What can interactional sociolinguistics bring to the family language policy research table? The case of a Malay family in Singapore

Mirvahedi, Seyed Hadi

doi:10.1080/01434632.2021.1879089

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…(d) Child agency in FLP Family language policy scholarship has shown that children play an important role in affecting the dynamics of language use in the family (e.g. Caldas 2012;Fogle and King 2013;Kheirkhah 2016;Mirvahedi and Cavallaro 2020;Mirvahedi 2021). Although the mothers we interviewed talked about their strategies and policies to maintain and/or resist language shift in the family, they pointed out how sometimes their children influenced the dynamics of familial interactions in Persian.…”

Section: Language Practices and Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK

Gharibi

Mirvahedi

2021

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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With a focus on an under-studied group of immigrants in the UK, this paper examines Iranian families' language ideologies and practices at home in relation to Persian acquisition and maintenance for their children. Working within a family language policy (FLP) framework (King, K. A., Fogle, L., & Logan-Terry, A. 2008. Family language policy. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(5), 907-922.), we draw on sociolinguistic data from semi-structured interviews with eighteen mothers to understand how parental beliefs, their everyday language practices and the attempts they make to maintain, improve, or alter their language use will lead to their children's heritage language acquisition and maintenance. The results of the study suggest that the success in heritage language development and maintenance boils down to parental pro heritage language ideologies and their everyday small-scale practices. It was also found that the interrelationship between language and cultural values and a successful FLP was further reinforced by the parents' migration trajectory and proficiency in English as the societal language. This research also showed that the large size of this diaspora in the UK (particularly in London), their closeknit social network, availability of heritage language weekend schools and the possibility of frequent visits to the home country create a conducive situation for the Iranian diaspora to raise their children bilingually.

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Section: Language Practices and Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK

Gharibi

Mirvahedi

2021

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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“…Previous FLP research has approached family as a fixed entity, therefore taking a synchronic approach to it (see e.g. Curdt-Christiansen 2016;Lomeu Gomes 2020;Lubińska 2021;Mirvahedi 2021). The current study conceptualizes family as a fluid network, in which new members become significant while others grow apart.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Families in flux: at the nexus of fluid family configurations and language practices

Vorobeva

2021

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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Research on multilingualism in the home has approached the family as a fixed unit thus neglecting the dynamic view of the family and its intersection with family language practices. The present study aims to address this gap by focusing on Russian-speaking mothers in Finland who have raised their children bilingually in single-parent as well as in dualparent families. Russian speakers are the largest minority language group in Finland, and their number is constantly growing. The current study is a contribution to the research on family language practices in the Finnish context. It examines the nexus of shifts in family configurations and language practices and explores how the dynamic changes in family constellations shape language practices in four families. The study reveals that creating new kinships leads to shifts in the language practices of the peripheral family members and that forming voluntary kin can expand heritage language use and enable an overhearer and bystander role for children. Non-residential family members expand the family's linguistic repertoire and support the legitimacy of already established practices. Being sole caretakers enables mothers to encourage language practices that they consider beneficial for their children without encountering any resistance from other family members.

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“…Although children’s bi/multilingual linguistic development in light of parental language ideologies and practices and home-external factors affording or constraining them has been a fundamental core element of FLP scholarship (e.g. Wright and Higgins ( 2022 ), Lanza ( 2007 ), Houwer ( 2007 ), Mirvahedi, Rajabi & Aghaei ( 2021 ), Mirvahedi, ( 2021b ), special issues edited by Van Mensel and De Meulder ( 2021 ), Curdt-Christiansen ( 2013 ), Li Wei ( 2012 ), Lanza and Li Wei ( 2016 ), and Lanza and Curdt-Christiansen ( 2018 )), FLP scholars in the currently emergent phase have, however, started to adopt a postmodernist lens to language planning and policy. Motivated by the colonial history of language names, this approach calls the existence of discrete languages into question (MacSwan, 2017 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…She also learned how to write in English, and within 3 months, she was ahead of all the other children in her class. I was stunned by the way she was learning and improving in English although her exposure to Persian outside the school was more than English and Hindi, suggesting the salience of the medium of instruction in language maintenance and shift studies (Mirvahedi, 2021b ; Mirvahedi & Jafari, 2021 ). We were observing her progress in English as well as Persian and we were confident that she was on the right track for learning English and Persian.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While she found Norouz boring and colorless compared to Christmas when we can decorate trees and wear red dresses (lines 8–15), her negative attitude towards Deepavali was shaped by a memory in Malaysia (lines 22–24). I assume that her agentive use of the English language, the expression of her enthusiasm for Halloween and Christmas, and her unwillingness to speak Persian and engage in Iranian traditions and ceremonies were associated with linguistic norms of the educational settings where she had been schooled (see also Mirvahedi, 2021b ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Family language policy in retrospect: Narratives of success and failure in an Indian–Iranian transnational family

Mirvahedi

Hosseini

2023

Lang Policy

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In this study, we investigate family language policy in a transnational family through a collaborative autoethnography. Following the theoretical underpinnings of family language policy (Spolsky in J Multiling Multicult Dev 31:3–11, 2012), we present parental language beliefs, management, and practices in retrospect to shine a light on the long-term impact of the family’s language policy on their daughter’s linguistic development in heritage languages (i.e., Persian and Hindi) and English. The components of the family language policy in this cross-cultural transnational family are sketched in the second author’s narratives of her experiences of multilingual childrearing and heritage language maintenance. We engage with, and critique, recent family language scholarship that apply postmodernist lens to examine families’ translingual use of languages at home to get by their daily life, showing how having failed to set boundaries between the home/heritage languages and English over the past nine years has resulted in their child’s predominant proficiency in English. We argue that such failure has its roots in parents’ own past lived, and future imagined, experiences, as well as language ideologies that are polycentric and scaled, the consequences of which concern emotional, linguistic, cultural and social frictions across generations. Drawing on the narratives of success and failure in the family, we call for critical adoption of translingual frameworks in examining family language policy paying careful attention to the long-term impact of such practices at home on children’s linguistic development.

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What can interactional sociolinguistics bring to the family language policy research table? The case of a Malay family in Singapore

Cited by 15 publications

References 75 publications

‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK

‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK

Families in flux: at the nexus of fluid family configurations and language practices

Family language policy in retrospect: Narratives of success and failure in an Indian–Iranian transnational family

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