Contemporary research on language policy underscores how top-down policymakers tend to endorse the interests of dominant social groups, marginalise minority languages and attempt to perpetuate systems of socio-lingual inequity. This paper demonstrates how pro-Galician parents from the urban terrains of Galicia become policy intermediaries at home and on the exterior by monitoring their children's language development through a favourable literacy atmosphere in the minority language, developing prestige for the minority language through continuous encouragement, selecting and promoting companionship with minority-language-speaking peers of their children. Moreover, we argue that the parents' under-the-radar participation in the policy discourse may appear extremely intermittent and ad hoc, but their individual actions, when galvanised into collective mobilisations such as setting up minority-language-medium schools in Galicia, can lead to bottom-up language policies.
References:
Nandi, A. (2017). Language Policies and Linguistic Culture in Galicia. LaborHistórico, 3(2), 28-45.
Nandi, A. (2018). Parents as stakeholders: Language management in urban Galician homes. Multilingua, 37(2), 201-223.
Shohamy, E. (2006), Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches, London/New York: Routledge.
