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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1073

Part of Session 107: Minority and Majority Languages within State, Community and Family (Other abstracts in this session)

Family language policies in history and in the making: what does ‘I speak Russian’ imply in today's Portugal?

Authors: Solovova, Olga
Submitted by: Solovova, Olga (University of Coimbra, Portugal)

The recent wave of migration from post-Soviet countries to Portugal has introduced changes both into the sociolinguistic landscape of the country and the distribution of power between different languages. The adopted “Portuguese–only” official education policy is pushing immigrant languages away from classroom setting and school hours. Russian-speaking and Ukrainian parents attempt to contest the policy by initiatives ranging from homeschooling their children in “heritage languages” (Moin et al. 2011) to organising playgroups and community schools.

This paper will outline family language policies in households of Russian-speaking and Ukrainian immigrants in Portugal as these are revealed in artefacts, ethnographic photographs, interviews and parent-child interactions. The data was collected in the course of a long-term linguistic ethnography around the site of a community school which makes up a “community of learners” (Rogoff, 2002). The paper will argue for a historical approach (“person in history” – Holland&Lave, 2001) as it examines the ways in which viewpoints on “borders between languages” (Canagarajan, 2005) and on multilingualism have changed over the years. It will situate them in the histories of: 1) the parents’ and their children’s literacy and language learning; 2) relationships between these migrant communities and host state policies; and 3) post-Soviet language policies. The paper will also look into the way those language policies are negotiated and resisted but  are also co-constructed by children as active members of the community.

 References:

1. Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice. Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum.
2. Holland, D. and Lave, J. (2001). History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities. New Mexico: School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.
3. Moin, Victor et al. (2011). Balancing between heritage and host languages in bilingual kindergarten: viewpoints of Russian-speaking immigrant parents in Germany and in Israel. European Early Childhood Education, 19:4, 515-533.
4. Rogoff, Barbara et al. (2002) Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.