Family Language Policies in A Multilingual Wor

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FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICIES

IN A MULTILINGUAL WORLD
“An important contribution to the new studies that help understand why the family
is such an important site for the study of language policy. This interesting collection
of cases makes clear the complex external influences and internal beliefs (some prob-
ably mistaken) that influence language choice in the family and neighborhood.”
Bernard Spolsky, Professor Emeritus,
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
“Family language transmission is closely intertwined with social and political macro
developments. By shaping language transmission, families themselves act as politi-
cal players, (un)consciously opposing or following power relations. This volume on
family language choice thus provides invaluable perspectives on potential balance
and power shifts within the near future and in different contexts around the world.”
Katharina Brizić, Professor,
Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany
Through case studies from around the world, this book illustrates the opportuni-
ties and challenges facing families negotiating the issues of language maintenance
and language learning in the home. Every family living in a bi/multilingual
environment faces the question of what language(s) to speak with their children
and must make a decision, consciously or otherwise, about these issues. Explor-
ing links between language policy in the home and wider society in a range of
diverse settings, the contributors utilize various research tools, including inter-
views, questionnaires, observations, and archival document analysis, to explore
linguistic ideologies and practices of family members in the home, illuminating
how these are shaped by macro-level societal processes.
John Macalister is Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Applied

Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi is Lecturer at Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Iran.

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FAMILY LANGUAGE
POLICIES IN A
MULTILINGUAL WORLD
Opportunities, Challenges,
and Consequences
Edited by John Macalister

and Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis

The right of John Macalister and Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi to be identified
as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-66604-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-66607-8 (pbk)
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
1 Beginnings 1
John Macalister & Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
PART I
Challenges in Family Language Policy 11
2 Family Language Policy: New Directions 13

Cassie Smith-Christmas
3 Family Language Policy for Deaf Children and the Vitality

of New Zealand Sign Language 30
Rachel McKee & Kirsten Smiler
4 Family Language Practices as Emergent Policies in

Child-Headed Households in Rural Uganda 56
Maureen Kendrick & Elizabeth Namazzi
5 Exploring Family Language Policies Among Azerbaijani-

Speaking Families in the City of Tabriz, Iran 74
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
vi Contents
6 The Role of the Zapotec Language from Lozoga’ in the

Californian Migrant Community 96
Daisy Bernal Lorenzo
7 Adrift in an Anglophone World: Refugee Families’

Language Policy Challenges 115
Diego Navarro & John Macalister
PART II
Opportunities in Family Language Policy 133
8 How Religious Ideologies and Practices Impact on Family

Language Policy: Ethiopians in Wellington 135
Melanie Revis
9 “I Speak All of the Language!” Engaging in Family

Language Policy Research with Multilingual Children
in Montreal 154
Alison Crump
10 Dynamic Family Language Policy: Heritage Language

Socialization and Strategic Accommodation in the Home 175
Corinne A. Seals
11 Language Ideologies, Social Capital, and Interaction

Strategies: An Ethnographic Case Study of Family
Language Policy in Singapore 195
Guangwei Hu & Li Ren
PART III
Consequences for Family Language Policy 217
12 Home: A Confluence of Discourses in Multilingual

Linguistic Ecologies 219
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi & John Macalister
About the Contributors 236

Index 241
PREFACE
The law of unintended consequences tells us that there may be unexpected

or unplanned outcomes as a result of the actions we take. Certainly when we
formed a language policy and planning literature discussion group in the School
of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Welling-
ton, New Zealand, a book project was definitely not anticipated. Perhaps, then,
we can describe this book as an unintended consequence of the decision to meet
regularly and talk language policy and planning.
Often these discussions focussed on the reasons why well-intended, top-
down policies and plans failed to deliver the intended outcome, or why under-
resourced, bottom-up initiatives achieved unexpected success. In such discussions
the role of the family regularly emerged as a key element, and this focus on
family language policy dove-tailed with the research interests of several post-
graduate students, some of whom have since had their degrees conferred and are
represented in this volume. Indeed, it is an indication of the relative youth and
vigour of family language policy research that new and emerging researchers are
well-represented in this collection.
The importance of the family and of inter-generational transmission in lan-
guage maintenance and language revitalisation have long been recognised inter-
nationally and in New Zealand, thanks in no small part to the efforts made
to preserve and strengthen the indigenous Māori language, te reo Māori. These
efforts were both community-led and Māori-driven, such as the opening in
1982 of the first kohanga reo (pre-school ‘language nest’), and government-
determined with, for example, the Māori Language Act being passed in 1987.
This act, among other results, made te reo Māori an official language. The coun-
try’s other official language (NZ Sign Language) and heritage languages have
enjoyed less top-down support to date. However, bottom-up, community-led
viii Preface
initiatives do operate to support these languages, at times inspired by Māori lan-

guage initiatives—aoga amata, for instance, are a Samoan version of kohanga reo.
Migration does, of course, explain the presence of Samoan and other com-
munity or heritage languages in New Zealand (as, indeed, it does the presence of
English), and as we prepare this book for publication in 2016, migration seems
to be an issue of great contemporary salience. We see this in the US presidential
election, in the British vote to leave the European Union, in the rise of far-right
parties in Austria and elsewhere, and in the results of the elections for the Austra-
lian Senate. Migration, it seems, frightens many people. Yet behind the rhetoric
and the statistics, we should never lose sight of the fact that many hundreds of
thousands of families are seeking a better life, usually escaping from civil war,
from persecution, from poverty. And as these families go about establishing a
new life in a new place, they must make decisions about languages. How to
engage with the language of the wider society. How to maintain the language of
home. How to use languages in the home.
This backdrop of people—and languages—on the move is certainly headline-
grabbing, and it is partly against this setting that this book can be read. But
family language policy also tells the stories of people quietly going about their
lives in their home countries, making decisions about language use in the home,
whether the language in question is a majority or a minority one. It is against that
background, too, that this book can be read, for the chapters in this volume tra-
verse a broad range of family language policy experiences in both settings. They
highlight some of the challenges families face, but also some of the opportunities
for language learning and language maintenance that present themselves.
After an introductory chapter that considers the origins of family language
policy, a section on ‘challenges’ contains six chapters. In the first of these, Cassie
Smith-Christmas discusses some of the challenges for the field as it evolves.
Rachel McKee and Kirsten Smiler then examine family language policy for deaf
children and the vitality of New Zealand Sign Language, which is an official
language in New Zealand. The language challenges that child-headed house-
holds in Uganda face are the focus of the third chapter, by Maureen Kendrick
and Elizabeth Namazzi; these are not, of course, the only challenges confront-
ing such families. In the fourth chapter in this section, Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
considers the future for Azerbaijani in Iran in light of his exploration of fam-
ily language practices in Tabriz. Another language with an uncertain future is
Zapotec, which Daisy Bernal Lorenzo discusses through the lens of speakers in
the Californian migrant community. Spanish, the first language of the single
parent families in the final chapter in this section, is not under the same pressures
as Zapotec, NZ Sign Language, or Azerbaijani, but for these families negotiating
a new life in an English-speaking environment, Spanish and English compete
for primacy in the home.
The second main section of this book looks at ‘opportunities’. Melanie Revis
finds that religion plays an important role in providing a domain for language
Preface ix
maintenance for Amharic-speaking Ethiopian migrant families. In Canada, the

agency of children in Japanese-Canadian families who are learning English,
French, and Japanese is explored by Alison Crump. The agency of children
is also highlighted by Corinne Seals in the United States, in families where
English, Ukrainian, and Russian vie for attention. In the final chapter in this
section, Guangwei Hu and Li Ren report on an ethnographic case study of the
language beliefs, practices, and regulating efforts of four immigrant and local
Chinese families in the multilingual society of Singapore. The book then con-
cludes with a chapter by Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi and John Macalister that draws
on the contributions to this volume to reflect on the relationship between the
ecology of language and family language policy.
We hope, of course, that you will enjoy reading this book as much as we have
enjoyed engaging with the contributing authors in bringing it to publication.
And if some of these chapters end up being the stuff of debate in literature dis-
cussion groups around the world, we hope that such debate will be stimulating.
But no matter how read, we look forward to this collection contributing to new
thinking about, and new avenues of research in, family language policy.
And, finally, we would like to acknowledge those who influenced our own
thinking in this field—the students and staff who contributed to the language
policy and planning literature discussion group in the School of Linguistics and
Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
In particular we want to recognise Professor Janet Holmes, whose example of
generous academic leadership has had such an impact on us, here and around
the world. It is, after all, through the support of academic leaders like Janet and
their nurturing of supportive academic environments that ideas and research can
flourish, ideas and research that in turn can contribute to individual and societal
well-being. So we end with the hope that this book may do its bit to help achieve
that goal.
1
BEGINNINGS
John Macalister & Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a sense of the broad

landscape into which family language policy, and this edited collection, sits. In
New Zealand, where this book had its genesis, we often use the word whakapapa
when we talk of genealogy, of ancestry, of the family tree. We know who we
are because we know where we come from. Thus, in a book dedicated to family
language policy, it seems appropriate to begin by considering the whakapapa of
this field of investigation.
Broadly speaking, the emergence of language policy and planning as an area
of scholarly attention in the twentieth century is linked to the creation of new
nations in the post-colonial period following the Second World War. Questions
arose around identity, and the language to be employed to express that new
national identity. An obvious question of choice was whether to maintain a
colonial language as a national or official language, or to switch to an indigenous
language. If the decision was for an indigenous language, then the question arose
as to which one, or ones, and for what purpose. These decisions were captured
in the term status planning.
The choice of a language as an official or national language often triggered
two other forms of planning, corpus planning and acquisition planning. Corpus
planning might be thought of as ensuring the language was fit for purpose, lead-
ing, for instance, to decisions about orthographic standardisation, or approaches
to lexical enrichment. When a language was not universally spoken in a nation,
thought also had to be given to how it would be learned by non-speakers, thus
entailing acquisition planning and language-in-education policies. In such cases,
language policy, therefore, emerges from language planning, although this is not
always necessarily so; a policy may be established, with planning for implemen-
tation following.
2 John Macalister & Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
It would be a mistake, of course, to think that such concerns are relegated to

the past, to the 1950s and 1960s. The same debates are being played out today.
They can be seen in and exemplified by one of the world’s most recently inde-
pendent nations, Timor-Leste. Status planning is evident in the constitution,
where Portuguese and Tetun are declared to be the official languages; English
and Bahasa Indonesia, working languages. The recognition of these four lan-
guages is explained by Timor-Leste’s history. Portuguese had had a long history

on the island, being the language of the colonisers for almost 400 years, whereas
Tetun was the most widely spoken of the indigenous languages. The Indone-
sian occupation of the country for 24 years following Portuguese withdrawal
in 1975 brought Bahasa Indonesia to Timor-Leste, and English arrived with the
United Nations following violence associated with the Indonesian departure in
1999. The decision to associate national identity with being Portuguese speak-
ing is generally seen as a reflection of the wishes of a political leadership largely
educated prior to 1975 (Macpherson, 2011, p. 189), coupled with unfavourable
attitudes to the other two exogenous languages.
The privileging of Portuguese and its adoption as a medium of instruction
in schools did, however, have consequences since, at independence, only 5% of
the population were estimated as having proficiency in the language (Hill &
Saldanha, 2001, p. 29) and, in 2004, fewer than 6% of teachers were fluent in it
(according to a World Bank report cited in Shah, 2012, p. 35). Acquisition plan-
ning was, therefore, necessary and resulted in, among other measures, compul-
sory intensive Portuguese language courses for teachers. Some indication of the
relative success of these steps is that the proportion of Portuguese speakers in the
population had increased to over 39% in the 2010 census.
At the same time, the declaration of Tetun as an official language had corpus
planning consequences. As an example, the lexis for new, or expanded, domains
of use needed to be developed and standardised with official support being given
to Portuguese as the source language for new terminology. (It is also worth
noting that as Tetun is only one of many indigenous languages, and that there
are two distinct varieties of Tetun, its adoption as an official language also had
acquisition planning consequences for speakers of other indigenous languages)
This outline of the language situation in Timor-Leste, brief and simplified
though it is (for fuller discussion, see Macalister, 2012, 2016), is probably suf-
ficient to generate a range of questions, which could include: Whose interests
are served by the choice of an official language? Which sectors of society may
be disadvantaged through language policy decisions? How well resourced is the
education system to respond effectively to language-in-education policy? What
happens when children are educated in a language their parents don’t speak?
What happens when children are supposed to be being educated in a language
their teachers don’t speak?
It should be no surprise, then, that language policy and planning at the
national level was, in due course, seen to be just one area of interest for the field.
Beginnings 3
The title of a book published in 1971, Can Language Be Planned? (Rubin & Jer-
nudd, 1971), neatly captures the challenge to any idea that language policy and
planning is a scientific, monolithic process leading to an assured outcome. At the
very least, this pointed to an obvious contrast between what occurs at the macro-
level and the micro-level of society; at the micro-level these are the “examples of
language planning [that] occur around us every day” (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997,
p. 52) as individuals make decisions about language use—because, if language

cannot be planned, we want to understand why not.
One way of examining the tension between what is intended (at the macro-
level) and what actually occurs is offered by Shohamy (2006), who explores
the mechanisms that operate between official and de facto language policy. She
identifies rules and regulations, language tests, language education, language in
the public space (also known as linguistic landscapes), and ideology, myths, pro-
paganda, and coercion as mediating between official and de facto policy. Thus,
returning to the Timor-Leste example, while Portuguese is officially sanctioned
as the source language for new lexis, language use in the public space shows
English ice cream inserted into a Tetun sign, and English environment determin-
ing Tetun envaironmentu rather than Portuguese meio-ambiente (Macalister, 2016,
p. 338). What happens in practice often diverges from what policy intends.
At least a part of Shohamy’s exploration is pitched at the meso-level of policy,
the mid-level below the state and national policies and sometimes framed in
government terms as the regional level, rather than at the micro-level where the
family sits. A very useful way of thinking about the micro-levels is encapsulated
in Fishman’s “Who Speaks What Language to Whom and When?” (1965), and
his later revisiting of five domains of language use—family, friendship, religion,
education, and employment (Fishman, 1972). Understanding what happens lin-
guistically in these domains can illuminate factors contributing to the success—
or failure—of what has been determined as policy at a macro-level, or judged
to be desirable.
It is probably fair to say that there has been an element of judging the desir-
able outcome in much of the research that has looked at speech communities
in terms of language maintenance, language shift, language loss, and language
revitalisation—the desirable outcome being bi- or multilingualism. The first
three of these areas for investigation are typically focussed on migrant communi-
ties, where a three-generation pattern has emerged as the norm (Fishman, 1970).
That is, the first generation arrives as native speakers of language A, the second
generation shifts to language B but retains at least oral proficiency in language A,
and the third generation are native speakers of language B with little or no ability
to communicate in language A, the language of their grandparents.
Language revitalisation, on the other hand, focuses attention on languages
that are dead or rapidly dying with well-known examples being Hebrew in
Israel, Māori in New Zealand, and Irish. While governments can, and do, invest
considerably in promoting the language through, for example, education and
media initiatives, a crucial factor for success in language revitalisation efforts does
appear to be inter-generational transmission, the use of the language between
parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and so on. This became a
central concern in Fishman’s work on reversing language shift (Fishman, 1991).
Perhaps, then, the importance of the family and the home should not be a sur-
prise, for, as Fishman (1972, p. 443) remarked, “Multilingualism often begins in
the family and depends upon it for encouragement if not for protection”.
Given that the family was identified as an important domain by Fishman in
the mid-1960s, it may seem surprising that, while introducing a special issue
dedicated to the field almost fifty years later, Spolsky (2012, p. 8) could remark,
“The study of family language policy is still new, and there remain many basic
questions to answer”.
Perhaps the dominant question remains understanding how family language
policy fits into the wider linguistic ecology. The home, after all, is not a silo. Lan-
guage choices in the home will be affected by language use, by language policy,
in other domains. It will be affected by decisions relating to corpus planning, to
status planning, to acquisition planning. If we draw for illustration of this point
on Timor-Leste once again, where Portuguese is the medium of instruction in
education, it may be that Portuguese enters the home domain through the chil-
dren. It may, however, enter the home via younger siblings, with the result that
different members of the family use different languages when communicating
with each other. It may also be that a parent, seeing benefit from familiarity
with Portuguese in the employment domain, positions the children as a teaching-
learning resource. The picture that emerges, therefore, is a dynamic one—even a
messy one—and the role of the languages involved is constantly shifting.
Nor is it the case that this influence is unidirectional, always on the home.
Language use in the home can affect other domains and indeed a language’s
position in the wider ecology. If, for example, Portuguese displaces the existing
home language in one family, and if that pattern is repeated in multiple homes
within a particular speech community, the likelihood of societal language shift,
even eventual language loss of the indigenous language, increases.
Family language policy, then, is concerned with the dynamics of language
use within a family (which should be read as meaning not the contemporary
Western-style nuclear family but rather ‘family’ in its many and diverse manifes-
tations) and the factors, both internal and external, that affect that use. Although
not normally discussed in these terms, its concerns are those of classic macro-
level language policy and planning—the decisions families make about what
language(s) to use in the home, for what purposes (a form of status planning),
what resources are available to support their use (corpus planning), and how
language learning, typically although not necessarily by the children, will take
place (acquisition planning).
In an attempt to understand and explain family language policy, a framework
that has been widely adopted is Spolsky’s three-component model of practices,
Beginnings 5
beliefs, and management, which he introduced in terms of a speech community

(such as a family) thus: “its language practices—the habitual pattern of selecting
among the varieties that make up its linguistic repertoire; its language beliefs or
ideology—the beliefs about language and language use; and any specific efforts
to modify or influence that practice by any kind of language intervention, plan-
ning or management” (Spolsky, 2004, p. 5). If we return to the hypothetical
example used earlier, we see that the mother may notice the younger children’s
practice of using Portuguese with each other, and, as a result of her belief that
knowing Portuguese may get her a better job, she may require the children to
respond to her in Portuguese, thus managing their language practice.
The components of Spolsky’s model are supported by the findings of other
researchers. For instance, one factor that does appear to support language main-
tenance within the home is what De Houwer (1999) called ‘impact belief’, “the
parental belief that parents can exercise some sort of control over their children’s
linguistic functioning” (p. 83). This may be manifested through explicit rules for
language use in the home, such as an expectation as to which language will be
used in the home, or with whom, as in the one parent / one language approach.
Parents with stronger impact beliefs, when they translate into explicit language
management strategies, tend to have greater success in language maintenance
in the home than those with weak impact beliefs. Parents with weaker impact
beliefs may feel that they have little power to counter the effect of language use
in other domains, as shown in, for example, Pérez Báez (2013)’s study of San
Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec, a language that also receives attention in this volume
(in Daisy Bernal Lorenzo’s chapter).
Similarly compatible with Spolsky’s model, the way in which parents interact
with their children has also been proposed as a factor in supporting language
maintenance within the home. Lanza (2004) proposes a number of parental dis-
course strategies along a continuum that ranges from the monolingual to the
bilingual. As an example of a monolingual discourse strategy, if a parent displays
minimal grasp of a language used by the child that is not the preferred home lan-
guage (regardless of whether the parent actually understands what was said), this
acts as a catalyst for the child to use the preferred language. At the other end of
the continuum, if a parent switches language in response to the child’s use of it,
this is said to promote bilingualism—though may also be promoting the child’s
shift from the parent’s first language. For example, while acknowledging the
difficulty of establishing a cause-effect link between parent and child language
use, in their study of two families endeavouring to promote Spanish-language
use with a two-year-old child, King and Logan-Terry (2008) suggest a child’s
higher use of English may be linked to the mother’s “tendency to not push hard
for a monolingual Spanish context” (p. 15).
Discussion of supporting language maintenance does trigger—possibly
controversial—thoughts about the nature of success in family language pol-
icy, with which we shall end before foreshadowing the structure of this edited
collection. Without questioning the benefits of bilingualism (as summarised in,

for example, Walter & Benson, 2012), or wishing to suggest that supporting
families to be bilingual is anything other than worthwhile, we do need to point
out that governmental support of bilingualism is not universal, that the ideal
of mother-tongue-based multilingual education is seldom realised, and that in
many jurisdictions it is on speakers of minority, not majority, languages that the
expectations of bi- or multilingualism fall. At the very least, therefore, we should

be wary of implicit judgements about ‘success’ in terms of language mainte-
nance. Success for an individual family may be that its children become pro-
ficient in the dominant language and thus gain better access to education and
employment opportunities, even if this means the children lose the language
of their parents and grandparents. A challenge for the field of family language
policy, then, may be to shift from a focus on “how to bring up truly happy bilingual
children” (Schwartz & Verschik, 2013, p. 7, italics in original) to a more inclusive
approach that takes account of the diverse language goals of families, and how
best to achieve them.
In similar vein, and returning to the messiness of family language policy dis-
cussions, we need to be cognisant of the many different contexts and situations
that exist around the world. The case of an indigenous minority language in its
home country is different from that of the same minority language in a migrant
or refugee setting, and both differ in turn from that of a majority language in a
migration context. All these situations are represented in this book, and an out-
come that is desirable in one context may not be desired in another.
In considering the structure of this book, we had considered using that taxon-
omy of contexts, but it would have resulted in sections of very different length.
We also considered a methodological structure to the book, reflecting the range
of approaches researchers take, with a distinction between longitudinal, qualita-
tive studies and those that included quantitative data-generation tools such as
surveys and shorter-term qualitative measures. However, in the end we have
opted to structure the book by considering challenges, opportunities, and con-
sequences, as signalled in the collection’s sub-title.
The first section, on ‘challenges’, begins with a chapter by Cassie Smith-
Christmas that considers the field of family language policy broadly, identifying
challenges for the field and innovations that may address those challenges. Sub-
sequent chapters in this book provide responses to a number of the challenges
raised in her chapter, which can be read as an extension of this take on the
whakapapa of family language policy.
Rachel McKee and Kirsten Smiler look at New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL),
one of New Zealand’s official languages. They provide detailed background of
macro-level status planning and of acquisition planning at meso- and micro-
levels, with survey data from the deaf community about perceived threats to
NZSL vitality also providing context, before looking at the experiences deter-
mining family language policy of ten families with one or more deaf members.
Beginnings 7
Five of these families are Māori, and, for these families, the value placed on spo-
ken Māori language as an ethnicity marker and aspirations for its maintenance
add another layer to family ideology about socialising a deaf child and to inter-
actions with institutionalised services. And for all families, the normalisation of
cochlear implant surgery for deaf infants has shifted values about signing and
speaking and has affected families’ likely exposure to NZSL.
The following chapter, by Maureen Kendrick and Elizabeth Namazzi, reports

on a study focusing on emergent family language policies in four child-headed
households (CHHs) in Uganda’s Rakai District. Drawing on sociocultural per-
spectives on children’s learning, funds of knowledge, and Vygotsky’s medi-
ated social activity, they use ethnographic methods to document how siblings
co-construct, re-appropriate, and remix family language practices to meet their
ongoing needs as a family. The findings demonstrate that the children’s language
practices are imbued with values and beliefs about language learning and use,
and reveal how they are trying to establish new priorities for communication in
the absence of adult caregivers. The implicit language policies evident in these
practices are often emotionally driven and both serve as a coping mechanism to
help the children minimise emotional distress and strengthen the family unit to
ensure the future.
The three chapters that complete this section all draw on recent PhD research
(as do the chapters by Seals and by Revis, as well as Smiler’s work on Maori deaf ).
In the first of these, Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi uses a quantitative attitude question-
naire administered to 107 families, a focus-group interview with six mothers,
and three case studies to examine FLP among Azerbaijani-speaking families in
Tabriz, Iran, specifically throwing light on how parents’ and children’s choices
are shaped by educational policies of the state and the media broadcast nationally
and internationally. Despite being the largest minority group with a population
of approximately 13 million, Azerbaijani is overwhelmed in various domains and
institutions, such as the education system and the media, by the official language
of the state, Farsi. The findings demonstrate that discourses of economic mobility,
educational success, and national and/or ethnic identity shaped in the linguistic
ecology mediate language choice in the home.
Daisy Bernal Lorenzo adds to the literature on Zapotec, an indigenous lan-
guage from Mexico, and more broadly to the literature on indigenous languages
in migration contexts. Her focus is on the Lozoga’ community of speakers, par-
ticularly on four children of migrants to Los Angeles. While these children have
limited proficiency in Zapotec, and the language appears to be under threat in
Lozoga’ itself, Bernal Lorenzo suggests the language is not yet in a terminal state,
that there remains a chance to reverse the apparent language shift.
Finally, in this section, Diego Navarro and John Macalister draw on inter-
view data from a year-long longitudinal study of two single-parent Colombian
refugee families in Wellington, New Zealand. Having little formal education
and language-learning experiences themselves to provide a basis for guiding
their learning of English in this new environment, and being the sole persons
responsible for managing all aspects of their families’ lives, the two mothers in
this study hold weak impact beliefs, although both recognised the importance of
learning English, the language that would provide access to opportunity. In both
families, the children appeared already to be shifting from Spanish to English as
their dominant language.
The next section of the book looks at ‘opportunities’. Perhaps it is indicative of

the field that this section contains fewer chapters than the section on ‘challenges’.
It begins, however, with a sort of response to the preceding chapter, a more
positive view of family language policy in the same setting. Melanie Revis con-
ducted the first study about Amharic language maintenance in New Zealand
and one of the few studies of this language worldwide. Her data is part of a
larger project investigating family language beliefs, practices, and management
in refugee communities in Wellington, New Zealand. Her chapter is based
on ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews conducted with
13 Ethiopian caretakers of children under 12 and with nine children between six
and 12 years. Although language maintenance practices varied by family, recur-
ring themes referred to personal motivation for language maintenance being
affected by their participation in and identification with the Ethiopian Orthodox
religion. The Orthodox Church community in Wellington represented a com-
munity of practice with the shared goal of maintaining their culture, religion,
and language in a diasporic context. The church provided continuous support
for language practice as a result of participants creating a monolingual Amharic
space to foster their children’s Ethiopian identity. These influences also trans-
ferred into the home domain where church members showed keen interest in
transmitting the core values of religion and language to their children, and used
a range of activities which connected both values. Overall, the strong role of
the Orthodox Church and its inextricable link with Ethiopian culture support
claims about the significant impact of religious beliefs on FLP.
The focus of Alison Crump’s chapter is twofold: first, it describes an FLP
inquiry with Japanese-Canadian families in their homes in Montreal, Que-
bec, and, second, it details a methodological approach for engaging in research
with (not about) young children. While Canada is officially bilingual (French-
English), the province of Quebec has its own language policy (Bill 101), which
makes French the sole official language. This makes Montreal a rich context in
which to explore FLPs. The chapter draws on a qualitative inquiry she engaged
in with multilingual preschoolers (aged four to six) who are being socialized in
English and Japanese at home, in French at preschool and extracurricular activi-
ties outside the home, and in Japanese at a Saturday heritage language school.
She found that the young children who participated in the inquiry are highly
attuned to, and can resist or adhere to language policies, both inside and outside
of home. She argues that children’s perspectives can help advance theoretical
Beginnings 9
understandings of the relationships between language policy at home, at school,

