Family Language Policy and Language Maintenance among Turkmen-Persian Bilingual Families in Iran

Mirvahedi, Seyed Hadi; Rajabi, Mojtaba; Aghaei, Khadijeh

doi:10.5040/9781350189928.ch-010

Cited by 2 publications

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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%

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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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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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“…However, it has drawn the attention of many scholars recently. To begin with, in his inquiry with Azerbaijani Turkish families in the city of Tabriz, Mirvahedi (2017) delved into families' attitudes and practices at home (micro-domain) as well as language policies in the education system and the broadcasting media (macro domain) to see whether they can alter language decisions and choices in the home context. Results revealed that Azerbaijani parents and their children used Farsi and Turkish along with Azerbaijani to different degrees in the home domain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family language policy among Kurdish–Persian speaking families in Kermanshah, Iran

2022

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Minority language studies have received increasing attention over the last decade in Iran. Drawing on Spolsky’s (Spolsky, Bernard. 2004. Language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) language policy theoretical framework, this inquiry reports on the language ideologies, practices, and management efforts of an under-explored group of Kurdish families residing in the city of Kermanshah. To this end, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork guided the collection of data from 40 Kurdish–Persian bilingual parents. The thematic analysis of data revealed glaring inconsistencies among the three elements of family language policy (FLP). That is parents’ strong attachment to Kurdish did not necessarily translate into their language practices and efforts. The results also suggest that the studied parents adopted a subtractive approach to their children’s proficiency in Kurdish. We argue that parents are not the core force in heritage language maintenance and there are other external factors determining the transmission of the home language.

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Family Language Policy and Language Maintenance among Turkmen-Persian Bilingual Families in Iran

Cited by 2 publications

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

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

Family language policy among Kurdish–Persian speaking families in Kermanshah, Iran

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