Family language policy in refugee-background communities: Towards a model of language management and practices

Abstract

As interest in the field of family language policy is burgeoning, an invitation has been issued to include more diverse families and language constellations. This article responds by presenting family language management data from Ethiopian and Colombian refugee families living in New Zealand. As part of the researcher's ethnographic involvement in both communities, data was obtained through participant observations, interviews with parents and children, and recordings of naturally-occurring interactions between family members. Findings from both communities differ greatly: While many Ethiopian families used explicit management for their children to speak Amharic in the home, Colombian families tended to prefer laissez-faire policies as they did not direct their children's language choice. Nevertheless, their children typically spoke Spanish, their heritage language.As a theoretical contribution, a model is developed to coherently present the caregivers' choice of language management and their children's typical language practices. This model helps to uncover similarities and dissimilarities across families and communities. Since families typically moved through different management and practice constellations over time, the model also assists in identifying recurrent family language policy trajectories. The article concludes by drawing practical attention to the need and best timing for informing recent refugees about options and resources concerning intergenerational language transmission.

Family Language Policies of Vietnamese–Australian Families

“…Studies in family language policy under the light of Spolsky's theoretical model have recently explored the language practices, ideologies, and management in families from different immigrant communities including Mexican, Iranian, Korean, and Chinese families in the United States, [26][27][28][29] Iranian, Ethiopian, and Colombian families in New Zealand, 30,31 Russian families in Israel, 21 and Japanese families in Australia. 32 Most studies supported Spolsky's theory in illustrating the multidirectional links among the three aspects of family language policy.…”

Intersections of official and family language policy in Quebec

“…In the past, FLP studies have tended to focus on households with two European languages, where parents had adopted a one-parent-one-language approach. However, more recent studies have examined more diverse families (King 2016), including families raising children with more than two languages, families who speak non-European languages, refugee families (Revis 2017), adoptive families (Fogle 2013), and families employing a wider range of language use practices than one-parent-one-language (Slavkov 2017).…”

Family Language Policy and the family sociolinguistic order in a neoliberal context

“…The first FLP studies paid more attention to homes with two or more European languages, where parents had adopted a 'one parent one language' approach (De Houwer, 1999). Recent studies have examined more diverse families, including families raising children with more than two languages, families who speak non-European languages, refugee families (Revis, 2017), transnational and multilingual families (Curdt-Christiansen and Lanza, 2018;Lomeu-Gomes, 2018;Moustaoui Srhir, 2020), diaspora families (Gharibi and Mirvahedi, 2021;Romanowski, 2021), adoptive families (Fogle, 2013), LGBTQ-identified families (Wright, 2020), and families with a broader range of language use practices other than 'one parent one language' (Slavkov, 2017) or families with 'new speakers' (Pujolar and Puigdevall, 2015;O'Rourke and Nandi, 2019). Soler and Zabrodskaja (2014) and Van Mensel (2016) renewed the interest on bicultural family configurations and studied parental attitudes toward language maintenance and transmission in mixed-couple families examining the language micropolicies that couples implement in their homes.…”