and in public places.
Also in North America, Corinne Seals has a similarly strong focus on the
role of the children in two Eastern European families, where both Russian and
Ukrainian have a role. Twenty-one hours of in-home audio data were collected
with these families, as part of a multi-year linguistic ethnography in the United
States. The families collected the data themselves through discreet wristwatches,
allowing them more control of the process and resulting in data with minimal
researcher interference. The results show that these émigré families’ language
practices are not reflective of any single family language policy; rather, the
practices and management strategies used shift dynamically depending on the
interlocutors and their goals in the conversation. Furthermore, this chapter also
discusses the importance of considering any in-home language use within the
larger societal context, as societally recognized languages may come to also hold
more symbolic capital within the home as well.
In the final chapter in this section, Guangwei Hu and Li Ren report on an
ethnographic case study of the language beliefs, practices, and regulating efforts
of four immigrant and local Chinese families in the multilingual society of Sin-
gapore. Specifically, the study aims to understand these focal families’ language
policy work by uncovering what language ideologies they held, how these lan-
guage ideologies shaped their language practices as manifested in mother-child
interaction strategies and the actualization of family social capital, and what
explicit and deliberate efforts were made by the parents to regulate their chil-
dren’s and their own language practices and language beliefs. Cross-family simi-
larities and differences observed in these aspects and their patterns of interaction
are interpreted in terms of not only family-internal factors but also external
influences such as cultural norms, social beliefs, societal values, socioeconomic
conditions, educational practices, and sociolinguistic environments.
The final section, and the concluding chapter for this collection, focusses
on ‘consequences’. In this chapter, we seek to understand and explain family
language policy in terms of the ecology of language model, drawing illustra-
tive links to the contributions to this book, and focus on the educational and
pedagogical implications that emerge. There are, inevitably, no single or simple
answers, but, given the importance of education systems in disseminating dis-
courses around languages, we end with a reminder of the crucial role that good
pedagogy can play in successful language learning.
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
PART I
Language Policy
Challenges in Family
2
FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICY
New Directions
Cassie Smith-Christmas
Introduction
It is over a century now since Ronjat’s (1913) study of his son Louis’ simultaneous
development in French and German, which came to be considered the naissance
of family language policy (FLP) research. This study also gave rise to the con-
cept originally developed by Ronjat’s friend Grammont of the une-personne une-
langue strategy, later to become known as the one-parent one-language (OPOL)
strategy. In turn, this strategy came to be one of the central frameworks for FLP
research (see, for example, Leopold, 1939–1949; De Houwer, 1990; Döpke, 1992;
Lanza, 1997; Kasuya, 1998; Barron-Hauwaert, 2004; Takeuchi, 2006; Mishina-
Mori, 2011; Palviainen and Boyd, 2013). It was not until nearly a century later,
however, that the term FLP came into being, appearing in Luykx’s (2003, p. 39)
account of Spanish-Aymara families:
While these efforts [minority language schools] are laudable [. . .], it is

the gradual displacement of Aymara by Spanish in functions that have
traditionally been the former’s stronghold (i.e. the domestic ones) that may
prove definitive for the future survival of the language. For this reason, it is
necessary to expand our current conception of ‘language policy’ to include
not only the sphere of official state actions, but also decisions made at the
community and family level. Such decisions are often implicit and uncon-
scious, but they are no less crucial to determining the speed and direction
of language shift. In this regard we may refer to family language policy as an
important area for both research and activism.
It was still not until a decade later that FLP was conceptualised as a field in
its own right with King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry’s (2008) paper titled ‘Family
14 Cassie Smith-Christmas
Language Policy.’ This paper, as well as subsequent work (for example, Schwartz,
2010; Spolsky, 2012; Fogle and King, 2013; King and Fogle, 2013), helped to
reify the remit of FLP research and put it on the sociolinguistic map, so to speak.
The emergence of FLP as a field in its own right nearly a century after initial FLP
research was first carried out is perhaps an example of what the famous psycho-
linguist Willem Levelt (2014) refers to as a ‘sleeping beauty’ in linguistics: work
that began much earlier is later ‘awoken,’ the process of which reflects shifting
conceptions of language and how it mediates the relationship between the indi-
vidual and society. After all, following from the naissance of FLP with Ronjat’s
study and Leopold’s (1939–1949) well-known documentation of his two daugh-
ters German-English development, there was a comparative hiatus in the field;
not only did linguistics turn towards other interests, but the ever-popular myth
that bilingualism inhibits a child’s overall development still held currency (e.g.,
Anastasi and Cordova, 1953; for a good overview of anti-bilingual discourses,
see Pavlenko, 2006). The FLP ‘awakening’ in the 1980s and 1990s in the form of
monographs on child bilingualism (e.g., Fantini, 1985; Saunders, 1988; de Hou-
wer, 1990; Döpke, 1992; Lanza, 1997) made important steps towards changing
these negative discourses on bilingualism as well as expanding the narrow view
of bilingualism that, as Grosjean (1992) puts it, envisages the bilingual individual
as the sum of two monolinguals instead of a holistic, multilingual individual.
The shift in framing research on child bilingualism in terms of language policy
reflects not only a growing interest in the field of language policy in its own right
(see, for example, Spolsky and Shohamy, 2000; Spolsky, 2004) but an emphasis
on the decision-making processes that multilingual families face (as alluded to in
Luykx’s earlier quote) and how these decision-making processes are mediated by
wider sociohistorical trajectories. As Canagarajah (2008, p. 173) writes:
We find that the family is not self-contained, closed off to other social
institutions and economic conditions. Furthermore, the family is shaped
by history and power, at times reproducing ideological values and power
inequalities established from colonial times. Such a broadened perspective
is critical to theorizing the prospects of the family in maintaining a mar-
ginalized language.
The sentiment encapsulated in Canagarajah’s quote is echoed in King’s (2016)

introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development on family language policy and transnational families, as she charac-
terises what she terms (pp. 2–3) the ‘fourth’ (and current) phase of FLP research
as involving ‘research questions that examine language competence not just as
an outcome, but as a means through which adults and children define them-
selves, their family roles, and family life.’ This premise is exemplified for instance
in Zhu Hua and Li Wei’s article within this special issue, which demonstrates
Family Language Policy 15
how different generations of Chinese speakers in the UK—and even individuals

within the same family—conceptualise multilingualism differently, prompting
the authors to emphasise in their conclusion (p. 11) that ‘bilingualism and mul-
tilingualism need to be studied as experiences, and experiences need to be studied
holistically and multidimensionally’ (emphasis in original).
The need for multidimensional views of FLP was also one of the key themes
emergent from the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA)

workshop ‘Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development’
held in Berlin in February 2016, which was attended by over seventy partici-
pants, mainly from Europe but from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.
This importance of interdisciplinarity and multidimensionality was particularly
clear from the keynote lectures delivered by Elizabeth Lanza and Annick de
Houwer, which established where we were are now in current FLP research and
where we should turn our attention in order to develop the field further. Their
lectures helped strengthen the sense among researchers of what is at stake in FLP
research. As encapsulated by King’s (2016, pp. 2–3) observation earlier, what it
is at stake is not simply the child’s competence in the minority language; rather,
the reflexive relationship between language mediation in the family and the
wider community not only shapes each family’s own experiences and outcomes
but may also play a role in social dynamics at the local, supralocal, and arguably
even global level (for example, the fast rise of English as a global language as dis-
cussed in Curdt-Christiansen, 2016). Further, it is important to bear in mind that
the most eminent scholar in language shift and maintenance, Joshua Fishman,
characterises successful intergenerational language transmission as the ‘fulcrum’
(1991, p. 467) in terms of reversing language shift; in other words, if minority
language transmission does not take place within the family, then it is unlikely
that the language will continue to survive. For many languages at the brink of
obsolescence, it is therefore critical to gain a deeper understanding of FLP and
its dynamics within particular endangered language communities. Thus, it is
clear to see that the stakes are high in terms of FLP research and that these stakes
encompass access to empowerment, social change, and the fate of certain endan-
gered languages, to name a few. As Lanza (2016) emphasised in her plenary lec-
ture in Berlin, FLP researchers are tasked with understanding the multi-layered
dimensions of complexity involving families, language, wider social structures,
and the relationship between the three. As the stakes are high, it is important to
identify key ways in which we can advance the field.
So, where to next? The following gives an overview of the possible future
directions of the field, grouping them into three major themes: contexts, meth-
odologies, and areas of focus. These suggestions are not meant to be exhaustive;
rather, they are meant as a way to stimulate an integrated dialogue and allow
space for FLP researchers to reflect on the milestones in the field as well as the
lacunae.
Context Is Key
As the famous Tolstoy quote goes, all happy families are happy in the same way,
but every unhappy family is unhappy in a different way. This is not to imply that
multilingual families are unhappy but, rather, a means to illustrate how context
is crucial in FLP research: the particular composition of each family; where they
are located; what languages they speak; the status of the languages they speak;
the parents’ life histories and linguistic trajectories; the role of other caregivers
in the child(ren)’s upbringing and these other caregivers’ own linguistic experi-
ences, and so forth mean that each family has the potential to be unique in terms
of FLP research. Thus, the realities that contribute to one family’s successful FLP
may not be applicable to other families’ situations or may in fact even hinder
their own FLPs. In order to cover as broad a range of family experiences as pos-
sible, FLP research needs to consider the issue of context carefully.
In my own research (2016), I synthesised the different contexts of FLP research
into three overarching prototypes: OPOL, in which the minority-speaking par-
ent is an immigrant and the other parent is usually a member of the host com-
munity (for example, Döpke, 1992; Lanza, 1997; Kasuya, 1998; Takeuchi, 2006);
immigrant community, whereby normally both parents are members of a com-
munity of immigrants in a host community (for example, Bayley, Schecter, and
Torres-Ayala, 1996; Zentella, 1997; Canagarajah, 2008; Gafaranga, 2011; Chatzi-
daki and Maligkoudi, 2013); and autochthonous minority language community,
whereby families are part of an indigenous minority community (e.g., Maki-
hara, 2005; Meek, 2007; Ó hIfearnáin, 2013; Smith-Christmas, 2016). I argue
that there are potential relative advantages and disadvantages to each in terms
of the child’s potential use of the minority language. In OPOL situations, the
onus of maintaining the minority language primarily falls on the minority-
language-speaking parent, whereas in immigrant and autochthonous minority
language communities, by virtue of being a ‘community,’ the child may have
more minority-language-speaking interlocutors. However, the disenfranchise-
ment of the immigrant or the autochthonous community vis-à-vis the majority
group may counteract this advantage; further, shift-inducing practices may be
well-ingrained in family and wider social communicative norms. As De Houwer
(2016) pointed out in her plenary address at the AILA conference, the majority
of research has been conducted in the first two contexts, and there has been
relatively little research situated in autochthonous minority language communi-
ties. One further direction therefore would be the expansion of FLP to include
more autochthonous minority communities. Further, it should be emphasised
that these categorisations of FLP contexts are prototypes and prototypes only; for
example, the reverse-diaspora nature of Israel, which has served as the locus of
much important FLP research (for example, Schwartz, 2008; Stavans, 2012; Alt-
man, Feldman, Yitzhaki, Lotem, and Walters, 2014), means that immigrants in
Israel might not face the same level of stigmatisation as Mexicans in the United
States, for example (cf. Bayley, Schecter, and Torres-Ayala, 1996). Research that
clearly involves a blend of prototypes (for example, speakers of an autochtho-
nous minority language who have migrated, such as Galicians in Argentina, for
instance) would offer further new directions for the field. Work oriented towards
this vein (for example, Yates and Terraschke, 2013) as well as studies of families
in highly multilingual areas with a diverse tradition of migration and multilin-
gualism, such as Malaysia (e.g., Dumanig, David, and Shanmuganathan, 2013;

Pillai, Soh, and Kajita, 2014), accelerate FLP’s path along this new trajectory.
As well, despite the existence of what I have argued to be three prototypes,
FLP studies are generally situated in Western, industrialised societies: the bulk
of FLP studies have been conducted within these contexts (primarily Western
Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia), and often the minority language
parent also hails from another Western, industralised nation-state (for example,
German parents in Australia in Döpke’s 1992 study; American parents in Norway
in Lanza’s 1997 study; Luxembourgish parents in the UK in Kirsch’s 2012 study).
Studies of immigrant communities from non-industrialised and/or non-Western
countries often involve cases where the host country is a prototypically Western,
industrialised nation (for example, Rwanadans in Belgium in Gafaranga’s, 2010
study), and research situated within autochthonous minority languages commu-
nities tends to involve groups that exist at the peripheries of mainstream Western
societies but nonetheless exist within the polities of these Western, industrial
societies (for example, Kaska in Canada in Meek’s 2007 study), and thus mem-
bers’ ideas about language and the family may be strongly influenced by the
ideologies held by the mainstream Western, industrialised societies. It is of course
problematic to draw on concepts such as ‘Westernised’ and ‘non-Westernised’ as
dichotomies, as, inherently, these terms are subjective, as are ‘industrialised’ and
‘non-industrialised.’ However, the reality that the bulk of FLP research has been
at least partially situated in Western, industrialised contexts is perhaps as much
reflective of global migration and colonisation patterns as it is of the fact that, as
Smakman and Heinrich (2015, p. xvi) point out in their book Globalising Sociolin-
guistics, much of sociolinguistic theory in general has been borne out of observa-
tions of Western, industrialised communities (which in turn is also reflective of
Western privilege in terms of access to higher education, prestigious universities,
etc.). However, child-rearing practices and beliefs about children and their role
in the family may differ considerably in non-Western societies (cf. child language
socialisation research, for example, Schiefflin and Ochs, 1984, 1986; Ochs, 1993;
Duranti, Ochs, and Schiefflin, 2011). For instance, in his well-known study of
language shift in Gapun, Papua New Guinea, Kulick (1992) finds that caregiv-
ers’ beliefs about concept of ‘self’ in relation to language plays a role in their
seemingly laissez-faire attitudes to the children’s lack of the minority language
Taiap. Studies which encapsulate experiences outside the typical largely West-
ern, industrialised viewpoint of sociolinguistics and FLP are particularly valu-
able to advancing our understanding of language use in the family; currently,
for example, there is a dearth of research situated within Africa or the Middle
East (apart from Israel), and studies which involve highly multilingual contexts,
as described for example in Myers-Scotton’s (1988) well-known work on code
negotiation in East Africa, would offer a much-enriched viewpoint for the field.
Curdt-Christiansen’s (2016) recent work in Singapore points toward new
directions in the field. By comparing the FLPs of the three main ethnic groups
in Singapore—a highly industrialised but in many respects non-Western nation

and one which is both historically and currently a multilingual society—her
research demonstrates the global forces underpinning language choice in the
family. It shows how pressure to use the ‘dominant’ variety does not only apply
to immigrants and speakers of indigenous languages; rather, the mechanisms by
which large-scale economic and social realities establish new dominances affect
language use in the family, as in her study a number of families orient towards
English use due to conceptions of English as a global language. Further, as previ-
ously mentioned, the family prototype that has tended to receive the most atten-
tion within FLP research is the OPOL prototype, a reality which is also perhaps
indicative of FLP’s outlook being rooted in Westernised, industrialised contexts:
the child’s experience of the family consists mainly of what is considered the
‘nuclear’ family in Western society, with relatives other than the child’s parents
playing a peripheral role in the child’s development. In many societies outside
of the so-called Western, industrialised mainstream, however, it may be more
the norm than the exception that the children will have frequent interactions
with extended family members and that multiple family members of different
generations (for example, grandparents, aunts, and uncles) may live in the same
household. Curdt-Christiansen’s study exemplifies this premise, as it looks at the
role that the language ideologies and practices of other relatives living in the
children’s house (for example, aunts, uncles, and grandparents) play in shaping
the FLP.
In a similar vein, Kopeliovich’s (2013) work in Israel also exemplifies how the
FLP field is evolving in terms of bringing multiple family members into scope.
As Lanza (2007) points out, traditionally, even siblings have played a relatively
small role in FLP research, as the focus tends to lie upon the eldest child. Kope-
liovich’s longitudinal examination of her own four children demonstrates not
only the impact of the siblings’ language use with each other but also the impact
of extended family members, such as grandparents, on the child’s language use.
Kopeliovich’s first child was stronger in his minority language (Russian) than
his two younger sisters, due in part to the fact that his grandparents were also
Russian speakers and they would often take him to the park, where they spoke
Russian with other grandparents who were also looking after their grandchil-
dren. The eldest child then went to school, however, and not only did he begin
speaking Hebrew to his younger sisters but they then began using Hebrew with
each other. However, at the birth of Kopeliovich’s fourth child, all three siblings
began to use more Russian and used the language with the fourth child. My
own work (2014, 2016) on three generations of a Gaelic-speaking family on the

Isle of Skye, Scotland, also examines the role of other caregivers, such as the
children’s grandparents, aunts, and uncles in their success in maintaining Gaelic
with the third generation, as well as the impact that the siblings’ language use
had on the FLP overall. I found that although certain other caregivers (primar-
ily the children’s two grandmothers and mother) were the main forces in the
Gaelic-centred nature of the FLP, other family members’ language practices in

many ways reversed the impact of the these particular caregivers, as the second
generation (as well as the eldest sibling) ‘model’ language shift to the youngest
speakers. This in turn was one of the many contributing factors to the third
generation’s early and continuing preference for English despite the family’s pro-
Gaelic efforts and the children’s attendance at a Gaelic immersion school (for
other studies that examine the impact of other caregivers, see Bayley, Schecter,
and Torres-Ayala, 1996; Kenner, Ruby, Jessel, Gregory, and Arju, 2007; Ruby,
2012; Melo-Pfeifer, 2015; Pillai, Soh, and Kajita, 2014).
Further, as Lanza (2016) emphasised in her plenary talk at the Berlin con-
ference, one of the new directions the field is taking is an interest in ‘non-
traditional’ family types, such as single-parent, LGBT, and adoptive families.
Fogle’s (2012) work on transnational parents of Russian-speaking adoptees and
Fiorentino, Meulleman, and Castagne’s (2016) work on Italian parents of adop-
tees of different linguistic backgrounds are important steps in expanding the
field in this direction. Work that compares and contrasts these different contexts
and family types, such as for example Fogle and King’s (2013) article, which
juxtaposes Fogle’s (2012) adoptive families with King and Logan-Terry’s (2008)
Spanish-English households, is integral to advancing the field. Further, as King
and Logan-Terry point out in their 2008 study (in which mothers use their L2
of Spanish due to perceptions of bilingualism as ‘good parenting’), most FLP
research is centred in contexts where parents are using their native language and/
or language of the wider community with the child. Increased global mobility
and the rise of ‘new’ speakers (cf. O’ Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo, 2015) both of
autochthonous minority languages and of world-dominant languages means that
many parents may be raising their children in a language which is neither their
L1 nor the language of the wider community. In situations where the language
shift is so acute that there are few ‘native’ speakers of the language left, this may
be particularly important, as a number of moribund or near-moribund languages
may rely on new speakers for the survival of the language. Further, there is very
little research from a linguistic dimension on the effects of input in terms of the
child’s acquisition and use of the minority language in instances when one (or
more) of the caregivers is undergoing language attrition due to time away from
the home country (OPOL or immigrant situations) or due to language shift
(autochthonous minority language situations).
In summary, the new directions the field is taking demonstrate how context is
key to gaining a deeper understanding of the reflexive relationship between the
family and society in FLP research. In returning to the opening Tolstoy quote,
one of the key studies to illustrate this point has been Kopeliovich’s (2013) ‘Hap-
pylingual: A Family Project for Enhancing and Balancing Multilingual Devel-
opment.’ In showing how different realities play out in different families, the
sentiment behind the Tolstoy quote—that no two families’ experiences are the
same—can be re-phrased in a more positive way: every multilingual family is
‘happylingual’ in its own way. The following section will discuss the difficulties
in assessing the ways in which each family is ‘happylingual’ and will examine
how the field is shifting to meet these new challenges.
Methodological Innovations
One of the main issues with FLP research is that it inherently involves captur-
ing and analysing language use in the very intimate setting of the family. Over
the trajectory of FLP research, researchers have developed different ways to deal
with this potential challenge. As gleaned from some of the studies previously
mentioned (for example, Ronjat, 1913; Leopold,1939–1949; Fantini, 1985; Kope-
liovich, 2013), in some cases family language use is captured and analysed by
one of the children’s parents in the form of language diaries and recordings.
Other studies in which the researcher is not the parent of the child (for example,
De Houwer, 1990; Lanza, 1997) have built on these methods and have often
employed parental interviews along with recordings of family’s language use and
parents’ diaries, etc. Studies centred primarily on the parents’ language ideolo-
gies (for example, Okita, 2001; Kirsch, 2012) tend to use parental interviews as
the primary methodology. Still other studies have employed more quantitative
methods such as surveys (Varro, 1998; Schwartz, 2008; King and Fogle, 2006;
De Houwer, 2007; Ó hIfearnáin, 2013) in assessing family language use and the
children’s acquisition of the minority language. Studies of immigrant or autoch-
thonous minority communities often centre on ethnographic methodologies,
especially that of participant observation, in examining FLP from a primarily
community-centred vantage point (for example, Kulick, 1992; Li Wei, 1994;
Zentella, 1997; King, 2000; Luykx, 2003). Curdt-Christiansen’s (2009, 2016)
work in Montreal and Singapore respectively exemplifies how a combination of
these methods can lead to a very fruitful and in-depth understanding of FLP. It is
clear, therefore, that over the course of the field’s existence, FLP researchers have
been innovative in adapting their methodologies to respond to different chal-
lenges and to maximise their understanding of multilingual families. Despite a
breadth of innovativeness, however, there are still ways in which the field could
further develop to better understand FLP. The following section gives some sug-
gestions for these developments.
One potential limitation of the scope of FLP is that due to many factors,
FLP studies usually are sometimes only able to provide a record of a particular
moment in a family’s ever-evolving FLP. This observation is not restricted to FLP
studies of course, as accounts of language use in general are often restricted to

an in-depth understanding of a particular moment in time, nor is this to say that
this ‘particular moment’ does not provide in-depth insight into FLP. However,
in again returning to Canagarajah’s (2008, p. 173) quote in the introduction
to this chapter, just as the family exists as a part of a sociohistorical trajectory,
so too does it exist as part of its own trajectory. Long-term longitudinal studies
(which I define as studies that span at least approximately four years) thus have
the potential to advance understanding of the field significantly and provide
valuable insight into the reflexive nature of family life and the wider commu-
nity. A number of long-term longitudinal studies have been conducted by the
parents of the children (for example, Ronjat, 1913; Leopold, 1939–1949; Fantini,
1985; Saunders, 1988; Caldas, 2006; Kopeliovich, 2013), a reality which may
stem from the practicalities of such research and the fact that such longitudinal
research often involves close relationships with the families. Caldas’ (2006) study,
for example, spans nineteen years in tracing his children’s French-English devel-
opment, and maintaining close contact with a family that is not one’s own for
so long may be difficult. This is not to say that longitudinal studies are necessar-
ily restricted to the researcher’s own children, however; for example, Zentella’s
(1997) ten-year ethnography of the Puerto Rican community in New York City
demonstrates how long-term longitudinal research conducted by a researcher
other than the children’s parents is not only feasible but extremely valuable in
expanding insight into the field. Similarly, my own eight-year ethnography of a
Gaelic-speaking family demonstrates how long-term longitudinal research can
be carried out by researchers who are initially very much ‘outsiders’ not only to
the family but also to the family’s community and their language. In contrast to
these very qualitative longitudinal approaches, quantitative approaches also play
a role in gaining insights in FLP over a substantial period of time; for example,
de Houwer and Bornstein’s (2016) recent study captures the linguistic experi-
ences of twenty-five children being raised with French and Dutch over a period
of nearly four years.
Another way in which FLP methodologies can broaden the viewpoint of the
field would be to employ methodologies designed specifically to elicit the chil-
dren’s views of their two (or more) languages. Even though the child’s language
use is in many ways the centre of FLP research, an understanding of the children’s
language ideologies and metalinguistic awareness is often obtained indirectly,
either narrated through the caregivers’ accounts or gleaned from the observa-
tions of the child’s language use. Although these means of analysis are extremely
valuable, it would be a further step to gain a more direct means of understanding
the children’s views of their languages, similar to the way that caregivers’ lan-
guage ideologies are elicited in interviews (for example, Kirsch, 2012). However,
many of the children under investigation in FLP studies are in the relatively
early stages of language acquisition and thus may have limited means to express
themselves, not to mention the fact that their understanding of the world may
be difficult to parse. The multi-modal methods employed in Crump’s qualitative

