In this presentation, I will focus on how parents and children interact as agents through realization of home language strategies and practices. Home language strategies and practices are inevitably related to the family's language ideology (Spolsky, 2004). Parents' language beliefs may play a critical role in designing their home language strategies and practices; those in turn play a powerful role in the children's language learning and use at home and other close environments such as playgrounds and pre-schools, as well as in their general linguistic development (Nandi, 2018; Schwartz, 2018).
In this talk, I will distinguish between home language strategies and practices and then I will present key strategies and practices that have been identified and described in the literature. I defined home language strategies as deliberate strategies aimed to manage "language input, and to control its quality and quantity in each family context and practice" (Schwartz, 2020, p. 196), while language practices can be defined as patterns of authentic use of languages in the family by the parents, grandparents, siblings, and other family members, as well as their daily spontaneous or intended language activities.
In addition, I will address how parents and other family members' agency use diverse language strategies and practices. Importantly, most recent research shows growing tendency to attune this proactive language management to the child's agency and languages around, namely, to apply a bilingual or multilingual developmental perspective (Kopeliovich, 2013).
Specifically, as agents, family members can use diverse home language management strategies that I will discuss on a continuum between maximal engagement with the minority language and the Happylingual approach, to promote flexible home language practices. Understanding the child's agency seems to be a critical factor enabling a positive motivational relationship between the child and the home language learning environment. As recent longitudinal projects in FLP show, family members search for creative ways "helping to avoid or minimize anxiety and tensions" (Kopelivich, 2013; p. 269) among young children, to color all their languages in positive emotional colors. By doing so, these agents may provide harmonious bilingual development for their children.
Finally, I will show that during home language and literacy activities, family members as agents may interact in a bidirectional way. They may act via synergies and mutually exchange family funds of knowledge
References:
Kopeliovich, S. (2013). Happylingual: A family project for enhancing and balancing
multilingual development. In M. Schwartz & A. Verschik (Eds.), Successful Family
Language Policy, (pp. 249−276). Springer.
Nandi, A. (2018). Parents as stakeholders: Language management in urban Galician homes. Multilingua, 37(2), 201–223.
Schwartz, M. (2018). Preschool bilingual education: Agency in interactions between children, teachers, and parents. In M. Schwartz (Ed.), Preschool bilingual education: Agency in interactions between children, teachers, and parents (pp. 1–24). Springer.
Schwartz, M. (2020). Strategies and practices of home language maintenance. In A. C. Schalley & S. A. Eisenchlas (Eds.), Handbook of Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development (pp. 194-217). Mouton de Gruyter.
Spolsky, B. (2004). Language Policy. Cambridge University Press.
