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20230718T131520230718T1615Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP13] AILA ReN - Social and affective factors in home language maintenance and developmentHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Without any Doubt? Professionals in Multilingualism Talk about their own Family Language Policy
Oral Presentation[SYMP13] AILA ReN - Social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development01:15 PM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 11:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
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.
Presenters Helena Olfert Senior Lecturer, University Of Münster
Navigating family tensions and discursive contradictions related to Russian heritage language learning in Finland
Oral Presentation[SYMP13] AILA ReN - Social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development01:15 PM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 11:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
The study explores family tensions and discursive contradictions that emerge from the nexus of heritage language learning (HLL), education, and the family. Two interviews with Russian-speaking divorced mothers and the guidelines for HLL in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education were analyzed to see how the families navigate heritage language support in Finland. Findings revealed that the status of heritage language classes as electives may serve as grounds for parental conflicts due to opposing attitudes. Meanwhile, the mothers encourage their children to approach heritage language classes as any other curricular class, while the guidelines frame it as an elective course.
Studies that focus on heritage language learning (HLL) have addressed a variety of questions in different contexts (see e.g., Kheirkhah & Cekaite, 2015; Leeman, 2015). Some research has been done in relation to Russian heritage speakers as well. For example, a study by Protassova (2018) demonstrated that Russian-speaking families value bilingual education as an important factor that assists in child's minority language support. Despite emerging studies that focus on Russian heritage speakers in Finland and on the families which aim to maintain and support Russian (see e.g., Protassova, 2019; Vorobeva, 2021), little is known about how families navigate heritage language support against the backdrop of the National Core Curriculum. The current study explores the nexus (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) of the official discourse concerning teaching heritage languages as articulated in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education (EDUFI, 2016) and the families' perceptions of (HLL). The data consist of two semi-structured interviews with Russian-speaking divorced mothers. The interviews were tailored to explore their family language policies (FLPs) and included such themes as mothers' socio-cultural background, migration trajectory, language practices, language beliefs, and other topics that emerged as important for shaping their FLPs. HLL had emerged from the data as a significant language management factor which was later analyzed against the backdrop of the Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education. The study especially focuses on the two nexus analytical aspects, namely historical body (i.e., mother's experiences as language speakers and their internalized language beliefs), and discourse in place (i.e., heritage language teaching guidelines as articulated in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education). Preliminary findings show that both mothers construct heritage language classes as important and encourage children to approach them as any other curricular classes, while Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education highlights that these classes are elective and remain outboard of the general curriculum. Furthermore, exactly for this reason (i.e., HL classes as elective), in one family child's attendance of these classes emerges as problematic, because divorced parents have shared custody but opposite beliefs about the classes. References: EDUFI (2016), National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care. Finnish National Board of Education Kheirkhah, M., & Cekaite, A. (2015). Language maintenance in a multilingual family: Informal heritage language lessons in parent-child interactions. Multilingua, 34(3), 319-346. Leeman, J. (2015). Heritage language education and identity in the United States. Annual review of applied linguistics, 35, 100-119. Protassova, E. (2018) "Longing for Quality: Experiences of Finnish-Russian Bilingual Kindergarten in Finland." In Preschool Bilingual Education Agency in Interactions Between Children, Teachers, and Parents, 135–162. Cham: Springer. Protassova, E. (2019). The Russian-speaking parents in Finland about their children and their education. Language Studies and Modern Humanities, 1(2), 84–96. https://doi.org/10.33910/2686-830x-2019-1-2-84-96 Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the emerging internet. Routledge. Vorobeva (2021): Families in flux: at the nexus of fluid family configurations and language practices, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, DOI:10.1080/01434632.2021.1979013
Challenging government’s low-intensity language policies on the ground: Family language policies in Castilian-Spanish dominated Galicia
Oral Presentation[SYMP13] AILA ReN - Social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development01:15 PM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 11:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
In the Castilian-Spanish-dominated sociolinguistic terrains of Galicia, this paper examines the rise of grassroots-level actors or agents in the form of parents who have decided to contest the government's low-intensity language policy models through various bottom-up efforts. The term low-intensity language policy refers to the governmental policies where the authorities retain some 'hidden agendas' (Shohamy, 2006) and want the policies to be implemented partly or have planned them in a way that they will never be executed, thus ensuring a negligible impact on the actual language practices at the grassroots (Nandi, 2017; 2018). Drawing on ethnographic research data before and during the pandemic, I investigate how pro-Galician parents exercise their agency and become policymakers in their homes and counter these top-down practices through a range of bottom-up efforts. The intention is also to understand the dynamics of Galician language-speaking families during the pandemic and whether the confinement caused by COVID-19 is affecting (or not) their grassroots-level practices. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Georgia}
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.