(2014; also this volume) study of Japanese families in Montreal, however, offer
a number of innovations in this respect. Crump’s study weaves together analysis
of play-time, drawings, and the dialogue between the researcher and the child
during these activities in arriving at an in-depth understanding of the children’s
multilingual identities and perceptions of multilingualism in their community.
Similarly, Melo-Pfeifer’s (2015) study of children being raised with Portuguese

in Germany also gives insight into ways into which researchers can gain a more
child-centred perspective. In this quantitatively-oriented study, analysis of 956
drawings of children aged six to twelve reveals the importance of affective
dimensions of FLP; Portuguese often conjures associations of sunshine and fam-
ily, while the association with German varies. As photographing and recording
devices become a frequently inexpensive part of everyday life, it is also possible
to capture children’s metalinguistic awareness and glimpses of their affective
relationships with their languages via disposable cameras, mobile phones, tablets,
etc., as demonstrated recently for example in Solovova’s (2016) study of Russian-
speaking children in Portugal.
In summary, the two main suggestions for future research in terms of meth-
odology lie in gaining a deeper understanding of the family’s trajectory as a whole
and in gaining a deeper understanding of the children’s views of their different
languages. This last point provides the springboard for the next section, which
will discuss possible future areas of focus, and, in particular, the need for more
research into the affective dimension of FLP research.
Areas of Focus
As King and Fogle (2013, p. 172) note in their review of the field to date, one
of the recent shifts in focus has been highlighting children’s agency and their role
in shaping the FLP, as exemplified in the work of Kulick (1992), Lanza (1997),
Okita (2001), Cruz-Ferreira (2006), Gafaranga (2010, 2011), and Fogle (2012), for
instance. This work has been formative in demonstrating how FLP is not simply
a top-down process (in other words, caregiver to child) but instead a dialogic and
ever-evolving co-construction, which is in turn shaped by the dynamic relation-
ship of the family to the wider community. Research in this vein has been fun-
damental to elucidating how language shift can take place at the micro-level (for
example, Kulick, 1992; Gafaranga, 2010, 2011) and how this in turn plays a role in
language shift at the community level. It has also provided insight into how lin-
guistic competence can shape family roles and relationships; for example, recent
work by He (2016) demonstrates how the child of first-generation Chinese immi-
grants in the United States can act as a linguistic and cultural broker for his par-
ents and how, in turn, the parents act as cultural brokers in terms of his heritage
language. This dynamic in turn is formative in shaping both the evolving nature
of this family’s FLP and their roles vis-à-vis each other (see also Williams, 2005).
Continuing this new direction for the field would be fruitful in expanding
the viewpoint of FLP, as would be examining the relationship between agency
and the affective dimension of FLP. Pavlenko’s (2004, 2006) well-known work
on language and emotions demonstrates the role that emotions can play in care-
givers’ language choices with their children, and a further direction for the field
would be to examine this dimension in greater detail, and especially to examine
the role that caregivers’ use of a particular language in conjunction with acts of
affect—such as, for example, disciplining the children in the minority language
(cf. Kulick, 1992; Zentella, 1997; Luykx, 2003)—have on the children’s own
language use. My work on FLP and Scottish Gaelic (2014, 2016), for example,
concludes that one of the reasons for the children’s low use of their minority lan-
guage is that their father primarily restricts his use of Gaelic to disciplining them,
and this, coupled with other realities in the family and wider community, forms
an association between the language and authority, thereby resulting in the chil-
dren’s negative emotional valence towards the language. Similarly, Meek’s (2007)
analysis of language use in the Liard River First Nation community in Canada
demonstrates how the children use their minority language Kaska in taking up
stances of authority vis-à-vis each other due to Kaska’s association with author-
ity figures, as the ongoing language shift means that the people who use the
language most frequently are also the people who are in the highest positions of
authority (in other words, the elders). However, this association of the minority
language with older speakers can have the opposite effect; Melo-Pfeifer’s (2015)
study shows for example how associations of the minority language Portuguese
with extended family members such as grandparents leads to positive affective
associations with the language. As well, in her comparative study of two children
growing up with Swiss German, French, and English, Chevalier (2012) shows
how the interactive style of particular caregivers (in this case, one of the child’s
aunts) can lead to a positive affective resonance with the language and thereby to
increased use of the language. Examining the different affective dimensions of
multilingual families and how this shapes the child’s language use and, in turn,
how this further impacts the FLP is an important further direction for the field
to take.
Related to this, in her keynote address at the Berlin conference, Lanza (2016)
discussed the importance of bridging the gap between FLP research and psy-
cholinguistic approaches to child multilingualism. This includes both the more
affective dimensions of language and psychology and the multilingual acqui-
sition research that is more psycholinguistically-oriented. A similar sentiment
is strongly re-iterated in Tannenbaum’s (2012) article, which introduces the
re-conceptualisation of FLP within the psychological paradigm of defense and
coping mechanisms and further concludes that this re-conceptualisation may
be useful not only in looking at language use at the micro-level of the family
but also in examining the trajectory of language policy-making processes at the
macro-level, as many of these processes are embedded in emotionally charged
discourses. Tannenbaum (p. 64) further argues that given the centrality of emo-
tions in family life, future FLP research should join together ‘psychological, psy-
choanalytical, and other psychodynamic approaches’ instead of ‘viewing them as
a by-product of such deep, multi-layered processes’ as family multilingualism.
Thus, a shift towards more psychologically-oriented approaches to FLP may be
integral to further advancing the field.
Finally, a greater understanding of the nexus between the wider community

and language use in the family would be another step in advancing the field.
One key way to do this is to look at the interaction between the family and the
children’s other main socialising agent: the school. In 2014, a workshop titled
‘Language Policy in the Family, the Preschool and the School: Theoretical and
Methodological Directions’ was held prior to the Sociolinguistics Symposium
20 in Jyväskylä, Finland, during which FLP researchers explored the connec-
tions between state language policy, the school, and language use in the family.
Additionally, the importance of broadening the contextual scope beyond the
realm of the family is also apparent in Schwartz and Verschik’s recent (2013)
volume titled Successful Family Language Policy: Parents, Children, and Educators in
Interaction in which a number of chapters (Schwartz, Moin, and Klayle; Moin,
Protassova, Lukkari, and Schwartz; Conteh, Riasat, and Begum) specifically look
at the intersection of language use in the school and in the home. Further, several
articles in the 2012 special issue of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Develop-
ment on FLP (Conteh; Lytra; Schwartz and Moin) also contribute to this new area
of focus. Further broadening an understanding of the family-community nexus
to looking specifically at the affective dimensions of this interrelationship would
similarly broaden FLP horizons. My own study, for example, showed how the
child’s association of the minority language with the school also contributed to
the negative emotional valencing of the minority language and, consequently, to
its low use in the home.
In summary, shifting our attention to new directions of focus, which lie pri-
marily in the psychological/affective realm, would be a yet another step further
for the field. The section prior to this (‘Methodological Innovations’) gave some
suggestions about how to go about this particular step, and, as the dialogue con-
tinues and the outlook of FLP expands, we may be able to move in these new
directions to uncover deeper layers of multilingualism in the family.
Conclusion
It is clear to see that in the years of its existence, FLP research has accomplished
much already and is currently expanding to encompass new modes of innovation
in understanding multilingualism in the family. Still, there is much we can still
do, and the aim of this chapter has been to give ideas for these further expan-
sions and to provide an overview of the studies which are currently leading the
way in these new directions. The chapter began by discussing how widening
the contextual viewpoint is key to furthering the field and highlighted the
main ways that this could be accomplished: by more research on autochthonous
minority communities and especially on communities outside the bounds of
Western, industrialised nations; by looking at a broader range of family types,
including more in-depth research on the impact of extended family members
and situations where parents are not using their native languages / the language(s)
of the community; and, finally, by comparing and contrasting FLPs in differ-

ent contexts. The chapter went on to discuss how, in terms of methodological
approaches, more long-term longitudinal research and research that is designed
explicitly to elicit the child’s views of the language would be particularly fruitful
in expanding the field. The final section drew on this latter point in discuss-
ing the need for more research oriented towards the affective dimensions of
language use, as well as research designed to investigate the family-community
nexus more thoroughly. As emphasised in the introduction, there is much at
stake in FLP research, and it is our job as researchers to see that we move the
field forward.
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3
FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICY FOR
DEAF CHILDREN AND THE VITALITY
OF NEW ZEALAND SIGN LANGUAGE

Rachel McKee & Kirsten Smiler
Introduction
The situation of a family with a deaf 1 child differs from other FLP contexts
in several ways: language considerations are usually imposed unexpectedly, the
main priority is ensuring development of a language, and institutional interven-
tions feature heavily in decision making. But there are also parallels: except for
the small proportion of families in which deafness and signed language (SL) are
part of family heritage, parents of a deaf baby face disruption to transmission of
language and identity. The realisation that a deaf baby will not automatically
acquire the spoken language of their home and community pushes parents into
time-critical decisions about how to facilitate perceptual access to first-language
acquisition: through eyes, ears, or both? As in other FLP situations, family values
about desirable language identities must be explicitly contemplated in socialising
a deaf child; first-language choice is intertwined with decisions about school-
ing and peer group, and communication practices within the family must be
deliberately modified and managed.
In a FLP framework, decisions and practices around child language develop-
ment are seen in interaction with macro- and meso-level influences, including
institutional policy and practice, social conditions, and societal ideologies medi-
ated through the attitudes and everyday practices of families and their commu-
nities (King, Fogle & Logan-Terry, 2008; Caldas, 2012). Issues in deaf children’s
language are extensively studied in disciplines allied with special education,
because language acquisition is the most powerful predictor of a deaf child’s
developmental and educational outcomes (Lederberg, Schick & Spencer, 2013;
Marschark, Machmer & Convertino, 2016). However, from a sociolinguistic
perspective, FLP for deaf children offers an important window on the effects
of macro-level planning for a signed language community. The centrality of
Family Language Policy for Deaf Children 31
FLP to reversing language shift and loss in minority language communities was
identified early by Fishman (1991), and in this chapter we consider whether
micro-level FLP for deaf children reflects status planning intentions for New
Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and consider the implications for ethnolinguistic
vitality of that community. We also specifically consider how the sociolinguistic
context of Māori whānau (extended family) affects FLP for a deaf child, since a
high proportion of deaf children are Māori (Digby, Purdy & Kelly, 2012), and
FLP outcomes are shaped by particular language ideologies and child-rearing
goals, as well as supports and constraints of the wider family and community
(King et al., 2008).
The chapter draws on evidence from two data sets: (i) interviews and sur-
veys with hearing and deaf parents of deaf children collected in a study of the
vitality of NZSL, led by author McKee (McKee & Vale, 2014a, 2014b), and
(ii) interview and observation data from case studies undertaken as doctoral
research investigating Māori experiences of deaf early intervention by author
Smiler (Smiler, 2014).
The first part of the chapter reviews common elements in FLP with deaf chil-
dren and then describes macro- and meso-level factors in New Zealand, includ-
ing policy and institutional interventions for deaf children. In the second part of
the chapter, we analyse micro-evidence from families and whānau to identify
motives, influences, and practices in FLP in hearing-parented and deaf-parented
families.
Family Contexts for Deaf Children
Deaf of Deaf Parents

Approximately 5% of deaf children are born to deaf parents or multigenera-
tional deaf families (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). In this family configuration
(abbreviated as deaf of deaf: DoD), parents and their social networks are usually
SL users, and native socialisation in a visual language proceeds automatically for
deaf children. However FLP in a DoD family is affected by contextual resources
available, including technology, critical language awareness, and social and edu-
cational options. DoD children are expected to become bilingual, in written
if not spoken form of the language of society and school. Contemporary DoD
children have the option of sophisticated technology to support acquisition of
spoken language, in addition to native SL, to a greater extent than was possible
for their deaf parents. As in other minority-language FLP situations, deaf parents
usually hope for better outcomes for their children than their own experience
(Mitchiner & Sass-Lehrer, 2011; Caldas, 2012). At the macro-level, attitudes,
practices, and opportunities for SL users in society have changed through time,
altering language beliefs and practices between generations of one DoD family.
Thus, even across DoD families, a variety of FLP outcomes may transpire.
32 Rachel McKee & Kirsten Smiler
Deaf of Hearing Parents

Ninety-five percent of deaf children have parents who are not deaf and have
no experience of childhood deafness (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). These ‘deaf
of hearing’ (DoH) families’ first need is for information about the effects of
deafness, and about ways to help a child with impaired hearing to develop lan-
guage and contingent cognitive and social skills. Information comes mainly via
interventions that present an array of communication approaches with differ-
ing consequences for the child and the family system (Knoors, 2016). Families
must decide about the desirability and practicality of developing the child’s first
language in one of three main ways: using a natural SL of the deaf community
which differs in modality and structure from spoken language, using an exclu-
sively aural/spoken mode (with assistive listening technology), or adopting a
bimodal approach in which speaking is accompanied by signs to a greater or
lesser extent (Lederberg et al., 2013). Any of these choices require parents to
learn new skills and adapt family communication practices to make interaction
comprehensible to a deaf child.
Māori Whānau
In New Zealand, the familial unit in which Māori deaf children may be socialised
is whānau. Whānau is not conceptually equivalent with family, since whānau
situate themselves within larger hapū (sub-tribe) and iwi (tribal) groupings, and
a traditional Māori worldview situates these within iwi rohe (tribal lands). These
inter-generational kinship groupings maintain norms that cement familial relat-
edness and connectedness, and members are considered interdependent with one
another and the environment. The contemporary manifestation of whānau has
been altered by the effects of colonisation and urbanisation which disrupted how
whānau traditionally associated themselves with hapū and iwi identities, lan-
guages, traditional lands, and economies (Walker, 2013). A consideration for FLP
with deaf children is that Māori still consider that the best outcomes for children
occur when they are raised in intergenerational contexts in which members are
interdependent and supportive of one another (Te Whaiti, McCarthy & Durie,
1997). Ideally that should be achieved within kin groupings, but where whānau
are unable to gain that type of support from related individuals, whānau may
include unrelated individuals who fill critical roles that maintain the wellbeing
of the group (Metge, 1995). Māori experiences of language loss and revitalisa-
tion mean that many whānau are familiar with sharing responsibility for lan-
guage socialisation of a child beyond the home (for example, through Māori
immersion education) and that they accept that whānau members may be unable
to fulfil the role of language model if they are learners (of Māori) themselves
(Tawhiwhirangi, 2014).
Common Factors in FLP for Deaf Children

Families with a deaf child encounter multiple sources of information about
options, which at times conflict: from research, media, expert advice, and the
experience of other parents and deaf people. Outcomes for deaf children and fami-
lies are so diverse and multifaceted that the relative efficacy of different language
approaches remains ambiguous (Martin, Rodda & Martin, 2001; Meadow-

Orlans, Mertens & Sass-Lehrer, 2003; Thoutenhoofd et al., 2005; Kermit, 2010;
Knoors, 2016), and parental choices are ultimately often more subjective and
practical than evidence-based (Christiansen & Leigh, 2002; Niparko, 2009).
However, persistent under-achievement for deaf learners cuts across communica-
tion modes, school settings, age groups, family backgrounds, and use of assistive
technologies, including CI (cochlear implant) (Marschark et al., 2016). A recent
meta-review of research on outcomes of language mode concludes: “While the
introduction of sign language as a language of instruction, and CIs in support of
hearing and speech have both offered more deaf children greater opportunities
for success than ever before, neither has proven sufficiently powerful as to deny
the importance of the other” (Marschark, et al., 2016: p. 447).
Language use by deaf individuals typically changes through the course of
childhood and young adulthood, causing FLP to evolve (Wheeler et al., 2009;
Lederberg et al., 2013; Knoors, 2016). Parental first-language choices may be
rejected and/or modified in response to a child’s new friendships, ease of com-
munication, perceived failure, changing educational environments, and employ-
ment opportunities (Beattie, 2001: p. 195). Given the complex nature of deaf
people’s language and identity trajectories, it is argued that FLP decisions should
be informed by first-hand and life-span perspective on outcomes for previous
generations, which tends to be lacking in clinical information offered to parents
(Beattie, 2001; Meadow-Orlans et al., 2003; McKee, 2006).
A family-centred approach to FLP in early intervention (EI) recognises that
communication practices develop in light of the “assets that the child, family and
the wider environment bring to the task of (among others) language develop-
ment” (Knoors, 2016: p. 20). In this process, parents engage with influential,
normative discourses about deafness and language to which they may align or
resist (Beazley & Moore, 1996; Bruin & Nevøy, 2014). The deaf FLP terrain is
ideologically fraught regarding the most natural and advantageous first language
for deaf children, including power struggles over which stakeholders (parents?
deaf community? professionals?) are culturally entitled to adjudge this (Niparko,
2009). Polemic between proponents of aural (speech) and visual (signing)
approaches at times resembles ‘tribal conflict’ which creates stress for families
and may hinder ethically informed decision-making (Beattie, 2001; Christian-
sen & Leigh, 2002; Bruin & Nevøy, 2014). From diagnosis onwards, institutional
interventions that families interact with are situated, either transparently or
implicitly, somewhere on an ideological spectrum about the relative value and

acceptability of signed and spoken language (Beazley & Moore, 1996; Beattie,
2001; Humphries et al., 2012). Lederberg et al. (2013: p. 14) note that while fam-
ily factors should be and often are considered, “for many professionals, parents,
and DHH (deaf/hard of hearing) adults, their philosophical stance rather than
characteristics of an individual child drives decisions.”
Technology as a Factor in FLP

Two important technological developments post-1990s have altered the context
for FLP for deaf children. Universal newborn hearing screening allows for early
diagnosis and transition to early intervention services which promote language
development within the first critical years. Paediatric CI surgery and digital hear-
ing aids have improved the quality of audition and increased capacity for acquisi-
tion of spoken language, as infant implantation enables stimulation of the auditory
cortex during the critical period of neural plasticity in which language processing
pathways are developing (Dillehay, 2011; Knoors, 2016). Implants are not, how-
ever, equally effective for all children for all purposes, for a variety of physiological
and other reasons (Thoutenhoofd et al., 2005; Lederberg et al., 2013).
The combination of early diagnosis and the clinical imperative for CI sur-
gery within the first year has compressed the timeframe in which families must
process information and decide on language goals. The availability of CI as an
early intervention reinforces spoken language as the primary, or only, language
goal for many families. Recent research with families in New Zealand shows a
pattern of professional advice against the use of SL following CI surgery, includ-
ing for children who used SL pre-implantation (McKee & Vale, 2014a; Smiler,
2014). International evidence also suggests that even where a bilingual option
(acquisition of a natural SL and a spoken/written language) is supported in policy
and provision, parents find that the dominant ideology around CI habilitation
weakens practical support for this choice and tends to position SL as a fallback or
supplementary mode if an oral approach falters (e.g., in Norway: Kermit, 2010;
Bruin & Nevøy, 2014).
Deaf communities have raised ethical concerns about physical and psychoso-
cial risks of CI surgery and use for young children, and about wider threats to
the maintenance of identity and language of deaf communities (Humphries &
Humphries, 2011; Paludneviciene & Leigh, 2011). Early criticisms character-
ised the promotion of CI surgery as tantamount to cultural genocide (Lane &
Bahan, 1998). Deaf advocates now increasingly accept that CI is a ubiquitous
technology for deaf children, and debate has shifted from the ethics of prosthetic
surgery to focus on associated language policy/practices that exclude signed lan-
guage (Padden & Humphries, 2006; Niparko, 2009; Gale, 2011; Humphries &
Humphries, 2011). Given that outcomes from an aural-oral approach are known
to be unpredictable across diverse children and conditions, it is argued that the
ethical principle of precaution dictates affording all deaf children both visual
and spoken language modes to minimise risk of language delay or deprivation
(Kermit 2010; Humphries et al., 2012).
A recent survey of the New Zealand deaf community asked their opinion
whether children with a CI should learn NZSL in addition to speech. Of 243
responses, 77% agreed, 14% were undecided, and 9% disagreed (McKee & Vale,
2014b). Responses to an open-ended question about issues facing the NZSL com-
munity in future identified CI as a threat in several ways: (i) CI interventions
exclude the perspective of deaf NZSL-users from advice to parents; (ii) CI inter-
ventions revive a deficit ideology (focused on restoration of hearing and speech)
which historically disempowered deaf people; and (iii) young, mainstreamed CI
users have limited social connection with each other and with a deaf community
(McKee & Vale, 2014b). However, research on identity in young adult CI users
suggests that not all these fears have transpired: an ‘either/or’ paradigm of deaf-
signing vs. hearing-speaking identity does not capture the range of identities and
language repertoires of this population, many of whom claim hybrid, bicultural,
and contextually fluid social and linguistic identities (Leigh & Maxwell-McCaw,
2011; Bathard, 2014).
Deaf-world concerns about language shift associated with CI have turned to
the prospect of the endangerment of signed languages, felt most acutely in smaller
countries with universal newborn hearing screening and state funded CI, such as
New Zealand, Sweden (Strömgren, 2011), and the Netherlands (Tijsseling, 2011).
The discourse of SL endangerment links medical interventions to educational
and family policies that weaken conditions for intergenerational transmission
of SL (significantly, loss of critical mass in deaf schools), and thus threaten the
sustainability of SL communities (Johnston, 2004; Bickford, Lewis & Simons,
2015). The advocacy of deaf communities in response to the globalisation of CI
focuses on the ongoing need for SL based education and respect for collective
cultural identity, in parallel to the claims of indigenous movements for heritage
language maintenance (Blume, 2011).
Local Context for FLP vis-à-vis NZSL
Macro-Level: Status Planning and Policy for NZSL

The articulation of language rights for deaf individuals at international and
national levels colours societal attitudes to the sociolinguistic identity(s) of deaf
people. Policy measures tend to address the status of SLs on the basis of (i) SLs
being historically stigmatised in education which engendered social inequity and
(ii) SL being a means of access to participation in civil society. In international law,
the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (United Nations,
2007) affirms SLs as natural languages and protects the right of deaf people to
participate in civil society via SL and of deaf children to receive education via
SL. These measures in the UNCRPD were advocated by the World Federation
of the Deaf, which maintains a position that SL is central to the human rights of
deaf people; their education policy, for example, states: “Deaf students learn best
through visual modalities and depend on sign language.”2
The New Zealand government ratified the UNCRPD in 2008, after it had
already passed the NZSL Act in 2006; the act grants official language status to
NZSL but does not confer rights, obligations, or resources in any domain, except
for the right to interpreters in courts (McKee, 2011). A policy statement on
deaf education adopted by the Ministry of Education affirms the value of NZSL
and deaf role models for deaf students (DEANZ, 2005). NZSL was made an
additional language subject in the national primary school curriculum in 2006
(Ministry of Education, 2006), and current work is extending this to second-
ary schools. These state-level language planning and policy (LPP) efforts aim
to redress inequities that deaf people have experienced due to a marginalised
language status.
National organisations of/for deaf people, and of parents, also articulate
positions on language that form part of the FLP macro context. The parents’
organisation NZ Federation for Deaf Children provides information on all
communication options, encourages parents to understand and consider them
all, and advises maintaining a f lexible response to the changing communica-
tion needs of child and family.3 The deaf adult consumer organisation Deaf
Aotearoa NZ expresses no formal position on language for deaf children but
promotes an NZSL cultural identity through its images, resources, activities,
and advocacy to policymakers on behalf of the deaf community. The National
Foundation for the Deaf (an umbrella group for nine mainly professional organ-
isations concerned with deafness) offers information for parents of deaf children
about diagnosis, technical support, and speech development but does not men-
tion sign language as a resource (although their website refers to upholding the
UNCRPD).4
Also relevant to the macro-context for FLP is the status of Te Reo Māori
(TRM), the indigenous language of New Zealand. From the 1970s, awareness
of imminent endangerment as a result of language shift following colonisation
led to legal measures to promote and maintain the language. Official language
status was granted in the 1987 Māori Language Act. Initial revitalisation efforts
addressed intergenerational transmission by the establishment of TRM immer-
sion pre-schools (Te Kōhanga Reo / language nest), where native speakers edu-
cated the children. This movement emphasises whānau commitment to learning
and using TRM in home and community around each child. State-funded TRM
medium schools (primary and secondary), bilingual and immersion units in
mainstream schools, and Whare Wānanga (tertiary education institutions) soon
followed. These initiatives have increased the number of speakers (albeit to vary-
ing abilities) in younger generations. Since the range of domains where TRM
can be used beyond these institutions is narrow, there are challenges to widening
its use (Higgins & Rewi, 2014). After three decades of concentrated LPP effort,
“[t]he verdict is still out as to whether revitalisation efforts will influence FLP
enough to ensure intergenerational transmission” (Caldas, 2012: p. 326). Never-
theless, Māori whānau aspire for their children to acquire TRM as an important
element of socialisation into a Māori identity, even if everyday use of the lan-
guage is not achieved (Ruckstuhl, 2014).
Meso-Level: Early Intervention and Schooling

Meso-level LPP for SLs is mediated through medical and educational early inter-
vention and school systems, which powerfully affect the vitality of SLs (Bickford,
Lewis & Simons, 2015). New Zealand has a programme of universal newborn
hearing screening and early intervention that aims to minimise language and
developmental delay by starting interventions by the age of six months (National
Foundation for the Deaf, 2016). Initial interventions including diagnosis, CI,5
and hearing aid services are delivered within the public health sector. Interven-
tions delivered in the education sector include home and pre-school support for
language development, and specialist teaching support for deaf children in pri-
mary and secondary school education. EI and education services for each child
are coordinated by an advisor on deaf children (AODC), assigned to the family
after diagnosis. AODCs have expertise in deaf education and audiological habili-
tation, and they play a key role in mediating information and supporting family
decision-making.
A northern and a southern Deaf Education Centre (DEC) each provide spe-
cialist support across their region and a local pre-school programme where deaf
children are supported in accordance with the language goals of the family and
the child’s strengths; this includes the presence of bilingual deaf adult models.
Prior to the 1980s, the DECs were mainly residential schools with a critical mass
of deaf students, and, although NZSL had no role in pedagogy, it flourished
informally between children. Currently, over 90% of deaf children attend main-
stream schools, some with ancillary support coordinated by the DECs, which
function mainly as resource centres and host a small number of residential stu-
dents of high-school age and manage satellite classes in mainstream primary and
secondary schools.
NZSL was acknowledged in deaf education policy in the mid-1990s. The cur-
rent vision statement of one DEC expects “staff to be able to use both English
and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) for communication and instruction
in order for students to achieve their maximum potential.”6 The Charter of the
other DEC refers more ambiguously to “developing communication skills and
language”. In practice, children attending a DEC provision are more likely to
use NZSL than those in local schools, most of which rely on aural-oral com-
munication with amplification (Powell & Hyde, 2013).7 Ministry of Education
data in 2008 indicated that 202 children use some form of signing, of whom
approximately half use NZSL, and 32% of all signing children have additional
disabilities (Fitzgerald, 2010: p. 18). A scoping report on provision for NZSL
users in the school system noted that family and deaf community stakeholders
expressed “some cynicism that Special Education can operate a dual paradigm of
disability and culture . . . but it is hoped that MOE’s experience with Māori may
allow a wider cultural and linguistic view to be taken” (Fitzgerald, 2010: p. 27).
In 2012, the NZ Human Rights Commission undertook an enquiry into bar-

riers for NZSL users in public institutions, and the resulting report highlighted
inadequate support in the education system for early acquisition of NZSL and
access to school in the medium of NZSL (Human Rights Commission, 2013).
In response, the Ministry of Education embarked on policy work from 2014 to
strengthen NZSL provision, including the establishment of ‘First Signs’, a ser-
vice managed by the national deaf association that provides in-home support
for family acquisition of NZSL. The government has also increased resourcing
for a small, targeted number of children in local schools who are identified as
‘dominant’ NZSL users.8
Survey Findings on Deaf FLP

A brief summary of findings from a survey of 112 New Zealand parents of deaf
children sets the scene for qualitative data reported next in this chapter. Key
results are as follows (see McKee & Vale, 2014a, for more detail): 65% of the
children in the sample have CIs (although the figure for current pre-schoolers is
much higher due to recently increased resourcing for early CI). Approximately a
quarter of responding parents use signed communication with their child (19%
said NZSL; others, in a combined mode). About 44% of parents reported receiv-
ing professional advice that supported the use of signing in some form, while
35% reported advice against signing (more often from medical than educational
professionals). Parents who chose to use NZSL reported a lack of practical sup-
port for family learning and limited opportunity for contact with other child or
adult signers. Parents who predominantly use speech with their child were more
likely to be satisfied with the advice they received. More children communicate
in SL at home than at school. Almost half the parents have concerns about their
child’s communication at school, and 10% have serious concerns, mainly those
whose children use NZSL at school. A minority of parents regard English/NZSL
bilingualism as a future language profile for their child, but most expect that
NZSL might be used by their child at some point, even if not currently. Some
parents with older children expressed regret at not being encouraged to use SL
initially. Strong support was expressed for NZSL as a subject in the general school
curriculum. Overall, these findings suggest weak institutional support for trans-
mission and maintenance of NZSL in family and school domains (McKee &
Vale, 2014a: p. 1).
Findings From Case Studies

