Parents' effort to raise their children multilingually is often not appreciated by society due to dominant language ideologies and perceived differences in language prestige (Spolsky 2012; Curdt-Christiansen 2009; King et al. 2008). To the contrary, parents are confronted with myths about multilingual upbring as being harmful to language development (Piller & Gerber 2018). In addition, they face practical questions about how to manage a multilingual everyday life and make decisions about language practices implicitly on the basis of previous (own or others') experiences and prevalent concepts about language and language acquisition (Spolsky 2004).
Against this background, the question arises as to whether parents would feel more empowered in their language transmission efforts if they had solid knowledge of multilingual language acquisition and could counter prejudices about multilingual education with valid arguments. In this paper, we therefore expand existing research on family language policy to include the perspective of parents who are themselves professionals in multilingualism. These parents are well informed about phenomena such as language ideologies and prestige, as well as methods and strategies for successful multilingual language acquisition. They are thus well equipped to face social and institutional expectations as well as prejudices against a multilingual education. The study presented in this talk therefore addresses the following questions:
- How does parents' expert knowledge on multilingualism shape their language practices in the family? How do these parents make decisions about their language practices and how are these decisions linked to their professional expertise?
- Who has the authority to question these parents' decisions about multilingual upbringing? In which situations do parents feel disempowered from their professional position?
To answer these questions, we discuss data from six semi-structured interviews with both parents from multilingual families. In these families, at least one parent is an expert in multilingualism and/or language acquisition. At the time of data collection, the respective parent worked at a German university and was either a lecturer or conducted research in this field. The majority held a PhD in a multilingualism-related topic. The families interviewed differed in terms of migration status, length of stay in Germany and language constellations. The languages spoken in the families were Arabic, Armenian, Czech, English, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian, as well as the majority language German.
The data was analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2015). The results show that parents who are professionals in multilingualism do actively make use of their expert knowledge when developing family language policy. Their professional background gives them security in their decisions about multilingual upbringing. Nevertheless, they also experience conflicts between their expert knowledge and societal and institutional expectations. They also have specific anticipations of the outcome of their efforts, fueled by their specialist knowledge and by their environment. With its subject matter, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of language and power relations and shows how external pressure is reflected in the family. It thus underscores the critical relevance of the family as a place of learning and as a domain of language policy.