Presenters Anik Nandi Juan De Cierva Postdoctoral Researcher, Universidad Del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Hungarian as a Heritage Language in Australia: A parental survey about family language policy and wellbeing
Oral Presentation[SYMP13] AILA ReN - Social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development01:15 PM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 11:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
This paper addresses family language policy and wellbeing in the context of the Hungarian diaspora in Australia. This study explored (i) what strategies parents used for teaching Hungarian to their children (ii) how they grappled with the challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic and (iii) how the intergenerational transmission of the heritage language contributes to family wellbeing and/or family conflict. Despite the relatively strong language planning activities surrounding the Hungarian diaspora on the community and transnational levels, the success of intergenerational language maintenance largely lies with the families. Family language policies and the domain of home have been well-documented in the literature as the key bastions of intergenerational language maintenance. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to study the dynamics of language use, and language policy in families, and to explore how effective these policies are. While most studies have focused on educational and linguistic outcomes, relatively few studies have addressed the connections between harmonious bilingual development (successful intergenerational language maintenance) and its impact on the parents' well-being. This aspect is particularly relevant in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had a major impact on families and heritage language learning. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, heritage language maintenance and language planning strategies shifted from face-to-face family interactions to new methods using digital technology and connecting with family members online, across geographical locations. The discussion is based on an online survey (N=80) and parental semi-structured interviews (N=13) which explored family language planning and practices in Hungarian families living in Australia raising their children bilingually. Parents reported on language use in the family and in various public domains, strategies of engaging children in the heritage language, teaching literacy skills in Hungarian, and the challenges they face while parenting bilingually, with a particular focus on family conflict and family wellbeing. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the maintenance and intergenerational transmission of Hungarian as a heritage language in Australia and advance our understanding of the socio-affective factors in language maintenance, particularly the interconnectedness between heritage language maintenance and parental wellbeing.
Presenters Anikó Hatoss Senior Lecturer, The University Of New South Wales
Social and affective factors influencing home language transmission – a quantitative approach
Oral Presentation[SYMP13] AILA ReN - Social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development01:15 PM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 11:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
This paper discusses the preliminary findings of a transnational quantitative study examining factors impacting home language transmission, focusing specifically on social and affective variables. Thus, the study contributes to the slowly growing literature adopting quantitative approaches, in a field still dominated by small-scale qualitative studies. Many studies on home language maintenance and development have used Spolsky's (2009) language policy framework in the context of the family, conceptualised as including three components: language ideologies, language practices, and language management. We propose, however, to expand this framework to include affective factors on the one hand and societal conditions on the other. Data were collected through a validated online survey administered to explore the role and clustering of the different factors in home language maintenance and development. In our analysis, we specifically focus on the reasons to transmit language(s) or not to do so, as well as the affective impact these decisions have on parents and carers. While the analysis is still ongoing, this study will serve as a springboard for further cross-country comparisons as well as across diasporas.
Rationale This paper discusses the preliminary findings of a transnational quantitative study that examines factors impacting home language transmission, focusing specifically on social and affective variables. Thus, the study contributes to the slowly growing literature adopting quantitative approaches in a field still dominated by small-scale qualitative studies with little generalisability and limited ability to disentangle the impact of various factors on home language transmission.
Background Many studies on home language maintenance and development have used Spolsky's (2009) language policy framework in the context of the family. Like language policy more generally, family language policy was conceptualised around three interrelated but independent components that help account for language choices: language ideologies (beliefs about the value and status of languages), language practices (what people actually do in their daily lives), and language management (initiatives implemented by families to foster language maintenance and development). This framework, however, appears limited and needs to be supplemented by two additional components: On the one hand, family language policies do not exist in a vacuum but are affected by societal conditions. On the other hand, recent research (De Houwer 2020; Pavlenko 2004) has shown the strong impact of affect and emotions on home language transmission or its failure. Therefore, in addition to the above framework components, we incorporated social and affective factors in our study.
Methodology In line with the rationale and background, we conducted a validated online survey covering the factors mentioned above as well as demographic variables. It was initially designed in English and piloted in Australia, with the idea of expanding it in a larger number of languages and countries at later stages. Survey questions included mostly closed questions, with the exception of questions on affective factors in which respondents were offered the opportunity to express their feelings in short open-ended responses in their preferred language. Statistical analyses explore the role and clustering of the different factors in home language maintenance and development.
Findings The data collection is still ongoing, but we will present preliminary findings in this paper. In particular, we focus on factors that enhance language maintenance and development as well as families' reasons to transmit their language(s) or not to do so. Moreover, we investigate the affective impact these decisions have on parents and carers. Unlike most other studies in the field, the survey also targets parents and carers who decided not to transmit their language(s), who are usually not given a voice in these studies. The findings of this study will serve as a springboard for further cross-country comparisons as well as across selected diasporas.
References De Houwer, A. 2020. Harmonious Bilingualism: Well-being for families in bilingual settings. In Schalley, A.C. & Eisenchlas, S.A. (Eds.), Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and Development: Social and Affective Factors (pp. 63–83). De Gruyter Mouton. Pavlenko, A. 2004. 'Stop doing that, Ia komu skazala!': Language choice and emotions in parent-child communication, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25(2–3), 179–203. Spolsky, B., 2009. Language Management. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Helena Olfert
Åsa Palviainen
Anik Nandi
Anikó Hatoss
Susana Eisenchlas