The next section presents key themes emerging from two sets of qualitative data:
interviews with five families of deaf children and five case studies with Māori
whānau, comprising conversations with whānau members and professionals who
support them and observations of interactions in the home, undertaken for a
doctoral thesis (Smiler, 2014). In eight cases, two or more significant family
members contributed to the data, and, in two cases, only the mother was inter-
viewed. Due to space constraints, narrative details of each case are not presented,
and their key characteristics are represented in Table 3.1. Other details are added
as relevant to contextualise discussion of the data.
Motivations for First Language Choice
Shared Identity and Connection With Family

A desire for the child to share the social and language identity of the family and
community is a key motive for parents’ choice of first language. For most DoH
parents the default immediate and/or long-term goal is therefore the spoken
language(s) of the home, as this mother explains: “Because the whole family’s
hearing, we felt that sign language wasn’t going to be an option for our family
to be able to communicate with her.” On the other hand, some families also see
SL as enabling easier communication with a deaf child which fosters belonging
in the family.
For DoD families, NZSL is automatically the shared family language. In addi-
tion to it being a natural medium for a child’s development, socialization in
a signing community is regarded by DoD parents as the basis of identity and
belonging: “We have a lot of deaf friends. I think it’s [NZSL] important for iden-
tity, fitting in, knowing you’re in a community, that’s good to know.”
In Māori whānau, identity considerations motivate hopes for a deaf child to
learn spoken language, including TRM if possible, to support the child’s heritage
identity and participation in Māori social domains and in some instances Māori
medium education. (See further discussion in the section below titled ‘Intersec-
tion of NZSL and Māori Agendas.’)
Aspirations Associated With English/Spoken Language

The main aspiration associated with spoken language for hearing parents is
access to the social life of home and school and, ultimately, to acquire a socially
endorsed identity. In DoD families, written and/or spoken English is valued as a
means of access to education, employment, and information.
Parents expect that use of CI and speech will increase independence, choices,
and economic opportunities: “It’s going to open more doors for her if she’s got
TABLE 3.1 Summary of Cases
Child Hearing status of parents/family Years of age First language CI Ethnicity Location
1 CODA mother, deaf father (1st generation), 3 NZSL & English Yes Pākehā Urban
deaf grandparents (bimodal) (European)
2 Deaf mother (4th generation), CODA father, 3 NZSL No Pākehā Urban
many deaf close relatives
3 Hearing mother (NZSL fluent), deaf father 12 NZSL No Pākehā Urban
(2nd generation), many deaf close relatives
4 Hearing mother and father 7 English Yes Pākehā Urban
5 Hearing mother and father 2 NZSL & English Yes Pākehā Small town
(bimodal)
6 Hearing mother and father 4 Uncertain: basic Yes Māori Rural town
One deaf relative NZSL, emerging
English
7 Raised by hearing maternal grandparents; 4 Emerging English & No Māori Small town
hearing impaired mother, siblings, and relatives Māori
8 Hearing birth mother; raised by hearing 2 Emerging NZSL, No Māori Rural
relatives; several deaf relatives English & Māori
9 Hearing sole mother 4 English, with basic Yes Māori/Pākehā Minor city
signs
10 Hearing mother and father parents; two deaf 3 Uncertain: (additional Yes Māori/Samoan/ Urban
relatives disability) Pākehā
CODA stands for child of deaf adults, signifying the identity of children (usually hearing) raised by deaf parents. CODAs’ use of SL, and other visual communication
strategies, vary according to family context (see Pizer, 2013, regarding FLP in relation to CODAs).
oral communication. We just felt if it was a total sign language we just thought
there’s limitations in jobs later on for her. We just wanted to open up as many
doors as we can for her. For future education as well, future jobs.” Hearing fami-
lies generally associate speech skills with employment and social competence in
“the real world”, as some put it.
Aspirations Associated With NZSL

In DoD families, NZSL means natural, unimpeded native language develop-
ment for a deaf child without the need for interventions: “A hearing child learns
through spoken language whereas a deaf child picks things up more easily
through sign language because it’s visual.” Multi-generational deaf families also
express that the heritage language of their community has intrinsic value as cul-
tural capital; one family described its transmission as endorsing status (‘mana’) of
the family’s identity: “NZSL is ‘mana’ for us. So using NZSL is about passing on
the mana and the heritage of [our] deaf family.”
Some DoH parents see NZSL and the deaf community as relevant to the
future of their child, but rarely with the primary enculturation role that DoD
families ascribe to it. NZSL is more likely to be instrumentally valued as a tool
for establishing early communication and as an insurance option if speech devel-
opment is delayed or inaccessible.
Some hearing parents choose a bilingual, bimodal approach. One such family
identified three reasons for using NZSL: to ensure communication in case the
CI does not give access to speech, psychosocial benefits from identity with other
deaf people, and cognitive advantages of bilingualism. These parents express
values and home practices that support NZSL bilingualism for their pre-school
child, yet their plan for the child to attend a local school and to participate solely
through spoken language (they hoped without any form of communication sup-
port) reflects a lack of understanding about the necessity of regular interaction
with NZSL peers to motivate and develop bilingualism. As Caldas (2012: p. 356)
comments, “the most poisonous external environment to a bilingual family lan-
guage policy is that of a child’s peer group.” This family regarded their child’s
adult language identity as a personal ‘choice’ rather than as an outcome of ongo-
ing socialisation experiences, and as choosing ‘one or the other’, whereas an
interplay of two languages is more typical of bilingual deaf adults.
Disincentive to Use NZSL

Weak institutional support to learn NZSL (particularly outside two main cit-
ies) is a disincentive. Families choosing NZSL as a first or additional language
mode found that a high degree of autonomous learning was necessary, and some
found that professionals they expected support from were unable or unwilling
to model bilingual skills. One family described proficient use of NZSL by the
first advisor working with their child, which instilled confidence in this as a
first language choice, followed by limited or non-use of NZSL by subsequent
professionals in this role. This mother said, “It’s almost like the advisors are not
really advised to treat them like they are deaf. I think there’s that perception out
there that cochlear implants are a cure for deafness. . . . I don’t think there’s any
support for her to develop sign language.” She describes their own attempt to
learn NZSL as a ‘battle’ and expresses frustration that the official status of NZSL
does not translate into robust support for NZSL acquisition in the early interven-
tion system. The mother of an adolescent CI user commented on the need for
acquisition planning tailored to the realities of family life, saying: “I regret the
lack of well-resourced NZSL learning opportunities. To choose an evening class
or an academic course to embrace NZSL is quite a different matter than having
to squeeze it into a life when you are already under duress with the needs of a
deaf child.”
A further practical and social disincentive for hearing families to choose
NZSL is a perceived (and actual) lack of contexts in which NZSL is used by local
children and/or adults: “Most of the families that we’ve met through [child]
being deaf, all the parents are hearing. The ones that have cochlear implants,
they seem to be all verbal approach as well.” Another parent said: “Because
there’s no hearing loss or anything like that in our family . . . and because we live
in such a small rural community, we don’t really have access to other people who
sign.” Education is one of the contexts in which NZSL is not seen to be viable:
“Because the school is a hearing school, she has to learn through listening.”
Conflicting Advice
Some families reported that conflicting advice about best language practices
caused tension as family members aligned differently with the options, as this
mother recounts:
When she got the cochlear implant, the first one, [the implant programme]
didn’t discourage us to use sign, but they’re not advocates for it. And so my
husband and I battled and battled over it, because I was very much, “We
have to keep signing with her.” And because of the advice we were given
from the implant programme, you know, AVT and stuff, he was like, “No,
we need to teach her to talk.” We had major, major arguments over it. But
months down the track, he now tells all his friends, “You should teach your
baby to sign,” because we can see the benefits of it. So yeah, I guess there’s
mixed approaches to using sign. Particularly with the implant programme.
In this family, the child’s rapid progress with signing reinforced the mother’s
preference, as did meeting deaf people who put NZSL into an adult social con-
text that seemed ordinary.
In some instances, families deferred decisions to professionals who would

‘know best’, and others reported that their decisions were stalled by confusion
over conflicting information. Survey respondents noted that bias in early advice
became more apparent to them only after some years of experience and exposure
to wider sources of knowledge in the deaf sector.
Choosing for and Against CI

In DoH families, a key motive for choosing CI is to achieve an accepted linguis-
tic identity, as one mother explained: “to be more like the (hearing) children that
she’ll go to school with”. A decision for CI is often made within months of diag-
nosis of deafness, before a hearing family has had meaningful engagement with
a range of perspectives on language pathways, outcomes, and deaf identities.
Parents understand that CI intervention inherently promotes aural-oral language
development, and for many this aligns with their native values and language prac-
tices, but they may not appreciate the range of identities and language profiles
associated with SL until later in the child’s life.
In the case of a multi-generational deaf family (deaf mother, CODA father),
a choice against CI for a profoundly deaf child was motivated by a desire to
maintain continuity of identity and language use with the wider family and
community: “We have lots of deaf people in our social environment, sign
language is right there, we have deaf culture. We felt it’s not like she would
be isolated.” This family felt that the known trajectory of a deaf NZSL user is
less risky than the uncertain status of a child with a CI in relation to the deaf
community.
This family’s choice against CI, and for NZSL as a primary language, was sup-
ported by their hope that recognition of NZSL (e.g., NZSL in the curriculum)
will reduce the institutional barriers to education and employment experienced
by previous generations of their family. However they were apprehensive about
whether this would actually be the case by the time their two-year-old child
enters school, and the father envisaged that much supplementary family input
would be required to ensure access to education.
DoD families choosing either for or against CI felt compelled to defend their
FLP to the deaf community who have a vested interest in the next generation,
and to non-deaf professionals who hold different values about language out-
comes. A parent in a deaf family (above) described family and community values
as a source of pressure in their decision:
Already in the back of our minds we were thinking probably not, say
80% sure we wouldn’t choose a CI, but we did want to look into it prop-
erly first. So we discussed it, and thought about our families, our home
environment. . . . We both have deaf family—our parents, uncles, aunts,
maybe cousins in the future. . . . There was pressure from her family,
because [they] have a pretty strong point of view. So yeah, it was a bit dif-
ficult making the decision in the community.
Their decision was criticised by some members of the deaf community, and they
were concerned that their child might be scrutinised as a ‘control group’ for
children whose parents had opted for CI:
There’s another family here, also part of the deaf community, and they
have deaf children and they did get CIs for their children. So some other
deaf people are saying, “Oh it will be really interesting to compare the
children and see what happens, with and without a CI.” But we feel like,
“You don’t compare your children with other children. Why should we?
We’re no different. We don’t want to be comparing her, we just see her as
a normal child.” But there’s this strong interest from people to compare
them, and see if they are developing at the same level, like it’s some kind
of competition over who can sign earlier and when they speak, and on
and on.
That DoD families feel pressure to defend their decision, not only to hearing
professionals, but to members of their own community, signals diversity in
NZSL community attitudes to the implications of CI for children.
The contrasting family mentioned in the quote above was also interviewed
for this study. Deciding to have their first deaf child implanted was difficult
for them, given the parents’ own socialisation in the deaf community (deaf
father, CODA mother) and their emotional resistance to surgical intervention
for a healthy child who shares biological identity with deaf family members.
Their decision was ultimately motivated by their belief that the social and edu-
cational context for deaf children has changed within one generation, including
a decrease in children using NZSL. Through contact with other families and
anecdotal knowledge, they observed that signing children without CIs appeared
rather stranded even among deaf peers.
In the old days, you know, we had 200 or 300 deaf students at [deaf school]
and we could communicate together. . . . For my daughter going to school,
there’s not that many deaf children any more. We were worried about her
future, making friends, and what kind of job she might have . . . we didn’t
really want to give her a cochlear implant but . . . we felt it was sort of the
only way.
This family’s decision to proceed with CI for two children was informed by
insider knowledge of the conditions necessary for a healthy deaf-NZSL identity,
and they concluded that while they could provide this in the home domain,
those conditions are not supported in school or society, saying:
We’ve got two options: we’ll go to somewhere like America where they
still have quite a strong deaf community using sign language, or, we give
our child a cochlear implant. Yeah, it was a huge sort of realisation for
us—what was her future going to look like?
They hoped for expanded opportunities through bimodal competence in NZSL

and English, and they recognised that technology affords different identity out-
comes for future generations:
In the end we realised that we were going to have to give her a cochlear
implant because it was the only way to give her access to both worlds and
actually be like the other deaf people that are going to be her community.
In this case, the family’s benchmark for equalising identity and opportunity is
not necessarily hearing peers (as typically expressed by hearing parents) but deaf
contemporaries.
The first child of this family (four years old) was well ahead of language
milestones in English and NZSL and able to codeswitch easily between them.
The parents felt strongly that her oral language progress rested on native access to
NZSL at home, and wished this to be acknowledged by the CI programme and
made known to other parents who lacked access to information illuminating the
benefits of a bimodal approach to language development.
Learning From Lived Experience

Professionally mediated information is prominent in the decision-making of
families of deaf children; however, learning from people with lived experience
of deafness also contributes to FLP. All except one of the Māori whānau had
an adult deaf relative in their whānau. Some observed their linguistic isolation
in the whānau context, and limited education and employment opportunities.
Being able to contextualise the life outcomes for these individuals in light of
a cultural, historical perspective on the NZSL community is important to the
way in which such observations contribute to decisions for a deaf child, but this
contextual insight could not always be gained directly from those deaf individu-
als. Perception of known deaf individuals as socially disadvantaged—or accom-
plished, in one case—prompted whānau to question historical educational policy
and practices that had contributed to this status, and to make decisions that they
hoped would lead to better outcomes. In some cases, whānau members also
re-framed their previous perception of a deaf relative in light of their growing
understanding of the impacts of childhood deafness, awareness of an NZSL com-
munity, and the nature of choices available to parents in past and current eras.
Some families met deaf adults by attending an event where deaf people
were present, such as a deaf children’s picnic or playgroup, or a weekend hui
(gathering) for Māori whānau that was convened as part of Smiler’s research.
Although it took courage to interact with unknown deaf individuals, parents
reported that such encounters reduced their fear of an unknown future for their
child and enabled them to imagine an alternate identity in the context of a sign-
ing community, as one mother recounted:
We were still quite apprehensive about the deaf community, and I guess . . .
not frightened, but just we didn’t have that awareness or exposure to it.
And so I went to a couple of playgroups, and just tried to expose ourselves
more to people who sign fluently. . . . We were scared about going, but we
could communicate with people who were profoundly deaf and who used
sign and we didn’t know a lot of sign language at that stage, but we could
quite easily have a conversation with someone. And we came home going,
“Do you know what? We’re okay. We’ll be okay, she’ll be okay, and there’s
this whole other world out there for her if the implants don’t work.” . . . [It
was] reassuring because I met [a deaf man], he’s married to a hearing per-
son and they’ve got beautiful children, and he’s been to university and so
all of a sudden we were like, “Oh, so they do lead normal lives.”
When a deaf interlocutor’s characteristics align with the family’s own identity
and aspirations in some respects—for example, in ethnicity, perceived compe-
tence (‘married, been to university’)—that deaf person may become a point of
reference for the family to appraise other information and to imagine possible
trajectories for their child.
Social encounters with deaf people also clarified the social context necessary
to learning NZSL and led some families and whānau towards opportunities to
connect with other deaf people and hearing NZSL users. The value of learn-
ing from others with lived experience of deafness was expressed particularly by
Māori whānau, reflecting the cultural expectation of peer and intergenerational
networks as a source of knowledge and support for raising children. Other fami-
lies’ experience can also be an important influence on FLP. A survey respondent
recalled, “Most of the helpful advice I got when both my children were diag-
nosed was from another parent of a deaf child.” In one case study, parents decided
to use NZSL after talking with the parents of an older child with the same eti-
ology of deafness, for whom a CI had not proven effective. Accordingly, they
decided to address that risk by adopting a bimodal-bilingual approach, counter
to the recommendation of some professionals.
Ad Hoc FLP—‘Learning as We Go’

Family language planning implies a level of decidedness about language pref-
erences and practices; however, in some families, distinct decisions and prac-
tices (e.g., ‘to sign or not to sign’) were not evident. Observation of day-to-day
interaction in some of the whānau case studies suggested that FLP developed ad
hoc in response to various sources of information, observation of the child, and
the capacity of whānau members to modify communication practices. At times
this amounted to an absence of FLP, in which family members made little accom-
modation to communicating with a deaf child—for example, speaking with a
raised voice, or leaving a young deaf child in the care of older children without
explaining the child’s communication difference and appropriate strategies. A

number of factors were seen to contribute to this ad hoc process, as outlined
below.
Family Capacity to Plan and Implement

Access to the determinants of health and wellbeing (the personal, social, eco-
nomic, and environmental factors that influence health status) affect the capacity
of families to reach informed decisions and to implement planned strategies in
raising a deaf child. Where families and whānau have marginalised access to the
determinants of health (often connected with intergenerational poverty), engag-
ing with health and educational interventions is more challenging. Constraints
on literacy and education, family size, location, sense of agency, and practical
resources (time, money, transport, and access to information) affect family and
whānau capacity to respond proactively to a child with different needs.
These factors contribute to higher incidence of deafness and late or inconclu-
sive diagnosis of deafness for Māori children (Digby et al., 2012). Some whānau
in this study experienced long periods of uncertainty about the child’s hearing
status and the progress of language acquisition (e.g., from age six months to
3.5 years in one case). In a period of uncertainty, whānau tended to draw on
knowledge of deaf relatives and adopt a child-led approach to communication,
such as use of gestures, actions, and adherence to routines that were predictable
for the child. Delayed diagnosis created anxiety about whether their efforts were
in the best interests of the child, to which some responded by pursuing diagnosis
while others retreated into a laissez-faire approach.
Following diagnosis, pressure to implement FLP intensifies; however, whānau
and professionals do not always share a view of effective action. For instance, one
Māori child received a CI at age four, and, from that point, intervention focused
intensively on building a spoken vocabulary of 50 English words in preparation
for school entry, a goal that her parents supported. However, they also felt it
was important to continue affirming all of the child’s communication attempts,
including in a visual-gestural mode, to maintain relationships and to scaffold
spoken language. The father explained their inclination to negotiate a commu-
nication mode with the child:
Instead of trying to discourage her [from using visual communication

strategies], better to get her to come off it and learn [speech], you know
meet her half-way. She’ll make her language [he indicates ‘signing’]. Then
we’ll have to learn that, and then we teach ours sort of thing. So I don’t
know, it’s still learning, trying to learn.
They were conscious that this flexible approach was at odds with professional
advice that the use of visual cues in communication would detract from effective
auditory-verbal training.
Interventionists often struggle to engage with the complex circumstances
of Māori whānau (Smiler, 2014). In practice, a family-centred model of EI is
often mediated through a primary caregiver who is available to interact with
professionals and becomes responsible to implement language development
plans across the wider family. In whānau (especially larger ones), children are
socialised as a cohort where collectivism is encouraged and a system of tuakana-
teina (older and younger child mentoring) delegates a level of (age appropriate)
responsibility to older children. In absence of adult management during play,
older children act as agents of socialisation through role modelling. This chal-
lenges the lead ‘planning’ individual to disseminate his or her understanding
of best practices for a deaf child both horizontally and vertically across genera-
tional groups and to ensure endorsement of the family plan. Where this does
not happen successfully, the lead person can be perceived by professionals as not
assuming responsibility for supporting the child’s development (Smiler, 2014).
Some whānau needed differently delivered support to understand the implica-
tions of a deaf child’s language development and to translate this knowledge
into everyday action across members of the whānau who played various roles in
socialising the child (Smiler, 2014).
Intersection of NZSL and Māori Agendas

FLP for a deaf child in a whānau context intersects with consciousness of his-
torical language loss and revitalization of TRM. However, few EI professionals
are Māori or deaf, and this constrains their ability to work within the relational
norms of whānau in the first place, or to contextualise information about deaf-
ness and language that takes into account language ideology and practices in
Māori communities (Smiler, 2014). Whānau and Māori education providers may
also share general societal misapprehensions about the effects of deafness, the
nature of SL, and how bilingualism in a signed and spoken language works. For
example, a commonly expressed misapprehension is that NZSL is ‘based on’ spo-
ken English and therefore would compete or conflict with socialisation of a deaf
child in a Māori language context. Without first-hand exposure to competent
Māori deaf adults, whānau lack a model of a deaf identity in which NZSL plays
a positive role. Cultural values also play a part in whānau language aspirations:
in an oral cultural tradition, spoken Māori is a medium for transmission of cul-
tural knowledge, is important to performing traditional roles, and demonstrates
alignment with ethnic identity. These factors all complicate FLP for Māori deaf
children at the levels of ideology and practice.
Of the five Māori whānau in this study, one spoke Te Reo Māori fluently
at home (the father was a TRM immersion school teacher); however, in that
case it was unclear what language pathway would be most feasible for the child
due to an additional impairment affecting communication. Three other whānau
spoke basic TRM along with English in the home, and two of these chose to
socialise a deaf child in kōhanga reo. This choice was framed more by social/
cultural considerations than explicit language goals. One custodial grandfather
explains: “We talked about kōhanga reo or kindergarten, I say why not put him
with all the rest of the Māori kids at kōhanga reo, they’ll all learn together. At
this kōhanga reo everyone is related—everybody, even the teachers were related,
or a friend.” For these grandparents it was important that the child be socialised
in a kinship network, according to Māori norms, and language was an implicit
part of that. Kōhanga Reo offered a domain for the use of TRM and was seen
as an intervention to support the youngest member of the whānau to reintro-
duce the language back to the whānau. However, few members of this whānau
had enough conversational Māori for everyday household interaction, and it was
acknowledged that there were challenges to re-introducing the language across
the whānau. Although there were three older deaf/HI children in the whānau
(all requiring additional support at school), use of NZSL was not pursued. The
grandmother acknowledged the value of visual communication strategies for
managing behaviour and alleviating communication stress; however, the grand-
father saw no purpose for learning NZSL since the other children had demon-
strated capacity in spoken languages.
This case illustrated tension around a non-Māori EI professional supporting a
deaf child’s language development in a Māori pre-school context. Difficulty arose
from mismatched relational expectations (in which the professional is an outsider
to the social and linguistic norms of a Kōhanga), and from differing language
goals and learning practices between home, Kōhanga, and deaf education sup-
port. In this case, an EI specialist took the language of the household (English)
to be the logical objective for establishing an early language foundation, and
struggled with the rationale of supporting bilingualism in Māori since it was
used only in an educational setting, whereas the whānau saw the Kōhanga as
an extension of the child’s home kinship network. From a professional perspec-
tive, this apparent disjunction in language practices was a risk to the child’s
development, since neither deaf education professionals nor caregivers at home
could support consistent first language development in Māori. In the transi-
tion to primary school, the grandparents felt they compromised their values in
sending the child to a mainstream school in order to harmonise deaf education
support with the school language context, and they expressed sadness at having
to choose between languages when their initial objective was bilingualism in
spoken English and Māori.
Conclusions
Evidence about FLP for deaf children in New Zealand indicates that the effect
of status planning for NZSL at macro-level is diluted at meso- and micro-
levels of acquisition planning. Cooper (1989: p. 159) points out that effective
acquisition planning to prevent decline in language vitality must create both
incentive and opportunity to learn. In relation to FLP for deaf children, our
data show that NZSL and deaf culture are acknowledged as part of the land-
scape by many DoH families, but they receive little guidance about interpret-
ing the potential relevance to their child. Families who are motivated to learn
NZSL generally find institutional support (advice, resources, and learning
opportunities) to be weak, or even averse. Scarcity of tailored support for
families to learn NZSL in many locations reinforces their incentive to focus
only on spoken language, and/or to devise spontaneous visual strategies to
enhance communication. On the other hand, opportunities for real-world
learning about language pathways from the experience of deaf people and
other families contributes to incentive to engage with NZSL as a cultural
resource for the child and family.
The majority of families (seven out of ten of our cases) choose early CI sur-
gery, usually followed by a concerted focus on oral language; for the most part
this aligns with families’ intrinsic wish for their child to share their own lan-
guage identity and to maximise independence in society. In Māori whānau, oral
language goals also align with aspirations to maintain ethnic identity through
knowledge of TRM, although there is little institutional support for achieving
this with deaf children.
Societal recognition of NZSL is reflected in deaf parents’ assertion of NZSL
as a natural first language and cultural heritage for their child, in contrast to the
conflicted values about signing/speaking held by deaf parent and grandparent
generations. They express a sense of entitlement to select NZSL as a first lan-
guage and for that decision to be legitimated by the early intervention system.
But deaf and hearing parents alike note the paucity of resources to develop and
maintain NZSL/English bilingualism, and they are dubious about adequate pro-
vision for learning in the medium of NZSL at school.
Family accounts of institutional influence on FLP indicate a disjunction
between macro-level support for the status of NZSL, as articulated in policy,
and implementation of those intentions via medical and educational interven-
tions. Families’ experiences illuminate statistical trends regarding young NZSL
use. Census results over the 12 years from 2001 to 2013 show a 25% decline in
the number of NZSL users (and a much steeper drop when population increase
is factored in). A disproportionately larger decrease in young users in that period
is evident: NZSL users under 15 years old fell by 44%, by 35% in the 15- to
29-year-old-group, and by 13% in the 30 -to 64-year-old group (Statistics New
Zealand, 2013). While census figures are not a measure of deaf community size
(since hearing people are included), the age-related cline suggests that families
with deaf children are increasingly choosing against NZSL. Our case study data
similarly suggest that the general direction of FLP in hearing-parented families
is unlikely to bolster the vitality of NZSL without more effective acquisition
planning measures.
Historically, this represents little change because the NZSL community
has maintained itself despite, rather than due to, language policy at any level,
and deaf people have always had contested pathways to becoming SL users
(Townsend, 1993; McKee, 2001; Padden & Humphries, 2006). However, con-
ditions for peer transmission of NZSL in school and social contexts have been
significantly weakened by increased investment of resources for children to
acquire spoken language associated with CI technology. Use of technology does
not, of course, preclude the opportunity for bimodal bilingualism in NZSL (as
our data shows), but the monolingual ideology of CI habilitation is strongly
informing the earliest stages of FLP and apparently reducing the likelihood
of children being exposed to SL. Inclusive education policy means that those
children who do sign have less opportunity for peer socialisation in NZSL at
school than in previous eras. In sum, it appears that New Zealand is witness-
ing a decline of incentive, opportunity, and context for young deaf children to
acquire NZSL.
DoD families spontaneously observed that the NZSL community is losing
vitality, noting the shifting language profile of deaf children, loss of school con-
texts for collective socialisation in NZSL, and the diminishing appeal of the Deaf
Club as a destination for intergenerational socialising. This critical awareness
can motivate different FLP decisions, as starkly illustrated in our data: one deaf
family privileged collective values to choose against CI and maintain heritage
language identity, while another chose for CI and bimodal bilingualism in light
of contextual changes that they believe will affect social and economic opportu-
nities for their deaf children as NZSL users.
Since data collection for this study, the government has allocated more
resources to acquisition planning, including an NZSL tuition service for pre-
school families, and an increase in NZSL support for school age deaf children.
Implementation of these initiatives is challenging in a small, dispersed popula-
tion, but the fact that they are available and endorsed may offer families incentive
to consider deaf-world perspectives on the value of SL in forming their FLP. Any
gains for the vitality of NZSL remain to be measured in future research.
Notes
1. We use the term ‘deaf’ in this chapter to refer to children who might be identified as
either deaf or hearing impaired according to social and audiological criteria; most of
the children discussed in this study fall into the former category.
2. See http://wfdeaf.org/databank/policies/education-rights-for-deaf-children.
3. See http://www.deafchildren.org.nz/communication-and-hearing/communication/
4. See https://www.nfd.org.nz/help-and-advice/your-childs-hearing/
5. Bilateral paediatric cochlear implants have been fully funded for eligible children
since 2014. Prior to that, one implant was fully funded.
6. See http://www.kdec.school.nz/.
7. See http://www.vanasch.school.nz/pdfs/VA_Charter_2014.pdf (p. 14).
8. See http://www.education.govt.nz/news/new-zealand-sign-language-school/.
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4
FAMILY LANGUAGE PRACTICES AS
EMERGENT POLICIES IN CHILD-
HEADED HOUSEHOLDS IN RURAL

