language policy has grown into a critical domain by studying the triplet aspects: language ideologies, family practices and language management in families (Spolsky, 2004, 2012). It focuses not only on explicit and overt planning in relation to language use within the home domain as defined initially by King et al. (2008), but also on implicit family language planning including language and literacy practices (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009, 2013). On the one hand, family language policy is constantly influenced by the broader socio-cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-linguistic environment. On the other hand, it shapes children's language and literacy development in both family and public spheres and their life trajectories. Linguistic landscape is traditionnally defined as "the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings" (Landry and Bourhis, 1997). Recent studies get interested into more widely defined landscape not only about static and moving signs displayed in public spaces (Sebba, 2010; Cenoz & Gorter, 2008) but also multimodal components including sounds, movements, music, smells, graffiti, clothes, food, buildings, and history (Shohamy, 2015). For the present study, an extended notion of LL (Landry & Bourhis, 1997), "homescape," is adopted, together with the discursive constructions of its inhabitants and designers, children and parents. This inquiry examines the family language policy in transnational (Chinese-French and Chinese-German) families with a focus on the ways homescape contributes to children's Chinese literacy development.Both researchers observed the families' language practices during their family visits and took pictures of the families' environment during a homescape walking tour guided by the family members. During and after the homescape walking tour, parents were invited to share their aspirations and expectations for their children's education and their opinions about the design of the family's material environment. Based on analysis of the pictures gathered from the walking tours and transcribed interviews, we conclude that homescape is represented as important literacy resources for children's literacy development. In terms of the ways the homescape is designed and family members interact with it, we investigate how 1) highly visible, 2) semi-visible, and 3) multimodal homescapes serves as literacy resources for the learning of the home language. Although some homescape resources are present in the family, they are not in active use at the time point of the research. Instead, their future or past use for children's literacy development is emphasized.
