Family Language Policy: Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home

Smith‐Christmas, Cassie

doi:10.1057/9781137521811

Cited by 77 publications

(68 citation statements)

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“…By using Malay, the mother both performs a figure through speech (Agha, , p. 39) which projects an image of motherhood at home who is worried about her child's health, and promotes Malay at home. Unlike some children in Smith‐Christmas () and Gafaranga () who could not speak Gaelic or Kinyarwanda, respectively, Amirah has an adequate level of proficiency to respond to her mother in Malay. Amirah, however, does not accommodate to her mother's language choice and answers in English (line 72).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Siblings' play and language shift to English in a Malay‐English bilingual family in Singapore

Mirvahedi

Cavallaro

2019

World Englishes

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This research applies language socialization theory within a family language policy framework to investigate how language shift is realized in daily activities within a Malay‐English bilingual family in Singapore. Applying Goffman's frame analysis to two excerpts of siblings’ play from ninety hours of recordings of family interactions, we illustrate how children as young as four and seven enact adult roles such as teacher and student within the frame of play. In creatively enacting these roles, identities and social relations, the children draw upon their knowledge of play‐external structures – with which they have experience from other (non‐play) situations. The children consequently use English – what is typical of educational settings in Singapore – to portray an image of a teacher and student within the frame of play.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Siblings' play and language shift to English in a Malay‐English bilingual family in Singapore

Mirvahedi

Cavallaro

2019

World Englishes

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“…These cases, as they show, bring into focus the multi-layered and multi-sited nature of family dynamics when it comes to decisions about language use and learning, not only within the family itself, but also in their relationship with the wider society. FLP has also become an important area of research in language revitalization studies (see for example, King et al 2008;Smith-Christmas 2016;Nandi 2018) taking account of the "explicit and overt decisions parents make about language use and language learning as well as implicit processes that legitimize certain language and literacy practices over others in the home" (Fogle 2013: 83). Although initially described as explicit and overt, FLPs can also be de facto, informal and unplanned, as a default consequence of caregivers' ideological beliefs (Curdt-Christiansen 2014).…”

Section: New Speakers and Family Language Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

New speaker parents as grassroots policy makers in contemporary Galicia: ideologies, management and practices

O’Rourke

Nandi

2019

Lang Policy

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This study examines the role of new speaker parents who have made a conscious decision to bring up their children in Galician, a language which they themselves did not acquire in the home. Although intergenerational transmission has for long been considered a crucial part of linguistic vitality, new speakers bring complexity to this paradigm and in particular prompt questions about their role as parents and as potential agents of sociolinguistic change in the process of language revitalization. Through their individual as well as collective linguistic practices, new speaker parents have the potential to generate visible and/or invisible language planning on the ground, influencing their children's language learning and creating future generations of speakers. As such, these parents, through their own linguistic behaviour, can play a potentially significant role in the revitalization and maintenance of Galician outside the school through their family language policies in the home. Drawing on two focus group discussions involving seven families in two of Galicia's urban centres, Santiago de Compostela and Vigo, we investigate how these new speaker parents exercise their agency and become policy makers in their homes.

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“…Smith‐Christmas (, ) explores the dynamic nature of family language policy in language maintenance contexts by documenting how interactions are actively negotiated by both caregivers and children. In her case study of a Gaelic‐speaking grandmother and granddaughter, the author observes how, in order to maintain positive attitudes towards Gaelic, the grandmother oriented herself to interactions that leaned more towards the “English” side of the continuum than to the “Gaelic” monolingual side.…”

Section: Affective Factors Influencing Intergenerational Transmissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Javi's reflections indicate common issues experienced by parents who follow the OPOL approach, which range from the concern of leaving aside the other parent as communicative partner to the arduous struggles in maintaining the minority language given the status of the majority language in the child's life, along with beliefs that the child will develop negative emotional valences towards the language (Smith‐Christmas, ).…”

Section: The Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a parental muda for new Basque speakers: Assessing emotional factors and language ideologies

Ciriza

2019

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The concept of muda refers to how specific biographical moments can precipitate changes in the speaker's linguistic repertoire (Pujolar & Gonzàlez, 2012). In recent years, more inclusive or participatory approaches to intergenerational transmission in language revitalization contexts have been encouraging all parents, including those with low proficiency in the minority language, to participate in their child's language acquisition. This article examines a Basque‐ language campaign that instructs low‐proficiency parents to adopt child‐directed speech in Basque to mould affective orientations in the home environment. Drawing on a case study, I explore the complications of new speakerhood, especially the difficulties of bringing about a parental muda. I demonstrate how mudas are traversed by competing ideologies of language and language socialization. In disrupting monolingual ideologies, participatory approaches which aim at increasing the symbolic value of the language clash with the attitudes of speakers who view these mudas as inconsequential for achieving normalization.

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Family Language Policy: Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home

Cited by 77 publications

References 0 publications

Siblings' play and language shift to English in a Malay‐English bilingual family in Singapore

Siblings' play and language shift to English in a Malay‐English bilingual family in Singapore

New speaker parents as grassroots policy makers in contemporary Galicia: ideologies, management and practices

Towards a parental muda for new Basque speakers: Assessing emotional factors and language ideologies

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