UGANDA1
Maureen Kendrick & Elizabeth Namazzi
Introduction
Family language policy has typically provided a frame for understanding child-
caretaker interactions in families (King, Fogle & Logan-Terry, 2008). In this chap-
ter, we ask: what can we learn about family language policy in contexts where
adult caregivers are not present in the home? Our focus is on the language practices
of siblings (i.e., what siblings do with language) in child-headed families in rural
Uganda and what these practices might tell us about family language policies.
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, “family” is broadly conceptualized and
includes relatives beyond biological mother, father, and siblings who share in
responsibility for the care of children through to adulthood (Oni, 1995). Despite
this widespread acceptance of collective childrearing and fostering, in Uganda,
where communities have traditionally relied on extended family structures to
care for orphaned children, factors such as size of family, age and gender of the
children, number of losses in the family, and economic status of the caregiv-
ers have shifted this traditional responsibility (Chirwa, 2002). The first cases of
child-headed households (CHHs), typically defined as children 17 and under
who have lost both parents and are living on their own, were identified in the late
1980s in Uganda’s Rakai District (Foster & Makufa, 1997). Although there are no
official numbers, among this district’s population of approximately 470,000, we
estimate that children head over 1,000 households. These numbers suggest that
child-headed families are not a short-term emergency that can be resolved with
a one-time injection of resources (Plan Finland, 2005) but, rather, a new reality
for families and communities operating at the limits of their resources.
Much of the research on child-headed families in sub-Saharan Africa has
focused on their risks and vulnerabilities. In this chapter, our aim is to expand
and strengthen the current knowledge base on children living in child-headed

households but focus on how siblings support one another in learning language,
and in establishing and maintaining family language practices. The literature on
children’s learning in family contexts is most typically based on apprenticeship
models (i.e., individual zones of proximal development) whereby less competent
members of a group learn vicariously or directly from more competent mem-
bers, though not necessarily adults (see discussion in Gregory, 2001). We know
very little about how siblings in child-headed families negotiate learning and
maintaining their first language as well as English, the language of schooling,
in the absence of adult care-givers. Our conceptual framework, which draws on
sociocultural perspectives, mediated social activity, and family language policy
literature, is outlined in the next section.
Conceptual Framework
Sociocultural Perspectives
What underpins our research is a sociocultural perspective, and the belief that
language learning is a social process in which culturally and historically sit-
uated participants engage in valued activities and develop the behaviours
and thought processes required for participation (Rogoff, 2003; Wertsch, 1998,
2008). Language and literacy studies grounded in this perspective pay care-
ful attention to the social practices in diverse language learning environments
and to the qualities of the communicative resources that learners have avail-
able to them (Lantolf, 2006; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Swain, 2005), including
“funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzàlez, 1992). The concept of
funds of knowledge is based on a simple premise: “People are competent, they
have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge”
(González, Moll & Amanti, 2005: ix–x). Moll and Greenberg conceptualize
funds of knowledge as “the essential cultural practices and bodies of knowledge
and information that households use to survive, to get ahead, or to thrive” (1990,
p. 321). González et al. (2005) further argue that a funds of knowledge approach
to research, which involves first-hand experience with families, affords a power-
ful way to represent existing resources, competence, and knowledge. We adopt
this approach because of its ability to alter perceptions of marginalized families
and communities, and in an attempt to understand child-headed households in a
more nuanced way that moves beyond a predominant focus on deficits.
Mediated Social Activity

We also draw on the Vygotskian notion of mediated social activity (Vygotsky,
1978; Wertsch, 1981, 1998). Vygotsky observed how children learn knowledge
through social interactions with significant people in their lives, particularly
58 Maureen Kendrick & Elizabeth Namazzi
parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, children learn cul-
tural habits of mind, including speech patterns, written language, and other
symbolic knowledge through which they derive meaning and construct their
own knowledge. The specific knowledge that children gain through interactions
represents the shared knowledge of a culture. According to Wertsch (1991), these
interactions, or human activities, are shaped by cultural tools that mediate and
transform cognitive actions into new patterns of knowing and doing. Activities
and cultural tools (e.g., language, numbers, writing, maps) cannot be separated
(Cole, 1998; Rogoff, 1995; Wertsch, 1991, 1998) because “culture is exteriorized
mind; mind is interiorized culture” (Cole, 1998, p. 292). Viewing the activities
and practices of children living in child-headed households within a mediated
action frame provides a window on existing as well as emerging patterns of
knowing and doing.
Family Language Policy

It is within the family that policies and practices regarding language use are
first negotiated (Wei, 2012), but, as Tannenbaum (2012) reminds us, “family
systems, by definition, are constructed of individual members, all carrying their
own internal and interactional dynamics and defences that, when combined,
have a significant impact on the system as a whole” (p. 62). In this chapter, we
draw on Spolsky’s definition of family language policy as “language practices—
the habitual pattern of selecting among the varieties that make up its linguistic
repertoire; its language beliefs or ideology—the beliefs about language and lan-
guage use; and any specific efforts to modify or influence that practice by any
kind of language intervention, planning or management” (2004, p. 5). We view
family language policies as enacted through the individual and collective home
language practices of siblings as they play and work together. In child-headed
families, because children are often isolated from extended family and may have
limited contact with adults in the community, we focus on the role of siblings
in preserving family language practices, as they develop their own beliefs about
language learning and language use.
Methodological Considerations
Context and Families

Our research takes place within the context of Uganda’s Rakai District. Rakai
is one of four former counties established when Buganda Kingdom was sub-
divided into districts (Rwabwoogo, 2002). Bordering the districts of Masaka in
the north and north-east, Mbarara in the west and north-west, and Tanzania in
the south, Rakai is one of the country’s southernmost districts. It has high tem-
peratures and heavy rainfall almost year-round. Primary economic activities are
food crops, cash crops (coffee), fruits and vegetables, and cattle keeping through
subsistence farming. The majority of the population is rural based and speaks
Luganda as a first language. It is also worth noting that Uganda’s first recorded
case of HIV was in the Rakai District, and the disease has had a serious impact
in the district.
In this chapter, we report on the role of siblings in maintaining and estab-
lishing family language practices, and the policies these practices imply, in four
child-headed families. Local knowledge was used to identify the families. Two
families were identified through a humanitarian organisation that referred us
to two local schools with a high population of children living in child-headed
families. A resident boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) driver familiar with the local
context assisted with identifying two additional families. All of the children
speak Luganda at home. For those who were able to remain in school, English
was the medium of instruction (MoI) from Year 4 onward. The families lived in
a rural area where the vast majority of people are subsistence farmers.
We followed the families for approximately eight months, with two years
of follow-up on the children’s well-being after the completion of official data
collection. The children in each family and their approximate ages at the outset
of the study are outlined below, along with a brief description of the family
context. For the purposes of this project, they selected to use non-identifying
English “short names.”
Family 1: Gerald (18), Vince (17), Lawrence (16), Jane (13), and Michael (10).
The parents of these five children died of AIDS. When we first met the family,
they had been on their own for approximately four years. Vince was unable to
continue his schooling and began to assist his older brother Gerald with growing
and harvesting coffee on a subsistence level. The three younger children were in
school at the outset of the study. The family also earned money by assisting with
cattle rearing for neighbours. All five lived in a mud house on a small plot of land
that belonged to their parents.
Family 2: Fred (17), Gabe (15), and John (10). At the beginning of the study,
this family of three boys had been on their own for approximately seven years.
For the first year, they lived with their uncle but soon left because they were mal-
treated. The children were taken out of school, expected to work, and not cared
for in terms of emotional and physical needs. Assisted by World Vision with the
provision of a house and school fees for Gabe and John, the boys were able to
return to their parents’ land. As the eldest, Fred left school so he could make a
home and tend livestock for his brothers.
Family 3: Ibra (12), Winnie2 (10), Irene (8), Manny (6), Paul (4), and David
(3). For these children, both parents died at home, without medical attention,
and their cause of death was not documented. We speculate that because the
parents had recently relocated to this area of Rakai, the relocation was most likely
a result of the stigma of living with HIV/AIDS in their home community, and
that further stigma associated with the death of their parents made it impossible
for the children to return to the area where their extended family lived. This is
the youngest family in our study, and the children had limited options for earn-
ing money. At the outset of the study, all of the children were able to remain
in school, a privilege negotiated by Ibra and Winnie with the assistance of their
area Chairman.
Family 4 : Barbra (15), Lydia (14), and Raymond (10). The mother of these
three children died prior to their father, when they were very young, and the
children do not remember her. When we first met the children, they had been
on their own for approximately three years. On occasion, their uncle assisted
with food, necessities, and school fees, and all three had managed to stay in
school. They also sold very small amounts of coffee to raise income for their
family.
Methods and Procedures

In this chapter, we examine examples of language practices in each of the
families in relation to their emerging family language policies for managing
and maintaining family traditions and cultural practices. For this phase of the
research, we spent eight months visiting the families, typically for full days
twice per month. We participated in their daily activities, observed, engaged
in conversations, collected life stories, and invited the children to draw pic-
tures and take photographs of their social worlds (Banks & Morphy, 1997;
Kendrick & Jones, 2008). Luganda (the children’s first language) and English
were both used as required during our interactions with the children, who
switched freely between languages, although their preference was for Luganda
in moments when they struggled to express themselves. Given that the lan-
guage of instruction in Ugandan schools switches from Ugandan languages to
English in Year 4, the older children in our study were more fluent in English
than the younger children. Driven by “rich points” (Agar, 1996), and patterns
in and across language events/practices (Harste, Woodward & Burke, 1984),
our analysis focused on (1) the children’s everyday activities (what was observed
as the children worked, studied, and played together); (2) examples of family
language practices such as stories, songs, riddles, proverbs, poems, etc., as retold
by the children; and (3) participant information about their own lives and con-
structions of the world (Hardman, 1973).
Data analysis was initially undertaken in the field with continuous recording
of and reflection on the data. All tape-recorded data were transcribed and, where
necessary, translated from Luganda to English. Inspired by Harste et al.’s (1984,
p. 56) observation that “children deduce rules and make predictions about how
their language works, testing those predictions in the process of using language
to get on with living”, we used the children’s language practices as our base unit
of analysis and as a window on their emergent language policies. These practices
were first categorised according to how they functioned in the family; we then
further collaboratively analysed them iteratively to gain insight, develop mean-

ing (Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009), and establish narrative threads about the
how the children were establishing and maintaining family language practices as
emergent language policies.
Children’s Family Language Practices as Emergent Policies

In this section, we present key examples that demonstrate the ways in which
the children in our study practiced language with their siblings within the con-
text of their homes. Their informal, emergent policies and everyday practices in
Luganda and English served critical functions for managing and maintaining
family traditions and meeting the ongoing needs of the family.
Example 1: Singing “Educative” Songs

This first example is an “educative” song that Jane sang to her four brothers:
Gerald, Vince, Lawrence, and Michael. Gerald, the oldest, provided a descrip-
tion of the typical context in which this song might be shared and also alluded
to other communicative practices that are used at home. Debbie, one of our
research assistants, led the conversation.
GERALD: The way I communicate to my young brothers and sister . . . is like this,
when we finish our work and my young brothers and sister have come
back from school, when they are cooking, we all sit in the kitchen and
everyone says what they saw on their way! After all that has been done,
when we are going to eat food, we all sit in the sitting room, humble
ourselves and pray for the food and then eat it. After eating, the one
who has an educative song sings for us.
DEBBIE : Who knows and usually sings?
GERALD: It’s Jane.
DEBBIE : Jane, do you mind singing for us?
JANE: AIDS the killer disease, it came to harass children, the practice is to use
preventive methods and create a bright future on this . . . hour . . .
DEBBIE : Now tell us what that song means or what information you get from it.
GERALD: Let us help her.
DEBBIE : Jane, tell me.
JANE: I learn to follow whatever they teach me [at school] that I am to lis-
ten to what they tell me or teach me about HIV/AIDS, the preven-
tive methods say like not engaging myself in immorality, to stay safe
because immorality is the lead [path] to AIDS.
Jane’s song, sung in English, is a practice that this family has adopted from
school, to share information about the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Although Jane
was one of the younger members of her family, she was the only girl and, accord-
ing to her brother Gerald, often sang songs to educate her siblings about particu-
lar issues and topics. In a cultural context where there are considerable barriers to
discussing sexuality and HIV/AIDS (Vision Reporter, 2015), and in the absence
of their parents, Jane re-appropriated “educative” information about HIV/AIDS
and integrated it into the cultural practice of singing in the evening. In this
example, she connects her lyrics with the lesson of remaining moral in relation-
ships and interweaves traces of her family’s history—namely, that AIDS has come
to “harass children”, adapting this new language practice to the situated experi-
ences and needs of her family. Singing in English also created opportunities at
home for practicing English, a language that the children well understood would
become increasingly important for their futures.
It is also worth noting that Gerald’s description of communicative practices
at home at the beginning of the excerpt shows how this group of siblings also
developed their own form of storytelling to describe “what they saw on their
way” to or from school. In this context, cultural teachings are often embedded
in self-expressions such as this game which focuses on the children’s experiences
of what they encounter on a daily basis as they walk to school and back home.
For example, because community news is typically shared orally, no invitations
are sent out for funerals, weddings, or any other initiation rites; children freely
join these events as they encounter them and try to establish their own place of
belonging among those in attendance. As they participate in and observe these
cultural practices, they become curious about what they mean and seek explana-
tions from more knowledgeable others. This language game served a number
of purposes in this household; it entertained, it helped maintain social relations
among the siblings, and it created opportunities for storytelling and sharing cul-
tural knowledge in Luganda, the children’s first language. In the absence of adult
caregivers, the children’s opportunities to learn cultural teachings (e.g., from
ceremonial events) and to express this new knowledge in Luganda are limited.
Sharing what they saw on their way home from school has the potential to
expose the younger children in particular to new language and information, and
an occasion to practice what they have learned.
Example 2: Using Community Dramas to Learn About HIV/AIDS

Similar to the previous example, the children also used drama as an important
tool for sharing information about HIV/AIDS:
DEBBIE : Tell me how you communicate excluding the other ways you told me
the other time. Have you understood it?
GABE : We do communicate through drama for instance when we move
[travel/commute], we learn many plays, so when you come across that
play you come back home and act for the rest who didn’t see it and they
get to know about it and what it meant. We also tell ourselves proverbs
thus teaching us more of the things we don’t know and the old things.
DEBBIE : Okay, that drama you talked about, that is, watching the play then
coming back and acting for the rest, where do you learn it from or
watch it from?
GABE : At times on our way to school, sometimes when we are in town there
are some plays. Rakai project usually presents teaching on ways in

which one can prevent him or herself from getting HIV/AIDS so in
such a case I come back, act for them [siblings] and tell them the things
I have learnt from there that they should do so as not to get HIV.
In this example, the children describe how they sought out new knowledge in
their local community. In this conversation, the children are referring to “things
they don’t know, including “unlearned cultures”. Similar to the previous example,
whenever the children see something on their way to or from school, their desire
to know more encourages them to seek explanations. In the first instance they
acquire prior/initial knowledge which they refer to as “things they don’t know
and the old things”. Because cultural knowledge is essential to the children’s well-
being, they explain their interpretation of the plays they see on the way to school
in terms of story-telling. They then pass on this knowledge to their siblings,
regardless of whether they understood it or not. In addition, Gabe’s example of
drama speaks to the power and effectiveness of demonstration in delivering the
intended preventive message about HIV/AIDS, while encouraging the develop-
ment of linguistic and cognitive skills for both storyteller and listener.
Using drama was a way for these siblings to entertain each other and share
important knowledge, experiences, and feelings that may be integral to the well-
being of this family. We see their practice as particularly important for maintain-
ing their first language, given that without parents and consistent opportunities
to interact with extended family and community members, their exposure to
new vocabulary and contexts of learning more complex language are limited.
Example 3: Communicating Through Storytelling

Our few examples of storytelling in this study were often stories of Hare and
Leopard. We speculate that the younger children had not yet had opportuni-
ties to learn storytelling skills, and there were only a few older children who
had learned storytelling from their parents or elders in the community. Factors
such as isolation and security issues further contributed to the children’s limited
opportunities to listen to or tell stories. The stigma of HIV/AIDS forces many
children in CHHs to live isolated from other members of the community. They
also face significant security challenges because they are vulnerable to break-ins
and other forms of violence. The children in our study often avoided staying up
late at night to participate in storytelling, as it would attract unwanted attention.
In the storytelling example we include here, Barbra tells her story to her brother
(Raymond) and sister (Lydia).
DEBBIE : Which stories do you usually tell yourselves?

BARBRA: Hare and Leopard . . .
Once upon time, there was Hare and Leopard. Hare didn’t want to
dig yet Leopard wanted so much to dig. Whenever Leopard would tell
Hare to go and dig, he would refuse, but for him, would go and dig.
So one day Leopard went and dug his food but Hare came and stole
whatever Leopard had dug. So Leopard asked Hare, “Who steals my
food?” Then Leopard told him, “You know what Hare, am going to
get the person who steals my food!” Hare replied, “Go ahead and catch
that person, he has really stolen our food!” So Leopard went and hid in
a very hidden place where he couldn’t be seen to wait for the thief. As
he was hiding, he saw Hare coming, he stole and stole, as he was steal-
ing, Leopard came out[of] hiding, grabbed him and beat him to death.
[story translated from Luganda to English]
So from the [. . .] story, I learn to work hard, that if someone tells me to

work, I do so rather than waiting for others to do the work and then steal
their [products]. Generally, it teaches me to be hard working and not to
be a thief.
Barbra’s story highlights how the intrinsic value of language practices learned
by children in CHHs can be transformed as they remake and remix them within
their family contexts. Although her story retained the traditional structure of
beginning, middle, and end, rather than engaging her siblings in the interactive
call and answer characteristic of traditional stories (Kizza, 2010), she offers a
fresh perspective on Hare and Leopard, taking ownership of the story by telling
it from her own perspective as the observer of the events and offering her own
interpretation of the moral of the story. As she explains, the story shows that
when we do wrong we can easily be discovered and punished:
I learn to work hard, that if someone tells me to work, I do so rather than

waiting for others to do the work and then steal their [products]. Gener-
ally, it teaches me to be hard working and not to be a thief.
Although the moral of Barbra’s story highlights what may be a guiding man-
tra to help her and her siblings make good decisions, we see a second, perhaps
more important, message that may be intended more for community members.
This young family lived largely isolated from the local community due to initial
speculations about why they had relocated to the area and why their parents died.
The children’s practice of telling this story at home offers a way to reposition
themselves as hard-working but also as members of this community who do

not steal from neighbours, thus resisting a conclusion that is often drawn about
children living on their own without parents. From a family language policy
perspective, telling their own versions of traditional stories enables the children
to maintain traditional language practices but also speak back in a culturally
appropriate way to a community where they feel stigmatized and isolated.
Example 4: New Purposes for “Old” Riddles

This next example focuses on the use of riddles with three brothers: Fred, Gabe,
and John. The boys begin by explaining more about how they use proverbs and
riddles at home.
DEBBIE : OK, then you also talked about proverbs or riddles. Can you tell me at
least one of the proverbs you usually use?
GABE : Koyi koyi.
ALL: Lya [eat].
GABE : Akalya amaggwa [the one who eats thorns] [Laughter].
ALL: Kekagamanyi enkyusa [knows how to turn them round (in the mouth)].
DEBBIE : Good what does it mean?
GABE : OK, you can’t do something that you aren’t used to. For you don’t
know, you might rush into it and get a problem for instance, you might
not be knowing how to use electricity so when you rush in a house
where it is and go touching everywhere you might get a shock!
DEBBIE : Is there any other person who wants to tell me any other riddle or
proverb?
FRED: Koyi koyi.
ALL: Lya [eat].
FRED: Atalukutambulire [one who isn’t going with you on a journey].
GABE : Akusibira ya menvu [packs for you yellow bananas (since s/he will not
share in the unsatisfying meal)].
FRED: [Laughter].
ALL: [Laughter].
DEBBIE : [Laughter] . . . OK. And what does it mean? [Laughter] . . .
FRED: It means that those are the old riddles.
When it was Gabe’s turn to respond to Debbie, although asked to share a prov-
erb, he began as if he were telling a riddle. His brothers, who were clearly famil-
iar with his example, were able to explain the traditional cultural meaning of the
riddle. Fred similarly started his proverb like a riddle, but Gabe and John were
unable to explain what it meant. Fred, unsure of the meaning of his own riddle,
responded by saying: “It means that those are the old riddles”. In other words, rid-
dles with deeper meaning that only adults would know. Here, the brothers have
confused the format of a riddle and a proverb. They started with a riddle opening
(Koyi, koyi . . .) but ended with a phrase that would be more similar to a proverb.
Although riddles would traditionally be used as brainteasers and tests of critical
thinking, in this example, as well as in a number of other examples we have of the
children making up their own riddles, a hybrid text is created. This text deviates
from traditional knowledge and practice, yet it maintains some features of riddles
and proverbs in this cultural context. In the hybrid texts, the telling had a revised
purpose, in this case, to generate laughter and entertain one another rather than
share cultural knowledge (e.g., using riddles as a test of one’s knowledge about
the features of particular plants and animals). The creation of hybrid texts was
common among all of the children in our study. They integrate the “known”
(bits and pieces of stories, poems, songs, etc.) and fill in the gaps with their own
content to create hybrid texts. Their practice reinforces the tradition of using
riddles but for the children’s own unique purposes. The adapted practice serves
to entertain and enrich family life through language use in Luganda, and also
strengthen bonds between siblings, which is essential to family continuity.
Example 5: Practicing Luganda With “New” Riddles

The riddle that Barbra and Raymond share is another example of how the chil-
dren worked collectively to communicate their understanding of riddles and
proverbs. This was not a traditional riddle but rather one that the children com-
posed on their own; the telling demonstrates how newly created riddles work to
enable the children to maintain the family and cultural practice of using riddles
to entertain and test the cognitive and linguistic skills of one another.
BARBRA: Koyi koyi.

