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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 107

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Minority and Majority Languages within State, Community and Family Language Policy Context in Multilingual Metropolises

Authors: Schwartz, Mila; Verschik, Anna
Submitted by: Schwartz, Mila (Oranim Academic College of Education; Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Department of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Israel, Israel)

From its inception, research in the field of language maintenance and shift has underscored the critical role of the family in the preservation of immigrant and ethnic minority languages. Recent research on family language policy exposes the full complexity and non-linearity of relationships between parental language ideology and actual language practice and management (Spolsky, 2007; Schwartz, 2010).

The session will explore the link between family language policy, practice and management in the light of state, and community language policyin multilingual metropolises. In particular, the session will present novel data on successful family language practices (e.g., literacy activities, homework sessions) and management (e.g., praying, choice of bilingual education, and link with mainstream and complementary learning) which permit realization of language ideology within the three contexts: immigrant families, inter-marriage families, and minority and majority families in conflict ridden societies. These family language practices and management will be discussed in interaction with mainstream educational and language policy. In addition, the session will address novel contexts of the family language practice: the post-Soviet context. Languages of the local majorities, formerly stripped of power (minoritized majority languages, Skutnabb-Kangas 1992), are now official languages, and speakers of other languages, notably, Russian have to master them. We ask how negotiation, management and learning of previously minoritized languages occurs in mixed families, focusing on speakers of “big” languages like Russian and English.

The session will show how the family language policy might be interpreted from diverse theoretical perspectives, such as ecological, socio-historical, perceived ‘hierarchy of language esteem’, and 'activity theory' approach. The researchers from five countries (United Kingdom, Belgium, Singapore, Estonia, and Israel) will present and discuss their data. The languages covered in their studies  range from Tamil to Estonian, from Chinese to Arabic, from Punjabi to Hebrew and the communities that have been studied in large are located as close as London and as far as Singapore.

The methods the proposed studies employ range from the traditional sociolinguistic observations and interviews to more innovative designs as collecting of linguistic resources and artifacts, linguistic autobiographies, and eliciting the viewpoints of all participants. Analyses involve qualitative, quantitative as well as methodological triangulation, for example, two-stage approach for data collection, exploratory survey, and then, in-depth semi-structured interviews (Okita, 2002).

Central questions include:

1. How have parents’ viewpoints and expectations of multilingualism been influenced by experiences of learning in home, school and community and their participation in the projects?
2. How do family diverse linguistic practices affect family language policy in minority community in multilingual metropolises?
3. What are the language management strategies which minority language families apply to negotiate between home, community and mainstream education language and cultural policy?
4. Is there anything distinctive about the post-Soviet context as far as family language policy is concerned?
5. How does family language policy achieve mutual understanding and recognition in conflict ridden societies?

References:

Okita, T. (2002). Invisible Work: Bilingualism, Language Choice and Childrearing in intermarried families. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Schwartz, M. (2010). Family language policy: Core issues of an emerging field. Applied Linguistics Review, 1 (1), 171-192.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1992). Linguistic human rights in education. Language Policy in the Baltic States. Conference papers. Riga, December 17–19, 1992. Riga: Garā pupa, pp. 173–191.

Spolsky, B. (2007). Family language management: Some preliminaries. In A. Stavans & I. Kupferberg (Eds.), Studies in language and language education: Essays in honor of Elite Olshtain (pp. 429-449). Jerusalem: The Magnes press, Hebrew University.