RAYMOND: Lya [eat].
BARBRA: Kasaja kampi [short man].
RAYMOND: Kaakuba Taata ekigwo [fights daddy throws him down].
DEBBIE : What does that mean?
BARBRA: He has failed it.
DEBBIE : How is it supposed to be?
BARBRA: Kasaja kampi kakuuma awaka [short man keeps the house] meaning
that a padlock is short and so keeps home [safe].
During this riddling session, Lydia was absent so Raymond and Barbra took
turns telling Debbie individual lines of a riddle. When Raymond gave the “answer”
to the riddle, Debbie was confused because it deviated from the traditional mean-
ing. Barbra explained that her brother had “failed it” (did not know the answer),
yet he was able to communicate some understanding that “short man” in the
riddle referred to a “padlock” and its effectiveness to keep a house safe. We view
this riddling example as an important way for siblings to help each other develop
and practice their language skills in Luganda through collective sharing. In some
examples, such as this one, older children support younger children’s learning
and language use. In other examples, however, such as the previous one with
Fred, Gabe, and John, each child contributes to the collective telling or creation
of new riddles and stories, in essence, within a collective ZPD (see Kendrick &
Kakuru, 2012) whereby no one child had the expertise or knowledge to scaffold
the learning of others. The continuation of a practice that had been part of family
life when these children’s parents were alive also enables the children to maintain
their own version of their families’ traditional language practices.
Example 6: Bringing Sports News Home

In the same way that children such as Barbra and Raymond created their own
riddles and co-constructed understandings as a means of entertaining their sib-
lings, some of the children were also highly inventive at devising their own sto-
rytelling practices at home. Gabe’s description of his siblings telling stories about
what they saw on the way to school is one such example. In a similar example,
Vince, the second oldest in this family, explains how he likes to communicate
with his brothers and sister through sports:
Vince: Another way we communicate is through sports. Since childhood, I

have been a fan of soccer, so I usually tell them the teams that are going to
play for instance today Arsenal is going to play against Liverpool and Aston
Villa vs. Newcastle. I always give them updates for instance; Manchester
United will play against Middlesbrough at 7:00 pm, I try to update them
about soccer that will take place over the weekend.
This family did not own a radio, but, whenever Vince had reason to go to the
trading centre for odd jobs, he took the opportunity to catch up on the latest news
about British soccer. He then repeated this information in his own “radio” com-
mentary when he returned home to his brothers. In many ways, this new way of
telling stories as a sports commentator was a kind of imaginary play for Vince,
whom we noted at the end of the study had written on the front door of the fam-
ily’s new World Vision house, “Manchester United—Manager”. Listening to the
radio offered another kind of language partner, and Vince’s sports commentaries
were eagerly anticipated by his siblings and provided not only entertainment but
also an important way of maintaining sibling bonds and relationships.
Example 7: Implementing Sign Language

Like all families, for the children in our study, work routines and family rela-
tionships depended on communication among all members of the family. Our
youngest family, however, was faced with an added challenge. Manny, one of the
younger boys, had significant challenges with communication due to a hearing

impairment. Winnie initiated the use of sign language with him, something she
had observed with an elderly man in her local community.
MAUREEN: How many signs have you taught him so far that he can also do?
WINNIE: Sending him [to get] a saucepan from the house, food, knife, salt, or
plates and washing. You show him how to do it and he does it.
MAUREEN: Is that all you have taught him to do?
WINNIE: No, also sweeping.
MAUREEN: Approximately, how many do you think you have taught him?
WINNIE: I think like 20.
MAUREEN: OK, how did you come to know that he needed to be communi-
cated to using signs and when did you start doing so?
WINNIE: We saw it from some mute guy who used to stay in the neighbour-
hood. They would do for him signs and [at] times touch on things
for him to understand because he wasn’t talking.
DEBBIE : And so, how did you come to know or think that this one too was
a mute?
WINNIE: We couldn’t understand what he was saying or talking and so
decided to start using signs.
Although none of the children in this family knew sign language, each sibling
was able to contribute to Manny’s signing vocabulary by observing interactions
with the “mute” man in their community. Their invention of signs for objects
and actions in their immediate environment showed considerable ingenuity
in working together to meet the needs of their family. We see the children’s
creation of their own sign language system, driven by immediate need, as the
implementation of a new family language policy that would enable them to meet
the ongoing challenge of their domestic responsibilities and sibling relationships.
Example 8: Rehearsing Family History With Photographs

In the same family, the children had a small collection of family photos that they
kept in a white envelope in a box under what had been their parents’ bed. The
photos showed signs of wear, smudged with red soil from layers of fingerprints.
Winnie told us they often looked through these photos as a way to remember
their family history:
DEBBIE :How do you remember or record your family history? How do you
remember all that? Is it through storytelling? Do you have photos or
other things?
WINNIE: OK, when we go to the neighbour, we see the things they are doing,
so we come back and tell ourselves stories . . .
DEBBIE : What helps you remember all that you told me the other time about
your family history?
WINNIE: OK, some things we see from people.
DEBBIE : And you remember?
WINNIE: Yes. For instance when we see people doing what daddy and mummy
used to do, we remember them.
IBRA: We remember by seeing the photos.
We watched as the children meticulously looked through the photographs in the

envelope, co-constructing their family history as each contributed fragments of
stories by identifying people, experiences, and memories evoked by the images.
Without parents to tell them stories of their birth and childhood, and stories of
family origin, the children collectively tried to recall these through the past.
As Tannenbaum (2012) suggests, in terms of family language policy, “mother
tongue is a central aspect of people’s internal sense of self and identity, and both
a practical and symbolic link to their homeland, childhood, memories and early
significant relationships, even when family members are not always aware of
these links” (p. 58), or in the case of our participants, when family members are
no longer alive. The children were fiercely protective of their small collection of
photos; it was a primary link to their parents and their past, and critical to their
sense of remembering, belonging, and identity in a community where their lives
were largely invisible.
Example 9: Meeting School Responsibilities

Although frequently impossible, remaining in school was a priority for many
of the children in our study, particularly Winnie, who was among the top
students in her class. Although she was a year younger than her brother, Ibra,
she was a year ahead in school. She also took responsibility for addressing the
educational needs of her siblings at home, a role that had been her mother’s.
Adopting the adult/parenting roles and responsibilities of providing leader-
ship and decision making in the distribution of school supplies involved con-
siderable interaction and negotiation between Winnie and her siblings. It is
through such interactions that children develop and learn to improve their
linguistic skills. As she explained, she also assisted her siblings with their
homework:
MAUREEN: What about homework? Do you support or help each other with it?
WINNIE: Yes.
MAUREEN: How do you do it?
WINNIE: One who is a class higher than the other helps out the one who is in
a lower class for instance. I do help Ibra because I have already learnt
what he is studying and others of course and the young ones too.
Through the support she provided, Winnie tried to ensure that her siblings met
the expectations of school staff and local authorities. School attendance provided
a routine and a community of belonging. Athanasopoulos (2009) and Maqoko
and Dreyer (2007) found that children in child-headed households often seek out
school as a place of belonging and community. Many identify teachers as their
only source of consistent adult contact. Similarly, we argue that school also pro-
vided an “official” life for these children—it was a place where their attendance
was documented and where their absence had a consequence. Roalkvam (2005)
has written about the invisibility of children living in child-headed households,
observing that they often live unofficial lives that go unnoticed by those around
them. As such, the children had limited “significant” others as language partners.
Family Language Policies Across the Families

The main focus of this chapter has been on examining how the language prac-
tices of siblings in child-headed families provide a window on emerging family
language policies. The children’s language practices are imbued with values and
beliefs about language learning and use, and reveal how they are trying to estab-
lish new priorities for communication in the absence of adult caregivers. Across
the four families, their range of practices include singing songs in English to
communicate culturally sensitive information, creating stories and riddles that
enable them to practice Luganda and develop new language skills, retelling tra-
ditional stories to make statements about themselves as being moral and hard-
working, playing sportscaster to entertain and inform, adapting sign language as
a new communicative resource, supporting the completion of homework, and
rehearsing family history through photographs. These practices required that
siblings commonly operate within a collective Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD) whereby no one member of the family necessarily has the expertise to
teach or apprentice younger siblings. Within this collective ZPD, family lan-
guage policies were implicitly co-constructed in situated ways, unique to the
lives, experiences, and histories of the families. In all of the families, the children
use both Luganda and English at home, recognizing that one language connects
them to their past and their cultural identify, while the other will be integral to
future school success and life opportunities.
The development of family language policies represents a “dynamic, mud-
dled, and nuanced process” (King et al., 2008, p. 917), evident in the ways in
which the siblings transformed communicative resources from their family and
cultural environments into everyday situated practices critical to their chang-
ing family context. As González et al. (2005) observed, a family’s cultural and
cognitive resources have great potential utility. For these children, this utility
was realised through appropriating and remixing features of songs, stories, and
riddles through play, performance, and co-constructions of knowledge to create
“hybrid” practices that were interwoven with their life histories and challenges.
These texts became part of “the essential cultural practices and bodies of knowl-
edge and information” that these children used “to survive, to get ahead, or to
thrive” (Moll & Greenberg, 1990, p. 21).
Both funds of knowledge and family language policy research identify
domains of practice and inf luence such as workplace, religion, neighbourhood,
and household management. As Spolsky points out, “each identifiable domain
has its typical participants, and each participant may have their own beliefs
about language choice” (2012, p. 4). For the children in our study, because of
their isolation from extended family, the neighbourhood became a predomi-
nant domain of influence, with its opportunities to interact with adult lan-
guage partners and observe or hear language practices in English, Luganda,
and sign language. School was also an important domain of influence for the
children who were able to attend, although classroom interactions were some-
what limited with teachers and school administrators spending the majority
of the school day delivering information rather than engaging the children as
language partners.
Overall, however, we see the children’s implicit family language policies as
predominantly emotionally driven. As Tannenbaum argues, “the family system
is largely affected by emotional dimensions touching each individual separately
and the system as a whole. The impact of these dimensions is extremely signifi-
cant, and family members operate, consciously or unconsciously, to improve the
well-being of the system as they perceive it” (2012, p. 61). He suggests that “these
aspects often affect and at times dictate FLPs [family language policies], and that
they may serve deeper layers of family functioning” (pp. 59–60). He suggests an
alternative way of viewing family language policy as a defence or coping mecha-
nism. We would argue that, in many ways, the implicit language policies evident
in the four child-headed families are often emotionally driven and serve as a
coping mechanism. Their policies and ways of using language help the children
to protect the family unit against further loss and to minimise emotional distress
(Baumeister, Dale & Sommer, 1998). Guardado (2008) has also emphasized the
emotional centrality of language maintenance in the family, whereby first lan-
guage is associated with songs, laughter, stories, affect, family, and history and,
in many ways, is at the heart of family relationships and meaning-making in
life. For the young children in our study, having already dealt with so much loss,
what would seem to be most important in developing family language policies is
strengthening the family unit to ensure the future.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by University of British Columbia Humanities and
Social Sciences grants through the Faculty of Education (F10-01683, L07-0033).
We also wish to acknowledge the generosity and courage of the children who so
willingly participated in our study.
Notes
1. This chapter is an extended and revised version of Kendrick and Kakuru (2012) and
Namazzi and Kendrick (2014).
2. During the follow-up phase of the research, Winnie was no longer living with her sib-
lings, and they had no information about her whereabouts. We suspect she was taken as
a domestic helper, but we were unsuccessful in locating her.
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5
EXPLORING FAMILY LANGUAGE
POLICIES AMONG AZERBAIJANI-
SPEAKING FAMILIES IN THE CITY

OF TABRIZ, IRAN
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
Introduction
This chapter reports on Azerbaijanis’ attitudes towards using Azerbaijani and
Farsi in the home in Tabriz, Iran, and explores how these families respond to
Farsi-medium educational policies and the potential inclusion of Azerbaijani in
the education system, as well as the broadcast media they are exposed to. Taking
the ecology of language paradigm (Haugen, 1972; Hornberger & Hult, 2008;
Mühlhäusler, 1996), I situate this investigation of family language policy within
the broader historical and sociopolitical macro context, promoting the elimina-
tion of the boundary between the linguistic and the non-linguistic in language
maintenance endeavors (Schwartz & Verschik, 2013). In other words, I analyze
how the ecology within which Azerbaijani is being transmitted to the next gen-
eration has been affected by language policy and planning activities of the state,
and how Azerbaijanis are responding to those policies.
Family Language Policy

Family language policy, defined as “explicit and overt planning in relation to
language use within the home among family members” (King, Fogle, & Logan-
Terry, 2008, p. 907), is an important area of investigation in language mainte-
nance studies. It has been persuasively argued that the domain of home is the
most important domain for language maintenance because it is the site for estab-
lishing “the bedrock of language maintenance” (King et al., 2008, p. 917)—i.e.,
intergenerational transmission of heritage language, culture, and values (Fish-
man, 1991, 2001). Favorable family language policy towards language(s) can
determine, and potentially guarantee, their vitality within a community to a
Azerbaijani-Speaking Families 75
great extent. By contrast, negative attitudes may be a prime cause of intergenera-

tional discontinuity of a language (Baker, 2006). As a result, some have argued
that “all meaningful language policy is ultimately played out in the home” (Cal-
das, 2012, p. 351).
Empirical research in multilingual settings demonstrates that the domain of
home and interactions among family members do not take place in a vacuum
but rather are influenced by ecology outside home. Family language policy is
said to be under the constant influence of pressures created mainly by external
macro domains such as education systems and the media (broadcasting media in
particular), as well as children’s relay role between home and outside domains
(e.g., McCarty, Romero-Little, Warhol, & Zepeda, 2009; Shohamy, 2006; Spol-
sky, 2009). Calvet (1998), for instance, reports the findings of a study on the
Wolof language in Senegal, clearly displaying the impact of the outside world on
the decisions made inside the home by family members. The enquiry showed
that Wolof, a dominant language in society, was spoken as a first language in the
home more by children whose parents did not speak it as a first language. The
researchers concluded, “It is not, therefore, the family that has most influence on
pupils, but the milieu.” They call such a phenomenon “a case of social assimila-
tion” (Calvet, 1998, p. 68). Spolsky (2009) similarly writes that although the
domain of family like other domains has its own policy, not all features within
the home are managed internally. Rather, language management in the family is
only partly under the control of family members. The family language policy is
influenced by “the sociolinguistic ecology inside and outside the home and by
the parents’ beliefs about the best strategy” (Spolsky, 2009, p. 18). Pakir’s (2003)
analysis also indicates that parents as the “invisible planners” recognize the advan-
tages of the dominant language for their children—e.g., enhanced employability
and upward social mobility. They consequently endorse macro policies in other
domains such as education systems in favor of the dominant language, usually
resulting in their choice of the dominant language to speak with their children.
Some have taken such a stance on the home-society relation even further and
maintained that family language policy is not often “consciously planned” but
rather has been “predetermined by history and circumstances beyond the fam-
ily’s control” (Caldas, 2012, p. 351; Lane, 2010).
Home and the family unit is thus viewed as a site, or, in Calvet’s words, a “bat-
tlefield” (Calvet, 1998) in which “dominant ideologies intersect and compete with
local or individual views on language and parenting” (King et al., 2008, p. 907),
both recording and reflecting multilingualism and language contacts found in
multilingual societies. Language ideologies are here taken as a forceful “interpre-
tive filter in the relationship of language and society” that—depending how an
individual or a community conceptualizes the links of language, cognition, and
social life—are used to rationalize why a particular language is not transmitted
to the next generation (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994, p. 62). Hence, the behavior
and attitudes of the members of families—i.e., children and parents—are explored
76 Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi
as a “tiny social barometer” that is sensitive to the pressures outside home (Har-
rison, 2007, p. 8). Studying this barometer is believed to shed light on the extent
to which family language policies are influenced by external forces, whether
such external policies are contested or endorsed, and which language(s) family
language policies are supporting.
Investigating dynamics of family language policy among Azerbaijani families
in Tabriz is thus situated within the wider language ecology in which families
find themselves. In other words, this paper explores how families’ decisions and
choices with regard to language use in the home are affected by the sociopolitical
and historical context in which families live their day-to-day life.
Historical and Sociolinguistic Context for the Study

Iran is a multilingual and multi-ethnic country situated in central Eurasia and
Western Asia with an area of 628,000 square miles (1,648,000 sq. km), mak-
ing it the sixteenth largest country in the world (Daniel, 2001; Nercissians,
2001). Its population is approximately eighty million with a literacy rate of
77 percent who can read and write the official language of the country—i.e.
Farsi (also known as Persian).1 However, the country is comprised of minor-
ities like Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Gilakis, Baluchis, and Turkmen who speak a
language different from the official language, and who make up nearly half
of the population of Iran (Axworthy, 2008). The ethnic groups residing in
Iran are Persian (51 percent), Azerbaijani (24 percent), Gilaki and Mazandarani
(8 percent), Kurd (7 percent), Arab (3 percent), Lur (2 percent), Baluch (2 per-
cent), Turkmen (2 percent), and other groups (Tohidi, 2009). Linguistic rights
of Iran’s sixty-eight regional and minority languages (cf. Ethnologue) are now
officially recognized in the Iranian Constitution (Spolsky, 2004, pp. 144, 174),
with special attention to Farsi, the official language (see Sadeghi, 2001), and
Arabic as a liturgical language.
Special and systematic attention to Farsi began in Iran when fear of European
colonization, experienced in India where Persian served as the official language
until the 1830s, was felt inside Iran (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2009). The British govern-
ment’s abolition of Persian as the official language of India in 1834 led to Persian
purist movements inside Iran (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2009). The rise of a Persian print
culture in the late eighteenth-century and the nineteenth-century governmental-
ization of everyday life resulted in publications of dictionaries, as well as restyling
the language—i.e. simplifying and de-Arabizing the Persian language (Kia, 1998;
Tavakoli-Targhi, 2009). Finally, the first Constitution of Iran in 1906 declared
Persian as the official language of the country, prescribing that all members of
the parliament “had to possess the ability to speak Persian, read and write Persian,
and be Iranian subjects of Iranian extraction” (see Kia, 1998). A supplementary
law was added in 1907 mandating that compulsory instruction in Persian should
be regulated by the Ministry of Science and Arts (Kia, 1998, p. 32). However, as
Sheyholislami (2012) writes, the policy was not implemented until a more cen-
tralized government in Tehran was established.
The nationalist and purist movements succeeded to a large extent by trans-
forming language and history into ideological tools to present Iran as one state
with one language (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2009). However, what was overlooked in
these movements was the multi-ethnic identities and multilingual nature of the
country; Iran was not only Persia or Persian. It was “only by denying the exis-
tence of non-Persian identities [that] this nationalist discourse [could] present
Iran as an ancient and unified nation with one history, one culture, and one liter-
ary language” (Kia, 1998, p. 9). This denial and neglect turned into intolerance
during Reza Shah and his son’s monarchy (1925–1979) (Sheyholislami, 2012).
Reza Shah (originally Reza Khan, 1878–1944, the founder of the Pahlavi
dynasty) was an officer who seized power in 1921 in Tehran through a coup and
made himself Shah of Iran with the support of the British government in 1925.
Adopting Pahlavi, the name of the middle Persian language, and renaming the
country from Persia to Iran in 1934, presumably meaning “the birthplace of Aryan
race” (Asgharzadeh, 2007), Reza Shah showed his nationalistic longing by using
the Persian language as a tool. His regime was characterized by modernization,
provision of infrastructure, secularization, and determination to build a modern
nation-state (Sheyholislami, 2012). What was evident was his awareness of the
role of language as a nation-building tool (see Hassanpour, Sheyholislami, &
Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012; Sheyholislami, 2012). In 1924, a year before he seized
the throne of Iran, Reza Khan ordered the ministry of war to form a committee
to create new Persian equivalents for European and Turkish words used in the
army. He formed a second committee in the army a year after he became the
Shah of Iran, asking the members to translate the widely used European and
Turkish words into Persian. Between 1921 and 1925, the army in fact became the
first institution to modernize and purify Persian (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2009). In line
with the Shah’s measures, the Teachers’ Training College of Tehran established a
society in1932 to create new words and terminologies resulting in close to three
thousand new words, four hundred of which were applied in text books. The
linguistic endeavors finally led to the formation of the Iranian Academy in 1935
whose principles were closely related to Académie Française (Axworthy, 2008;
Daniel, 2001; Kia, 1998, pp. 20–22; Sheyholislami, 2012).
Alongside his language purification and modernization activities, and soon
after Reza Shah centralized his authority in Tehran, he terminated the semi-
autonomous status of regions such as Azerbaijan, Arabistan (Khuzistan), Luristan,
and Kurdistan. Using non-Persian languages in any form of writing was pro-
hibited, and Farsi was legitimized as the only Iranian language. Other ethnic
languages were repressed either as an ‘imperfect dialect’ of Farsi such as Kurdish
and Luri, or non-Indo European languages such as Turkic languages—i.e., Azer-
baijani, and Arabic. All the ethnic languages were required “to be assimilated to
‘the superior Aryan/Persian race and culture,’ and if they did not acknowledge
the ‘superiority of Aryan/Persian race,’ they would then become subjected to

humiliation, marginalization, and exclusion” (Asgharzadeh, 2007, p. 87). Farsi
was elevated as the ‘national language’ to unify all Iranians and present Iran as
one nation with one language.
Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980), also followed nation-
alistic and purist goals denying non-Persian ethnic minority groups’ rights. It
was during his reign that severe linguistic genocide took place. As Asgharzadeh
reports, after approximately being an autonomous region for a year, Azerbaijan,
and then Kurdistan, was invaded by Pahlavi’s army, killing many people in Azer-
baijan and Kurdistan. Finally, Azerbaijan collapsed after a period of resistance.
Shortly after the fall of the autonomous regions, “book-burning ceremonies
became a source of celebration and entertainment for the members of the domi-
nant group and their invading army.” Ultimately, the young Mohammad Reza
Shah was admired as the hero of “Azerbaijan Crisis” and “the Bringer of Azer-
baijan to the Bosom of the Mother Land” (Asgharzadeh, 2007, pp. 101, 102).2
Following the global trend perhaps, the linguistic situation for minorities in
Iran can be said to have been mitigated after the revolution in 1979, which ended
the Pahlavi dynasty. Currently, according to Article 15 of the Iranian Constitu-
tion, all minority languages in Iran are officially recognized. Minorities and
their languages are “allowed” to enjoy institutional support such as teaching
minority languages in the education system, having them in the mass media,
etc. Nonetheless, owing to the lack of proactive policies obliging protection of
minority languages, rather than merely relying on granting permission, minority
languages in Iran can be arguably claimed to be threatened. Unlike the period
during the Pahlavi dynasty where minorities were forced to assimilate into the
mainstream Persian culture, it seems that they are now covertly persuaded to join
the mainstream Persian culture through a variety of mechanisms.
The highly centralized education system where all teaching materials are in
Farsi appears to be one strong assimilatory tool. Minority and regional languages
are neither taught nor tested in the educational institutions. Given the role of
education systems in shaping particular de facto policies (Shohamy, 2008), such
policies towards minority languages in the education system in Iran need to be
taken into account. In the same way, the highly centralized media funded and
controlled by the central government is yet another assimilatory and unifying
tool although, in the last fifteen years, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting
(IRIB) has established provincial channels that broadcast programs in regional
and minority languages. The airtime for programs in the regional language, and
Farsi if any, varies from channel to channel. These channels can be said to be
some institutional support that minority languages currently receive from the
government. Yet their impact on the ecology of minority languages should be
carefully examined.
Although one might take daily usage of Azerbaijani and the size of Azerbaijani-
speaking population in Tabriz (approximately two million) as evidence that
Azerbaijani is not overwhelmed by Farsi, this study proposes a different scenario.

Drawing upon qualitative and quantitative data, the investigation demonstrates
how Azerbaijani-speaking families respond to what goes on in the ecology in
which they find themselves, the ecology that is shaped by socio-political and
historical processes.
Methodology
Based on the findings from a focus-group interview conducted with six mothers
of young children, a language attitude questionnaire was designed and adminis-
tered to 150 Azerbaijani-speaking families in Tabriz, 116 of which were returned
and then analyzed with SPSS. Moreover, semi-structured interviews were done
with fifty young Azerbaijani-speaking children. The findings from these inter-
views were both quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed and reported.
Data Collection
Focus Group Interview

Interviews, either individual or group interviews, often precede or follow ques-
tionnaires to develop ideas or triangulate research findings (Oppenheim, 1992).
A focus group interview or “thinking society in miniature” (Markova, Linell,
Grossen, & Orvig, 2007) was, thus, used in this research to develop ideas to
prepare a questionnaire. By producing qualitative data, focus group interviews
allow the researcher to learn not only why an issue is important but also what is
salient about it (Litosseliti, 2003). The aim in such interviews is to collect data
on group beliefs and norms regarding a particular topic or set of issues through
the capture of intra-group interaction (Bloor & Wood, 2006) and explore peo-
ple’s behavior and attitudes on “issues largely taken for granted” (Hesse-Biber &
Leavy, 2006). Focus group interviews, as “a method of least resistance,” are argu-
ably well-suited for such purposes, as people feel more comfortable to express
their attitudes and feeling when they are in a group (see Barbour, 2008).
The focus group interview protocol contained general questions germane to
the respondents’ attitudes and their linguistic behavior with respect to different
domains of home, education, and media. The focus group consisted of six moth-
ers of young children recruited from a language school, where parents waited
for their children’s class to be over to pick them up. With the consent of authori-
ties of the school, I was introduced to the parents by one of the assistants. The
interview was conducted in one of the free classes and lasted forty-five minutes.
Before the interview began, I provided a brief description of the research and
reassured the participants of the confidentiality of their identities. The partic-
ipants felt very comfortable when they found out that their names were not
required. The discussions during the interview were audio-recorded for analysis.
The analysis of the focus group provided some clues to designing the attitude
questionnaire. In terms of the domains of language use, parents explicitly talked
about the influence of satellite channels (especially Turkish channels) on their
children’s linguistic behavior, the impact of the Farsi-only education system on
their own behavior in the home, and their preference for using Farsi in the home
to ease their children’s integration with the education system. To triangulate
these findings and collect data at a larger scale to achieve a higher degree of
generalizability, these issues were included in the questionnaire in the form of
different questions (multi-item scales).
Questionnaire Data
Questionnaires are the most commonly used data collection instruments (Dornyei &
Taguchi, 2010). Questionnaires are known for being relatively easy to analyze
but difficult to construct. There are various challenges that the researcher needs
to anticipate before using a questionnaire. Designing questions, the effect of
ordering questions, and reliability are the most important issues that were taken
into account when designing the questionnaire.
The questionnaire data was collected through seven-point Likert scale ques-
tions, where the responses ranged from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly dis-
agree). Thus, responses 1, 2, and 3 together indicated the respondent’s agreement,
while responses 5, 6, and 7 showed his/her disagreement with a question. It is
worth noting that the midpoint response—i.e., 4—could be claimed to suggest
the participant had no particular inclination toward agreement or disagreement
regarding a question.
Azerbaijani Parents’ Attitudes

The questions, as shown in Table 5.1, revolved around Azerbaijani parents’
attitudes towards using Azerbaijani and Farsi in the home and their attitudes
towards educational policies and the media available to them, including Sahand
TV (East-Azerbaijan provincial channel), Farsi channels broadcast by the Iranian
government, and other Farsi channels broadcast through satellite from outside
Iran, and Turkish channels broadcast through satellite from Turkey.
TABLE 5.1 Azerbaijani Families’ Responses to Attitude Questions
Name of the multi-item scale Cronbach’s Alpha Mean St. Deviation

Attitudes towards Azerbaijani 0.66 3.1184 1.40324
Attitudes towards Farsi 0.83 3.9624 1.45374
Attitudes towards education in Azerbaijani 0.90 3.4750 0.56585
Attitudes towards Sahand TV 0.67 3.97 1.57
Attitudes towards Farsi channels 0.67 3.64 0.79
Azerbaijani Parents’ Attitudes Towards Azerbaijani

and Farsi in the Home
Eight questions on the questionnaire addressed Azerbaijani parents’ attitudes
with respect to Azerbaijani and Farsi use in the home. A factor analysis of those
questions yielded two distinct factors. A scale formed using questions 10, 40,
and 41 with the Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.66 shows Azerbaijani parents’ attitudes
towards Azerbaijani in the home. Another scale formed using questions 1, 17, 22,
and 30 with the Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.83 shows Azerbaijani parents’ attitudes
towards using Farsi in the home.
Table 5.1 lists the mean for the questions addressing attitudes towards Farsi
in the home. Given that 3.50 is the midpoint on the agreement/disagreement
continuum, the mean 3.96 indicates that the participants in the study are mod-
erately inclined towards disagreeing with the use of Farsi in the home. They do
not have strong views against using Farsi in the home, however. Farsi, as the
official language of the state, seems to have gained a foothold in the domain of
home in Tabriz.
Table 5.1 also shows that Azerbaijani parents participating in the research do
not hold strong views about using Azerbaijani in the home. The mean (3.11)
shows the respondents reported relatively moderate favorable attitudes towards
using Azerbaijani in the home. Given the role of Azerbaijani in Tabriz—i.e., the
ethnic language spoken daily—it is surprising that these parents do not express
stronger attachment to Azerbaijani. The results of a paired-samples T test between
attitudes towards Azerbaijani (M = 3.11; SD = 1.40) and attitudes toward Farsi
(M = 3.96; SD = 1.45) shows the difference is significant (t [100] = 3.20, p = .02),
meaning that Azerbaijanis report stronger attitudes towards using Azerbaijani
than Farsi in the home. Yet, such relatively weak attitudes with respect to Azer-
baijani use and moderately positive attitudes towards Farsi in the home are likely
to affect language use and family language policy in the home resulting in lan-
guage shift from Azerbaijani to Farsi in the long run.
Azerbaijani Parents’ Attitudes Towards Educational Policies

This section examines the attitudes of Azerbaijani families with respect to cur-
rent Farsi-medium education system and possible future introduction of Azer-
baijani to the education system either as a subject or as a medium of instruction.
The analysis of the attitudes of these families can suggest to what extent, if at all,
current educational policies are endorsed or contested by Azerbaijanis.
Ten questions in the attitude questionnaire were designed to investigate Azer-
baijani parents’ attitudes towards teaching Azerbaijani as a subject as well as using
Azerbaijani as a medium of instruction in schools in Tabriz. A factor analysis
showed that two questions—namely, questions 12 and 35—had a negative cor-
relation with other questions and thus were removed from the final analysis. The
Cronbach’s Alpha for the remaining eight questions was calculated at 0.90 show-
ing the high reliability of these questions.
The primary analysis of the data revealed that Azerbaijani parents’ attitudes
about the idea of introducing Azerbaijani into the school system in Tabriz were
neither strongly positive nor negative. The mean 3.47 suggests that Azerbaijani
parents seem to be irresolute with respect to having Azerbaijani in the education
system. Given the position and value of Azerbaijani and Farsi for Azerbaijani
people, Azerbaijani parents participating in the research seem not to be able to
make a firm decision as to whether to support the presence of Azerbaijani in the
education system or not.
The analysis of some of the questions separately, however, sheds more light on
the issue, revealing latent attitudes. Examining two sets of questions addressing
the presence of Azerbaijani as a subject and a medium of instruction in schools
suggests that the respondents seem to support the presence of Azerbaijani in the
education system as a subject much more strongly than Azerbaijani as a medium
of instruction. Questions number 2 and 23 addressed the issue of Azerbaijani as
a subject in the education system:
As Tables 5.2 and 5.3 demonstrate, answers one, two, and three—equivalent
to strongly agree, agree, and somewhat agree—score higher in total than answers
five, six, and seven indicating that the majority of the participants agree with
having Azerbaijani as a course in schools. It is worth noting, however, that, as
comparing Table 5.2 and 5.3 results demonstrates, not all the 78 percent of the
people agreeing with having a course on Azerbaijani may send their children to
TABLE 5.2 Results for Question Number 2

(2) I wish there were schools which had language courses on Azerbaijani.
Answers Strongly Agree Somewhat Neither agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly

agree agree nor disagree disagree disagree
Frequency 39 26 19 10 4 5 4
Valid percent 36.4 24.3 17.8 9.3 3.7 4.7 3.7

(23) I would send my child to a school where there was a course on Azerbaijani.

Frequency 25 11 14 30 9 11 6
Valid percent 23.6 10.4 13.2 28.3 8.5 10.7 5.7
such schools. Table 5.3 clearly shows that only 46 percent reported they would
send their children to schools where there was a course on Azerbaijani. More-
over, 28 percent checked the midpoint, suggesting ambivalence towards the issue
of having schools where Azerbaijani was taught as a subject.
By contrast, the analysis of question 18, which addresses the issue of using
Azerbaijani as a medium of instruction in schools, indicates that 50 percent of
parents would ideally like to have Azerbaijani as a medium of instruction in

schools.
Table 5.4 shows that nearly half of the participating parents wish there were
schools where the children could study all subjects in Azerbaijani. They wish
Azerbaijani was used as a medium of instruction. However, investigation of the
behavioral aspect of attitudes, data from question 33 in particular, suggests that
the parents’ wish is not likely to ever materialize as their responses indicate they
would still be unwilling to send their children to Azerbaijani-medium schools.
As Table 5.5 shows, over 60 percent of the participants disagree with sending
their children to Azerbaijani-medium schools.
The analysis of the questions addressing Azerbaijani education as a subject and
as a medium of instruction, respectively, indicates that Azerbaijani parents par-
ticipating in the research support having a course on Azerbaijani more strongly
than having Azerbaijani as the medium of instruction. One explanation for such
attitudes may be the parents’ concern about their children’s future. We could
assume that the respondents seem to believe that studying all subjects in Azerbai-
jani could lower their children’s proficiency in Farsi, which could in return slow

(18) I wish there were schools where all subjects were taught in Azerbaijani.

Frequency 24 14 16 17 13 16 6
Valid percent 22.6 13.2 15.1 16.0 12.3 15.1 5.7

(33) I would send my child to a school where they taught all subjects in Azerbaijani.

Frequency 17 5 5 12 15 39 13
Valid percent 16.0 4.7 4.7 11.3 14.2 36.8 12.3
down upward social and economic mobility. On the flipside, the parents are posi-
tive about their children being able to read and write in Azerbaijani, although, as
discussed above, they may not send their children to Azerbaijani-medium schools.
In sum, the analysis of parents’ attitudes regarding educational policies sug-
gests that most endorse the current policy—i.e., having Farsi as the only medium
of instruction. Although the majority of those responding would ideally like to
be able to read and write in Azerbaijani, they do not seem to be interested in

having Azerbaijani as a medium of instruction in the education system.
Azerbaijani Parents’ Attitudes and Behavior Towards

Television Channels
To investigate the parents’ attitudes towards Sahand TV (the provincial chan-
nel broadcasting in Azerbaijani and Farsi), and Farsi channels, six Likert scale
questions were designed. A factor analysis demonstrated two distinct underlying
factors, labeled as “attitudes towards Sahand TV,” and “attitudes towards Farsi
channels.” The means (M) for attitudes towards Sahand TV and Farsi channels
were respectively calculated at 3.97 and 3.64, on a Likert scale of 1 to 7. The
data show Azerbaijani parents’ relatively negative attitudes towards Sahand TV
compared to Farsi channels.
A paired-samples T test was conducted to compare the attitudes towards Sah-
and TV and Farsi channels, to determine if the difference between the two fac-
tors is significant. There was a significant difference in the scores for attitudes
towards Sahand TV (M = 3.97, SD = 1.57) and attitudes towards Farsi channels
(M = 3.64, SD = .79), conditions: t (103) = 2.17, p = .032. This provides evidence
that Azerbaijani parents hold negative attitudes towards Sahand TV compared
with Farsi channels. In other words, they prefer Farsi channels to Sahand TV.
To corroborate the above-mentioned findings, a question was also designed
to explore to what extent Azerbaijani parents watch different channels available
to them. Figure 5.1 provides more evidence reinforcing the view that the par-
ticipants do not watch Sahand TV as much as they watch other national channels
broadcast in Farsi and/or Turkish satellite channels. Nearly half (49.1 percent) of
the participants reported that they most often watched national Farsi channels.
Turkish formed the second-most commonly watched programs among Azer-
baijanis in Tabriz with 33 percent of the participants watching those programs.
About 13 percent of the respondents reported they watch Farsi satellite channels
that are broadcast from countries outside Iran. Only 4.7 percent of the parents
said they watched Sahand TV.
Sahand TV seems to have lost the battle to its Farsi and Turkish competitors
in attracting viewers. In other words, Azerbaijanis do not demonstrate a prefer-
ence for Sahand TV, presumably because it is not “institutionally complete and
qualitatively competitive” (Moring, 2007, p. 29). A low level of institutional
completeness—i.e., the inability to produce high-quality and attractive programs
60
49.1
50
40
33
30
20
13.2
10
4.7
0
National channels Turkish satellite Farsi satellite channels Sahand TV
channels
FIGURE 5.1 Channels Parents Watch Most Often (in Percentage)
for people, especially children and teenagers in the minority language (see Che-
val, 1992, p. 193)—may lead to negative results increasing “the tendency towards
a complementary use of media in the minority language, lowering the level of
functional completeness of these media” (Moring, 2007, p. 26). Sahand TV as
one of the main institutional supports established in 2000 seems to be only a
symbolic gesture by the government for showing their support and care for
Azerbaijani. This can be said to be a characteristic of all minority channels which
are “for” minorities rather than “by” minorities (Caspi & Elias, 2011). The way
Sahand TV functions has led Azerbaijanis to prefer Farsi and Turkish channels.
Considering such circumstances, it can be said that Azerbaijani has lost its hold
on one of the most important formal domains and institutions.
Interview With Azerbaijani Children

Children’s significant role in influencing language practices in the home has
been acknowledged in the literature. Because children are sensitive to “the dis-
favored status of their elders’ language” (Harrison, 2007, p. 8), they may choose
the more prestigious and dominant language under the influence of the educa-
tion sector, the media, and the public sphere (Spolsky, 2009). Influenced by
language policies outside home as well as family language policies, children,
depending on a variety of considerations, “make decisions, conscious or not, as
to the language(s) they want to use at home, with their peers and in the public
domain” (McCarty et al., 2009; Shohamy, 2006, p. 48). Such linguistic choices
among children in the home are highly likely to disrupt the intergenerational
transmission of weaker languages.
This section explores the dynamics of family language policy among Azerbai-
janis from the children’s perspective. Fifty children were interviewed about what
language(s) they use with different members of the family. The reported data
collected from the interviews suggests that Azerbaijani is not the only language
spoken in the home.
Azerbaijani Children’s Linguistic Choices in the Home

Children’s language use at home demonstrates that Azerbaijani is used inside the
home as the dominant language between children and their fathers. Yet, other
languages, Farsi being the most frequent one, are also used in the home in Tabriz.
As shown in Figure 5.2, Azerbaijani is the dominant language reported in
the home between the child and the father. Thirty-nine children (78 percent)
report that they use Azerbaijani to interact with their fathers. Farsi stands second
with seven children speaking Farsi at home with their fathers. Only two chil-
dren report using both Azerbaijani and Farsi within the family unit. One child
uses Azerbaijani and Turkish, and one (2 percent) uses Azerbaijani, Farsi, and
Turkish.3
The situation is slightly different when it comes to the mother. Thirty-three
children speak Azerbaijani with their mothers at home. Eleven report that they
speak Farsi at home when they talk with their mothers. Five use both languages,
and only one child uses three languages. This slight difference might be due to
the impact of gender on language choice. There is a body of research that sug-
gests women tend to choose the dominant language more often than men, and
consequently lead in linguistic change (e.g., Aikio, 1992; Cavanaugh, 2006; Gal,
1978; Holmes, 1993; Mukherjee, 2003; Roman, Juhasz, & Miller, 1994; Yu-Hsiu
Lee, 2013). Thus, Azerbaijani children might use Farsi more with their mothers
45
39
40
35
30
25
20
15
10 7
5
2 1 1
0
Azeri Farsi Azeri & Farsi Azeri & Turkish Azeri, Farsi, and
Turkish
FIGURE 5.2 Language Used With the Father at Home

than their fathers because their mothers expect them to do so. It is said that such
expectations, which lead to the strategic choice of a particular language, are usu-
ally carried out to achieve socioeconomic gains and acquire symbolic capital for
both the mother and her children (Smith-Hefner, 2009).
Azerbaijani is also reported as the dominant language used between the sib-
lings at home. Twenty-four of the thirty-eight children who had siblings (twelve
were only children) report they use only Azerbaijani while interacting with their
siblings. Farsi, as in the case of parents, stands in second place with nine children
using it. Azerbaijani and Farsi with three children using them, Turkish with one
child using it, and Farsi and Turkish also with one child using them take the
next places.
35 33
30
25
20
15
11
10
5
5
1
0
Azeri Farsi Azeri & Farsi Azeri, Farsi, and Turkish
FIGURE 5.3 Language Used With the Mother at Home
30
25 24
20
15
12
10 9
5
3
1 1
0
Azeri Farsi Azeri & Farsi Turkish Farsi & Turkish No siblings
FIGURE 5.4 Language Used With Siblings at Home

Azerbaijani Children’s Attitudes and Behavior

Towards Television Channels
This section examines Azerbaijani children’s reported attitudes and behavior with
respect to the broadcasting media available to them. Azerbaijani children’s atti-
tudes and behavior are explored here because children are active users of televi-
sion and able to learn—e.g., vocabulary—from television (Kirkorian, Wartella, &

Anderson, 2008; Kunkel, 1998; Madsen, 1973). Their attitudes and behavior
with respect to viewing television may consequently have an impact on language
maintenance or shift (e.g., Hourigan, 2007).
One part of the questions in the interviews with children were specifically
designed to learn about Azerbaijani children’s attitudes towards different lan-
guages in which programs were aired on different channels, and the possible
reasons for such attitudes. One question designed to explore the young Azerbai-
jani children’s attitudes towards programs broadcast in different languages was
which cartoon they would choose if they had the option to choose to watch that
cartoon in Azerbaijani, Farsi, or Turkish. Turkish was included in the question
because I found out during the pilot study as well as the focus group interview
that Azerbaijani families also watch Turkish satellite channels broadcast from
Turkey. Moreover, some of the children reported they knew how to speak Turk-
ish when they were asked how many languages they knew. This question was
designed to indirectly examine the children’s attitudes towards languages. As
the data below shows, such attitudes towards the three languages present on the
media tend to favor societally dominant languages.
As Figure 5.5 clearly demonstrates, 64 percent of Azerbaijani children reported
they preferred to watch cartoons in Farsi, the official language of the country,
whereas Azerbaijani and Turkish were preferred by 16 percent each, together
accounting for only half the number preferring Farsi. Interestingly, two of the
70
64
60
50
40
30
20 16 16
10
4
0
Cartoon in Farsi Cartoon in Azerbaijani Cartoon in Turkish Cartoon in Farsi/Turkish
FIGURE 5.5 Azerbaijani Children’s Preference to Watch Cartoons in Different Languages

children favored either Farsi or Turkish cartoons, but not Azerbaijani ones, sug-
gesting that Azerbaijani has no place in the media for two of the children.
A direct question was also posed to children with respect to their actual
behavior towards viewing Sahand TV. Figure 5.6 clearly shows that only nine out
of fifty children reported they watched Sahand TV on a regular basis. Twenty-
one of the children said they did not watch Sahand TV at all, and twenty of the
participants reported they watched Sahand TV only a little. It is worth noting

that watching Sahand TV would not necessarily mean watching Azerbaijani
programs and becoming exposed to Azerbaijani given that nearly half of the
programs on Sahand TV are aired in Farsi, especially children’s programs (see
Mirvahedi & Nasjian, 2010).
Three points can be made about the data presented above. First, as Browne
(2007) notes, many minority media offer few or no engaging programs for chil-
dren and teenagers to encourage them to use the language. Sahand TV does not
seem to be an exception. Farsi seems to have become the main and default language
choice for watching television for Azerbaijani children. This attitude is very likely
due to the children’s exposure to high-quality Farsi programs on television, and
perhaps the impact of the Farsi-only education sector. The children interviewed
mentioned various reasons for their lower interest in Sahand TV and Azerbaijani
programs, and positive attitudes towards Farsi and Farsi programs. They mentioned
reasons such as a weaker ability to understand Azerbaijani, being more accustomed
to Farsi, liking the way Farsi is spoken, wanting to learn more Farsi, Farsi being a
beautiful language, Farsi showing a higher class of the speaker, and so on, to justify
their preference for Farsi. Such positive attitudes are highly likely to be formed
under the influence of the education system, media, linguistic landscapes, and
other macro domains, or in Spolsky’s (2009) words by the ecology outside home.
There is a real danger, as Bell (2010) argues, that exposure on a daily basis to media
may implicitly signal the death or survival of a language as a fully vital language.
25
21
20
20
15
10 9
0
Do not watch Sahand TV Watch Sahand TV a lile Watch Sahand TV
FIGURE 5.6 The Number of Children Watching Sahand TV

Second, the presence of Turkish in the children’s repertoire and their posi-
tive attitudes towards Turkish are of great interest. The main reason mentioned
by children for their preference for Turkish channels was the better quality of
programs, in this case the children’s programs, broadcast on Turkish satellite
channels. The children found Turkish channels’ shows far more appealing that
those of Sahand TV. Labeling some of the Iranian and Sahand TV’s children’s
programs as “silly,” a seven-year-old boy, for instance, enthusiastically stated

that those programs compared to Turkish shows are meaningless and not worth
their while to watch. Other children mentioned reasons such as having always
watched Turkish programs, being used to Turkish programs, and knowing Turk-
ish better for their preference for Turkish shows.
The third point about the data presented above is the low level of positive
attitudes towards Azerbaijani television programs among Azerbaijani children.
Producing high-quality programs, Farsi and Turkish shows have replaced Azer-
baijani ones. This appears to be one of the reasons for children’s weaker prefer-
ence for Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani cartoons. The young children participating
in the interviews also mentioned that Azerbaijani is a “hard” language in their
opinion and that they cannot understand Azerbaijani. Having a weaker prefer-
ence for the Azerbaijani channel also seems to be the case for Azerbaijani people,
in general.
Discussion and Conclusion

The analysis of Azerbaijani parents and children’s attitudes towards language
policies in the education system and broadcast media, and the examination of the
dynamics of family language policy in the home, provided insightful findings.
First, although Azerbaijani is reported as the dominant language among family
members in the home, Farsi and Turkish have gained a foothold in the criti-
cal domain of home. This might not sound very detrimental to the vitality of
Azerbaijani at first glance. However, given the only moderately strong attitudes
towards using Azerbaijani in the home and moderately weak reactions against
using Farsi in the home, there is a concern that Farsi may replace Azerbaijani in
the long run. This concern becomes even more considerable when we take into
account Azerbaijani parents and children’s responses and reactions to language
policies implemented in other domains.
Second, Azerbaijani parents participating in the research reported moder-
ate attitudes towards potential presence of Azerbaijani in the education system.
Although the majority of the participants would like their children to be able
to read and write in their ethnic language—i.e., Azerbaijani—they do not seem
to favor Azerbaijani-medium schools. Endorsing Farsi-only educational policies
can be a contributing factor to encourage parents to introduce Farsi in the home
before school to ease their children’s integration into the mainstream education
system. This suggests that educational policies and how parents perceive the
impact of such policies on their children’s upward socioeconomic mobility could

be considered to be part of families’ language policies.
Third, the participating Azerbaijani children and parents’ attitudes and behav-
ior revealed that Sahand TV has not been very successful in attracting a strong
audience. As a result of Sahand TV not being qualitatively competitive (Moring,
2007), the participants reported that they watched other national channels in Farsi
and/or Turkish channels brought to them through satellite. Turkey, as a regional

power, has increasingly become integrated with the West through membership
in organizations such as NATO, the Council of Europe, and the G-20 major
economies. Given its great geostrategic and geopolitical importance—e.g., being
at the crossroads of Asia and Europe—it is seen as a country with significant
economic, cultural, and political potential (Bechev, 2011). Offering attractive job
opportunities, especially in the form of trade and business, Turkey has become
a gateway to the world of modernity and success, especially for the people with
the potential to learn Turkish. One possible explanation for Azerbaijanis’ interest
in Turkish could therefore be the socioeconomic potential Turkey has to offer.
The economic gain one can receive through learning Turkish on the one hand,
such as discounts in university fees for those who know Turkish, and the mutual
intelligibility of Azerbaijani and Turkish, on the other (Boeschoten, 1998), seem
to have affected parents and children’s attitudes and preferences towards Turkish,
encouraging people to watch Turkish television programs and learn the lan-
guage. Having recognized this potential, Azerbaijanis seem to be keen to learn
Turkish in order to be able to take this opportunity. They apparently see Turkish
in addition to Farsi as a tool for upward social mobility.
A second possible explanation for Azerbaijanis’ interest in Farsi and Turkish
channels could be their identification with Iranian and broader Turkic identity.
Association with the national Iranian identity and identification with the larger
Turkic community seem to have attracted Azerbaijanis to viewing Farsi and
Turkish channels. Farsi channels and Farsi programs on Sahand TV may exist
to amplify the national Iranian identity (for the role of state-governed media,
see Isaacs-Martin, 2008), while one goal of Turkish satellite channels might be
to bring all Turks together, in line with a pan-Turkic movement, by imposing
a larger Turkic identity across the borders (Poulton, 1999). Although a typical
Azerbaijani may identify equally with Azerbaijani and Iranian identity (Shaf-
fer, 2002), there might exist some who believe in and identify only with either
national and Iranian identity or broader Turkic identity, denying local Azerbai-
jani identity (cf., e.g., Hawes & Mirvahedi, 2013; Paul, 1999; Tavakoli-Targhi,
2009). The issue of regional identity in Azerbaijan has been a thorny historical
issue (Daniel, 2001, p. 7). More in-depth research is required to investigate what
portion of, and to what extent, Azerbaijanis identify themselves as Azerbaijani
and/or Turks, and/or Iranian.
This chapter has examined Azerbaijanis’ attitudes and practices with respect
to using languages in the home as well as language policies in the macro domains
of the education sector and the broadcasting media in the way that they can be
seen to influence language choice in the home domain. The data analyzed in
this chapter show that Azerbaijani parents and children use Farsi and Turkish
along with Azerbaijani to different extents in the domain of home. Azerbaijani
may not be endangered at the moment, but the intergenerational continuity of
Azerbaijani appears to be disrupted in some families. Given the lack of support-
ive and protective policies with respect to Azerbaijani use in macro domains and
institutions, and Azerbaijanis’ linguistic attitudes and behavior, a warning bell
should be sounded about the future of Azerbaijani in Tabriz.
Notes
1. See Iran’s Statistics Center at http://www.amar.org.ir/english/.
2. It is worth mentioning here that there are ongoing debates and doubts about the true
nature and intentions of the autonomous regional governments as well as the truth of
historical accounts of events in the 1950s in Iran. While some believe the governments
were not separatist, others argue that their ultimate intention was the disintegration of
Iran. In this chapter, I focus on the historical impact of events on the fate of languages.
The summary of event in the 1950s presented here is necessarily simplistic but aims to
provide the historical context for the research.
3. Turkish is the official language of Turkey; it has gained a foothold among Azerbaijanis
over the last decade.
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6
THE ROLE OF THE ZAPOTEC
LANGUAGE FROM LOZOGA’ IN
THE CALIFORNIAN MIGRANT

COMMUNITY
Daisy Bernal Lorenzo
Introduction
Few studies around the world have investigated migrants from indigenous
peoples with respect to their languages, inside and outside of their countries.
The indigenous migrant population from Mexico increased significantly in the
1980s, in both urban and rural zones in California—and then in Texas, New
York, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington (Fox, 2006,
p. 3). However, there is little information about the sociolinguistic situation of
Mexican indigenous languages in this migration setting. As researchers or lin-
guistic curators, then, we have to know more in order to act or propose strategies
that contribute to maintaining these languages as a part of the cultural heritage
of humanity.
According to INEGI (2015), in Mexico 7,382,785 people, three years or older,
speak an indigenous language. Of this population, 479,474 speak the Zapotec
language: 228,247 are men (47.6%), and 251,227 are women (52.4%). This lan-
guage belongs to the Oto-Manguean family, and it has 62 varieties (INALI,
2009). Contrary to the common belief that this language is only spoken in Oax-
aca, Mexico, it is also spoken in the State of Veracruz, Mexico; in the municipal-
ity of Playa Vicente, Santiago Sochiapan; and in the oil region from Minatitlan
and Coatzacoalcos (AVELI, 2010, p. 85).
At the end of the nineteenth century, different Zapotec and Mixe families
migrated to the State of Veracruz. It is commonly believed that in those years
many people used to speak Zapotec, and some families used to speak the Mixe
language. With the implementation of the schooling system in Spanish dur-
ing the 1930s in Playa Vicente and Lozoga’, the history of those native Zapo-
tec speakers changed gradually. This happened in many rural parts of Mexico.
The Role of the Zapotec Language 97
For example, Santiago’s (2015, p. 69) investigation carried out in Mitla, Oaxaca,
demonstrates that the grandparents he interviewed “perceive the school as a
transforming agent and a provoker of the Zapotec shift into Spanish” (my trans-
lation). But, on the other hand, some old adults consider that “younger parents
are responsible for not transmitting the Zapotec language to their children” (my
translation) (Santiago, 2015, p. 70). The school system and parents who decide
not to transmit their Zapotec language to their children are two factors that
contribute to language shift.
Although this language is still spoken by many people, five varieties of Zapo-
tec are only spoken by old adults in Oaxaca (Embriz and Zamora, 2012). This
situation reflects the language shift because of the lack of its transmission to chil-
dren and young people as proposed by Santiago. In any case, we need to analyze
what occurs in the intergenerational transmission of language of each family.
Pérez (2009), whose research with San Lucas Quiavini (SLQ) Zapotec migrants
was carried out in SLQ, Oaxaca, and in Los Angeles, California, found that “that
language choices among migrants affect language choices in San Lucas, thereby
destabilizing the domains of Zapotec use in the native community”. This means
that it is important to study indigenous language use and its transmission from
parents to children when speakers are living in other places. Here the focus is on
Lozoga’, a Zapotec community located in the South of Veracruz, Mexico.1
The present chapter examines the experience of four American children,
whose parents are Zapotec speakers from Lozoga’ (LZ), with respect to languages
they use at home and with their family in Los Angeles, California. I am going
to analyze how the educational context and the decisions of children’s parents
are determined by the languages their children acquire and learn. I propose
the refunctionalization concept (explained further below) in order to talk about
the role of Zapotec, taking into consideration the functions of languages that
were presented by Halliday (1979) and Jakobson (1988). Although the Zapotec
language is at risk, I argue that there exists a kind of refunctionalization in this
language in its new context.
First, it is important to contextualize where Lozogan paisanos (people from
the same area, sharing a common culture) are from in Mexico, in order to
understand the role that the Zapotec language plays in these children’s life with
their parents. Lozoga’ is located in the Southwest of Veracruz, bordering the State
of Oaxaca, as we can see in the map (see Figure 6.1). It has seven barrios: Las
Cruces, Coyote, Centro, Coyol, Lagunilla, Colorado, and Carmelita. Lozoga’ is
a multilingual community, where Zapotec is spoken more by people who are
35 years or older according to an estimate made by some old native speakers. The
INEGI, in its Censo de Población y Vivienda 2010, registered the Lozogan popula-
tion as 2,594. Of this number, 1,321 speak an indigenous language (51%). As a
member of this community, I observe that Zapotec is used the most. The rest
of the population (49%) are monolingual speakers, in this case, of the Spanish
language.
FIGURE 6.1 Barrios of Lozoga’ and Its Languages2

Many children, teenagers, and young people do not speak Zapotec, but some
of them understand it. All of them speak Spanish. A small number of Chinan-
tec families also settled in the town, so their Chinantec language is also heard;
the Mixe language is also spoken by a few old people in the Barrio Coyote.
We know who speaks it. In addition, there are Zapotecs who went to LA and
returned to Lozoga’. They understand and speak a little English as their third lan-
guage. In some specific cases, this language is used when the American children
of Lozogan migrants communicate with other people who understand English,
in Lozoga’, including each other.
Lozogan people migrated to the United States—specifically, Los Angeles,
California—from the end of the 1970s through to the first years of the 2000s.
They left the town to pursue the “American Dream”. Lands were abandoned.
Few people used to sow; others used to look after cows and bulls a medias.3 Oth-
ers keep on working in their grocery stores; renting their land; teaching (in
elementary school); and studying. There are many old people in Lozoga’ and
many adults in LA as well who still speak Zapotec and Spanish, according to the
observations and interviews I made in the community during 2012–2014. Few
Zapotec adults who live in LA even speak or understand English because of the
context where they are right now.
Literature Review
According to the Instituto Cervantes (1997–2016), language functions “are the
different goals that can be achieved through the social use of a language”. All
languages, in this sense, have a purpose and a utility in the interlocutors’ com-
municative act, in a determined context.
In his book Essays on General Linguistics (1988), Jakobson argues that language
must be researched in all the variety of its functions. He summarizes these func-
tions based on the factors that are constitutive of all discursive acts—i.e., any act of
verbal communication. He states that each of these six factors determines a differ-
ent function of language, and he explains them as follows: the sender sends a mes-
sage to the receiver; the message requires a context in order to be operative, thus the
receiver can verbally capture it or be susceptible of verbalization; the code must be
common or partly common between the sender and the receiver; the contact refers
to the physical channel and a psychological connection for the communication to
be established between the sender and the receiver. Accordingly to Portal Educa-
tivo (2008), the functions of language that Jakobson distinguishes and explains are:
(a) Referential. Objectively represents reality, informing or exposing facts, con-

cepts, and ideas.
(b) Emotive or expressive. Expresses emotions, feelings, and physical states.
(c) Poetic. It’s present in literary texts and publicity. It tries to alter everyday
language to provoke an effect in its form. It is centered in how it is said.
100 Daisy Bernal Lorenzo
(d) Conative. Incites or influences others to do something.

(e) Phatic. Opens, closes, and maintains communication.
(f ) Metalingual. It refers to the code itself.
Furthermore, Halliday (1979, pp. 30–31) did a study on the first stages of lan-
guage development, from a functional point of view, in order to see how chil-
dren gradually learn to signify. He registered seven initial functions:
1. Instrumental (“I want”): to satisfy material needs

2. Regulatory (“do as I tell you”): to regulate the behaviour of others
3. Interactional (“me” and you”): to involve other people
4. Personal (“here I am”): to identify and express the self
5. Heuristic (“tell me why”): to explore the outside and inside world
6. Imaginative (“let’s pretend”): to create a world of one’s own
7. Informative (“I’ve got something to tell you”): to communicate new
information.
Both approaches center their attention on the communicative act. Halliday (1979,
p. 242), however, adds that when the internal functioning of language is explained,
it is fundamental to consider its external relation with the social context. Also, he
argues that language consists of three components: content, form, and expression—
or, if we are to use linguistic terms, semantics, lexicogrammar, and phonology. As
regards the content, he argues that when it is analyzed, it is possible to observe the
internal organization in which language social functions are reflected.
Based on these two approaches, I define linguistic refunctionalization as the
reproduction, activation, actualization, and/or change that a language can have with
respect to its uses and functions in a determined social, cultural, and geopolitical
context, having specific ends in the communicative act and being a “linguistic
system”. In Halliday’s (1979, p. 30) words, “language is how it is because of what
it has to do”.
Methodology
In spring 2013, I interviewed four children in Los Angeles, California, in order to
gather information about the role the Zapotec language plays for these children,
who were born in that city. Here I will use codes for each child. The first one is
SE, an 11-year-old-girl; the second is MBS, a 9-year-old girl; the third is ME, a
16-year-old girl; and the last one, MMV, is a 17-year-old boy. The main criterion
for choosing each child was convenience, as well as the following:
• A child whose parents are Zapotec speakers from Lozoga’.

• A child whose mother is a Zapotec speaker from Lozoga’ and his/her father
understands this language.
• A teenager whose father is a Zapotec speaker from Lozoga’ and his/her

mother understands this language.
• A teenager whose mother is a Zapotec speaker from Lozoga’.
When interviewing the four children, their parents were present. I had the
authorization for recording them, after explaining the purpose of this research
in LA to their parents. Two of the Zapotec parents (JLMC, LN) were inter-
viewed at the same time and place as their children (MMV, ME) and two at
different times, because of work and class commitments (AA and her daughter
SE, and JS and her daughter MBS). The findings from this set of data were
compared to the one provided by their children, as well as with my own
observations.
After analysis, the data was organized in the following categories, which pro-
vide the structure of the following section:
(a) Languages that children speak and understand

(b) Uses and functions of language they speak and understand
(c) Experiences or imagination about Lozoga’ and its languages
(d) Languages and intercultural experiences in LA
(e) Experiences of Lozogan paisanos in the transmission of Zapotec language to
their children in LA.
Findings and Analysis

Here, I discuss the data using the five categories mentioned above, in order to
understand the role that the Zapotec language plays in the lives of these children
and their families.
(a) Languages That Children Speak and/or Understand 4

Table 6.1 shows the languages that each child speaks and/or understands and
each language’s role.
Spanish is the mother tongue (MT) in three cases. Only SE acquired Zapotec
as a mother tongue, and ME acquired it as a second language (L2) in Lozoga’.
The English language is L2 in two cases, L3 for two cases and SE speaks Span-
ish as a L2. She is learning Korean as a L4, because she spends time with Korean
children in a children’s program preparing for a concert for an hour each day
in the afternoons. There are children who speak languages from their parents
(Latin American and Asia), but English is the language in which they communicate.
In one case, MMV took Chinese classes for a semester, so it is his third language.
However, in all cases, English is the language they speak the most, because of the
time spent in school.
TABLE 6.1 Languages in Children’s Lives
Languages CASE: SE CASE: ME

MT L2 L3 L4 MT L2 L3
Spanish
Zapotec
English
Korean
Languages CASE: MBS CASE: MMV

MT L2 L3 MT L2 L3
Spanish
Zapotec
English
Chinese
The children said that they had developed the linguistic abilities shown below.
Here, each skill (writing, reading, listening, and speaking) is considered if it was
learned or acquired.
What we immediately notice from the self-reported data in Figure 6.2 is that
English and Spanish are the languages children use the most in LA. All of them
go to school, and their education is in English. They have bilingual teachers
(English-Spanish), but they teach in English. While I observed that their families
promote Spanish at home, English is the language in which they receive their
education. However, children do take Spanish courses in their school in order to
improve or become proficient in this language.
We can see that the Zapotec language is developed only in speaking (particu-
larly by SE, whose parents still help her to communicate in Zapotec with her
grandparents from Lozoga’; and to a lesser extent by ME) and listening (SE and
ME understand perfectly). The case of SE is interesting because her mother does
not speak much Spanish; she is a Zapotec native speaker, so she speaks Zapotec to
SE more often. In the case of ME, her mother speaks Zapotec and Spanish only.
MBS understands and speaks a little of the Zapotec language, whereas MMV does
not speak this language; he understands only some isolated words. As shown in
Figure 6.2, the four children do not write and read any Zapotec.
As regards the other languages, SE is starting to understand a little of the Korean
language because she spends time with Korean children in her musical practices, so
in that place she listens to Korean. MMV studied Chinese during a semester in his
school, and he reported that he got a basic level of knowledge about this language.
We can see the activation of different languages as an important part of the
linguistic abilities developed in each child. They acquired two or three languages
15%
15%
Chinese
15%
15%
Zapotec 75%
50% Writing
100% Reading
100%
Spanish 100%
100% Listening
100% Speaking
100%
English 100%
100%
Korean
25%
FIGURE 6.2 Linguistic Abilities
(Zapotec, Spanish, and English); they are taught in English during their educa-
tion; and Spanish is taught as a subject at school, when the school has a program
that offers the Spanish course or for example when they can choose a language
they want to learn. So, the question is, how do these languages work?
(b) Uses and Functions of the Languages

They Speak and Understand
The ways in which the four children reported using their languages are shown in
Table 6.2. In the case of Zapotec, information reported here is taken only from
SE’s and ME’s experiences.
To sum up, we can see from Table 6.2 some of the functions of language as
proposed by Jakobson (2008):
• Referential (oriented toward the CONTEXT)

• Emotive (expressive) (oriented toward the addresser)
• Conative (action-inducing, such as a command) (oriented toward the addressee)
• Metalingual (language speaking about language) (oriented toward the CODE)
• Poetic (oriented toward the MESSAGE for its own sake)
• Phatic (associated with the contact)
TABLE 6.2 Uses and Functions of Languages in Children’s Lives
Languages Places Means Participants Functions

Spanish House/ Face-to-face Parents Plans
School Facebook and family Interpreting
(cousins, Communicating
uncle, aunt, Having nightmares
grandparents) Making corrections

Classmates Knowing of the language
Zapotec House/ Face to Face Mother Saying hello/good-bye
Kermes/ Telephone/ and uncle/ Asking for food
Street/School Cell phone Lozogan Listening news from Lozoga’
people Making plans and shopping
Asking for health conditions
and studies
Recognizing variants
(Oaxaca-Veracruz)
Thanking
English School/ Face-to-face Classmates Playing games
House Facebook Parents Doing homework
Park/ Friends Camping
Interpreting
Expressing emotions and
feelings (angry and happiness)
Doing exercise
Dreaming
Making corrections
Korean Concert/ Face-to-face/ Classmates Greetings
Street TV Knowing games
Chinese School TV Classmates Knowing of the language
Characters of
cartoons
A party that is organized and celebrated by a group of people in order to collect money, following
common objectives. So they usually sell food, hold raffles, enjoy dancing, and so on.
We can also notice that interactional, instrumental, and informative functions

proposed by Halliday are present in their Zapotec language use.
(c) Experiences or Imagination About Lozoga’

and Its Languages
SE was in Lozoga’ once when she was four years old. She is aware that her parents
come from Lozoga’ and Oaxaca and notices the existence of other languages in
LA. SE remembered that her younger brother told her, in a mixture of English
and Spanish, that he used to see green and black children in the field in Lozoga’,
who are not seen these days. This made SE scared to go back to Lozoga’.
ME was three and a half years old when she was in Lozoga’, and she learnt
Zapotec language during her nine months there. Her grandmother and aunts
used to communicate with ME only in Zapotec. So Zapotec became her second
language. ME perfectly understands this language and speaks a little today. She
knows her grandparents are descendants from Oaxaqueños people.
Later, as a teenager, she travelled to Lozoga’ alone and met with ten teen-
agers from LA, also the children of Lozogan Zapotecs, who also were travel-
ling to this community. They communicated in English. ME was the only
person who understood Zapotec. ME tried not to speak English in the town,
because people think that a person who speaks English is rich, and she was
afraid somebody might kidnap her. So she preferred to speak Spanish there.
She said that when she was in Lozoga’, people told her stories about “duendes”,
little children that make us get into mischief—also about a dead woman who
appears in the park and about Bene ya’, somebody who gives you money you
never have.
When MMV was a child, he often used to go to Lozoga’ with his father,
but now it is not a common event. This teenager knows his parents are from
Veracruz, specifically Lozoga’. He recognizes Zapotec and Spanish are spoken
in the community, and he was curious to know what Zapotec speakers talk
about in Lozoga’. He enjoyed spending time with his family (grandparents, great
grandmother, and uncle who used to take him to the cattle ranch). His aunt told
him a story about a person who changed into something. During his stay, he
communicated in Spanish and English. His family from Lozoga’ wanted him to
translate what his little brother would say in English into Spanish, because his
brother does not speak Spanish.
MBS has never been to Lozoga’, although her family there ask her to visit
them. She would like to travel there, but, when thinking of this possibility, she is
afraid of not returning to LA. MBS knows that in Lozoga’ people speak Zapotec
and Spanish. Sometimes she communicates with some families who live in the
community and uses Spanish. She asks about their health and well-being.
(d) Languages and Intercultural Experiences in LA

The majority of children from Lozogan paisanos, born in LA, are descendants
of Latin-American parents (speakers of different languages: Spanish, indigenous
languages, depending on countries they are from). These four children rec-
ognize there are people who speak different languages in LA besides English
and Spanish: Korean, Zapotec, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, indigenous languages
from Guatemala, Persian (Farsi), Arabic. They spend time with children whose
parents are Afro-Americans, from El Salvador, Guatemala, Korea, the United
States, and Mexico (from Michoacán, Zacatecas, Hidalgo, D.F., Puebla, Colima,
Villa Hermosa, Chiapas, and Veracruz [from Lozoga’, El Arenal, El Gavilán,
and Chilapa—these are Zapotec communities]). Many children speak English
in parties and kermeses that Zapotec paisanos organize in LA, where three
languages are in use: Spanish, Zapotec, and English. The kermes is the central
meeting among Zapotec paisanos and other people with whom they have got on
well. Table 6.3 presents information about the presence of the Zapotec language
in the children’s life:
TABLE 6.3 The Presence of Zapotec in the Children’s Lives
Children Family Social Education

SE Parents, brother; Lozogan paisanos A teacher from Chihuahua
grandparents who in kermes, baptisms, motivates her mother to teach
live in LA and and when they this language to SE
Lozoga’ meet in streets With one of her classmates
ME Mother, aunts, Lozogan paisanos When she and her classmates
grandmother, cousins in LA and Lozoga’ (women from Oaxaca) speak
in LA and Lozoga’ Zapotec
MBS Mother and uncle Lozogan paisanos –
in LA in LA
MMV Father in LA Lozogan paisanos –
in Lozoga’
The Zapotec language appears in school only when some of these children
meet other students who speak or understand Zapotec and when teachers moti-
vate parents to keep on using this indigenous language. However, Zapotec also
has a presence at home, in kermeses, and in parties with paisanos from Lozoga’.
Zapotec language is then used and heard in LA because children have parents,
family, and Lozogan paisanos who use it. Furthermore, three of them have
been to Lozoga’ where they have listened to this language, but they commu-
nicate in Spanish with their family who live in Lozoga’. Indeed, ME said she
was surprised when she was in Lozoga’ because she believed that young people
would speak Zapotec; however, this was not the case as only some children
understood it:
Pensé que todos iban a entender zapoteco, los niños de allá de mi edad o
más grandes ah . . . ya no entienden, unos lo entienden o no lo hablan.
I thought that everybody was going to understand Zapotec, children
from there [Lozoga’], who are the same age as me or older, ah . . . they
don’t speak Zapotec anymore. Some of them understand it or they don’t
speak it.
(my translation)
What ME points out is a symptom of non-Zapotec transmission to children in

Lozoga’: children and teenagers do not speak it. Lozoga’ is a Zapotec community
where the language is supposed to be the mother tongue of their parents. A simi-
lar situation for Zapotec exists in LA, but the reasons vary a little.
In terms of other languages and experiences, the children believe that English
gives them opportunities to study a profession, and they know that speak-
ing this language and Spanish will give them the opportunity to find a job.
However, they have many possibilities to learn other languages of the world
because LA is a city that has everything. SE wants to learn Italian because her
father works in an Italian restaurant; she is interested in taking part in the
Olympic Games, and she likes running. At school, she has stood out in read-
ing and mathematics, and she likes to learn Chinese. MMV likes to be a DJ
in the celebration parties; he likes to mix English music, but mixing Span-
ish with English causes difficulty for him, because he needs to know more
Spanish. Of the children, only MBS would like to learn Zapotec because she
wishes to know what her mother talks about in this language, plus the curi-
osity of knowing what Zapotec speakers talk about. She has a cousin who
speaks English, Spanish, and a little Zapotec. MBS is also interested in learning
French; she has not seen French people in LA, but she has listened to this lan-
guage via television. Mostly, however, she watches TV programs like Sponge
Bob and “El Chavo del 8” in Spanish.
(e) Experiences of Lozogan Paisanos in the Transmission

of Zapotec Language to Their Children in LA
In three cases, the mothers of the children, speakers of Zapotec as a mother
tongue, have played an important role transmitting the Zapotec language to
their children, because they spend more time with them at home. Even if they
work, they look after their children. Men work outside the home more than
their wives. The family motivation is important to make children feel interested
in learning Zapotec—for example, AA said:
Le digo: “aprende hijo aprende a hablar zapoteco, es bonito, porque cuando

te vas a ir pal pueblo allí vas a entender lo que te van a decir, sea bien o
sea mal; ya lo sabes, pero si no lo sabes, aunque te van a mentar a mí, ni
sabes lo que te van a decir, pero tienes que aprenderlo y ya pues si . . . si ya
lo sabes, pero vas a disimular, no lo demuestras que esto, el otro. No te lo
estoy enseñando para que andes peleando o diciendo cosas a los niños. Yo
te estoy enseñando cosas buenas, no porque escuchas que alguien habla mal
de mí o de tu papá o de ti mismo y vas y te arrinconas, no”, le digo, “eso
no, tú este . . . ignóralos”.
I tell him, “learn my son, learn to speak Zapotec, it is pretty, because
when you go to the town [i.e., Lozoga’], you will understand what people
are going to tell you there, bad or good things; you will already know,
but if you don’t know it, when somebody wants to insult me, you won’t
know what people will say, but you have to learn it, because if you know
it . . . but you’re going to disguise it; you won’t show this and that. I’m not
teaching it so that you fight or say [rude words] to children. I am teaching
you good things, if you listen to somebody gossip about me or your father
or yourself and you hide, no”, I tell him, “don’t behave that way, ahmm,
ignore them!”
The Zapotec language is seen as a means to connect affectively—for example,

AA’s children with their grandparents who live in Lozoga’. SE said: “One day
my mom told me that my grandma does not speak Spanish and we had to learn
Zapotec too . . . and if one day we go back to [Lozoga´ ] we had to communi-
cate with her in Zapotec” (my translation). On the other hand, this language is
the mother tongue of AA, so she communicates in Zapotec with her children.
However, AA notes that her daughter SE used to speak Zapotec very well when
she was a child:
Bien que entiende ella zapoteco, pero como ya para hablarlo ya no podía
hablarlo como lo hablaba antes, ella lo hablaba, bien bonito que lo hablaba,
“hola”, todo saluda bien, decir “gracias”, todo así hablaba ella zapoteco y
contaba de 1 al 10 contaba ella zapoteco. Yo no quería que lo pasara en
puro inglés, porque yo no quiero que pierda el idioma de uno.
She understands Zapotec very well, but when she wants to speak it,
she cannot do it as before, she used to speak it very well, “hi”, she used to
say “hello”, “thank you”, she used to say all these things in Zapotec, and
she used to count from 1 to 10 in Zapotec. I didn’t want her to study only
English [in school], because I don’t want our language to be lost.
Cuando ella estaba en primero y en segundo sí lo hablaba porque me
acuerdo, ella cuando me dice: “Ben dagawa xtonha yet” [dame de comer,
tengo hambre]; “Goxken Dios” [Gracias a Dios]; o “Ba bedawa” [ya comí];
“Goyiba trast” [voy a lavar los trastes].
When she was in first and second grade [of primary school], she used
to speak it [Zapotec], when she tells me: “Ben dagawa xtonha yet” [give
me my food, I am hungry]; “Goxken Dios” [Thank Godness!]: or “Ba
bedawa” [I already ate]; “Goyiba trast” [I am going to wash dishes].
(my translation)
There exists a sense of identity with the language, and this motivates Zapotec
language use by speakers in LA.
LN said that Zapotec paisanos are ashamed to speak in their Zapotec lan-
guage, but she is not. She communicates in Zapotec with her siblings who live in
Lozoga’ and Florida, her friends of the same generation, and paisanos in the ker-
mes. When she goes shopping with ME, she uses Zapotec with her to plan some-
thing. LN said that she uses Zapotec and Spanish to speak with her daughter,
who understands but does not speak much, preferring to answer in Spanish when
her mother uses Zapotec.
Si hay que hacer una línea, yo le digo en zapoteco: “mira, vete allá, que
hay menos gente, y si no ya me voy para allá, si pasa más rápido me voy
para allá”.
If we have to do a line, I tell her in Zapotec: “look, go over there, there

are few people, and if not, I’m going over there, if people go fast, I will go
over there”.
LN motivates her daughter to learn Zapotec. This woman is conscious about

the importance of maintaining this language through the parents.
The third parent is JLMC, who talks to his sons in Spanish, but he spends less
time with them than his wife does. He does, however, encourage them to speak
Zapotec; the children, however, say they are not going to be able to speak it
because it is difficult or they are ashamed to speak it. JLMC sometimes compares
Zapotec and English in order to motivate his children to learn Zapotec: “mira,
hay muchos de . . . palabras que hablas en zapoteco que es casi igual en inglés,
como el awey [yes] es como el freeway [autopista]”. He means that the pronuncia-
tion of the word awey from Zapotec is similar to “way” from English. He tries
to convince his children to speak Zapotec by making this comparison. On the
other hand, JLMC speaks Zapotec to paisanos who know it, but sometimes there
are people who prohibit him to speak it:
Tengo un amigo que es de Mexicali y siempre dice: “ey, no quiero me

hables así delante de mí con éste [señalando a la persona que habla zapo-
teco]”, “no puedo es que él yo tengo que hablar el dialecto; yo no estoy
hablándote mal de ti ni le estoy diciendo . . . estoy comunicándome así, pero
por otras cosas que no quiero que tú le entiendas” le digo, pero . . . dice:
“no, pero es que aquí en mi cara no”. . . . “Sorry, pero es que . . . a mí se me
sale hablarlo porque yo sé que lo hablo, yo me siento raro hablar español y
sabiendo que él habla dialecto” le digo.
I have a friend who is from Mexicali and he always says: “hey, I don’t
want you to talk to me this way with him [pointing out to the person who
speaks Zapotec]”, “I cannot, because he speaks with him in our dialect; I’m
not speaking bad things about you, neither am I saying to him . . . I am
communicating this way, but I don’t want you to understand” I tell him,
but . . . he says: “no, but in front of me I don’t want to”. . . . “Sorry, it’s just
that . . . my language comes out because I know I speak it, I feel strange
speaking Spanish with him because he speaks dialect”, I tell him.
JLMC does his best to keep speaking Zapotec in LA with people who speak
it. He appreciates and wants to maintain the language, while recognizing that
Zapotec is not spoken by many children who were born in the city. However,
Zapotec paisanos work to maintain their customs and traditions such as music
and dances. Their children take part in them. They dance and play the tradi-
tional music from Lozoga’ because there is a wind music band:
Se formó una banda allí está donde están digamos no . . . siguiendo la

cultura que no se muera, ya formaron la banda de viento y eso lo bonito

de nosotros, que no se pierda esa tradición ya que estamos acá y ahora. Ya
los niños más chiquitos como ahora dijo mi hermano, terminando dice,
ya estamos, van a crecer éstos, vamos meter ahora a otros niños pa que
vayan . . . que aquellos se salgan aquí ya está el refuerzo.
A band was integrated there, it is . . . I mean . . . maintaining our cul-
ture so it doesn’t die. They integrated a wind music band and it is good
for us, not to lose our tradition here and now. The little children, as my
brother said, we are already, they are going to grow up, then we are going
to form other children so that they go . . . if the others left the band, we
can have other generation.
When asked whether the Zapotec language is going to live more or not, JLMC
answered:
Yo digo que allí ya estamos eh . . . allí creo que la lengua los ya allí está
quedando ya; ya nomás el papá lo habla, porque los hijos no lo quieren
hablar . . . bueno, no sé si es culpa de uno ¿no? porque no les enseña uno
hablarlo, pero a veces tú quieres hablarlo y dicen . . . se empiezan a reír de
ti; o que no quieren aprender.
I say that we are already there, eh . . . I think the language is already
staying behind; now it’s only the dads who speak it, because children don’t
want to speak it . . . well, I don’t know if it is our fault, isn’t it? Because
one doesn’t teach them to speak it, but one sometimes wants to speak it and
they say . . . they start laughing at once.
We can see that the experience of JLMC with his children is different from AA
and LN. While women generally play an important role in transmitting Zapotec
language because they spend more time with their children, the case of JLMC
is different because his wife only understands words and phrases in Zapotec. She
speaks to her children in Spanish and English. JLMC asks his wife not to speak
English to their children:
No les hables mucho inglés, porque ella como ella habla inglés . . . no les
hables inglés a ellos porque ¿sabe por qué? ellos se les va ser muy difícil
llegar a un pueblo, digamos yendo pa México no van a poder hablar bien
el español.
Don’t speak to them much in English, because she, as she speaks

English . . . don’t speak English to them because, you know why? They
are going to have problems when they want to go to a town [when the
Spanish is spoken], I mean, going to Mexico they won’t be able to speak
Spanish very well.
Because JLMC sees his children do not want to learn Zapotec, he wants them to
speak Spanish very well, because in Mexico and Lozoga’ people speak Spanish.
But he insists his children learn Zapotec: “but I sometimes tell him [he pointed
out MMV, his son], if you don’t want to learn it is your decision, because my
mom didn’t tell me: go, learn Zapotec fast ; I know that . . . I felt very strange, I
tell him, I arrived where everybody used to speak dialect, nobody used to speak
Spanish, does it make sense?” (my translation).
The experience of JLMC contrasts with the suggestion that younger parents
are failing to transmit the language (Santiago, 2015). In this case, JLMC wants
his children to learn Zapotec, but they do not want to. This may suggest that
when a mother does not speak Zapotec, her children will not; her children will
only speak the languages their mother uses with them.
JS, the fourth parent, reads stories with MBS in English. Sometimes JS tells
short stories from her grandparents to MBS in Spanish, because her daughter
asks her to tell these stories from her family in Lozoga’. JS talks to her brother in
Zapotec, so her daughter MBS understands a little, because she listens to them
at home. JS said she would like MBS to learn Zapotec, so she shares what they
talk about in Zapotec with MBS. Her daughter is interested in knowing Zapotec.
One day she listened to her mother and her aunt: “Mom, what did my aunt Cris
tell you, you were saying . . . because you mentioned me” (my translation). MBS
knows Spanish and English, because she was in a bilingual preschool. During
the first grade of primary school, her daughter was taught in English completely,
and, as a result, JS had difficulties helping with MBS’ homework.
JS goes to the parties that Zapotec Oaxaqueños celebrate (Santa Cruz, May 3),
where they speak Zapotec with paisanos. There, they eat chicken broth, cham-
purrado, bean tamales, and bread and enjoy wind band music. In this way, they
celebrate their indigenous culture. JS has seen people who are ashamed to speak
Zapotec, but she is not. She is proud of speaking this language. JS’s husband does
not speak Zapotec, but he understands when she talks to him at home. She com-
mented that one day her boss listened to her speak Zapotec to her boss’s children,
and she realized his boss valued her Zapotec language:
Dice: “a ver cómo se dice tortilla, cómo se dice pan, cómo se dice”. Dice
“ay; me gustaría que tú les enseñaras a mis hijos” dice, “a mí me gustaría
que ellos hablaran zapoteco y ellos hablan puro inglés”. Apenas entendían
el español [los niños]. Y le digo: “pues primero que aprendan el español y
después les enseño el zapoteco” le digo; “no” dice “están yendo a clases de
español también”. Pero sí me sorprendió que mi patrón me . . . le intere-

sara, pues el idioma.
He says: “let’s see, how do you say ‘tortilla’, how do you say ‘bread’,
how do you say?” He says “I would like you to teach [Zapotec] to my chil-
dren”, he says, “I would love them to speak Zapotec and they only speak
English”. They hardly understand Spanish [children]. I tell him: “first,
they have to learn Spanish and then I teach them Zapotec” I tell him; “no,
they are also taking Spanish classes”. I was surprised that my boss . . . was
interested in the language.
JS was surprised by her boss’s attitude to her language. She feels sad because
Zapotec is losing words and because people introduce Spanish words when
speaking Zapotec. She also notices there are words from English that Zapotec
people use when talking.
Conclusions
Spanish and English are used more in Lozogan paisanos’ children’s life in LA
than the Zapotec language, which is invisible in children’s schooling. English is
the language in which many children are educated, and the Spanish language
has a presence when children have opportunities to take classes to study it during
their education. Indeed, many languages are alive in the children’s world, which
follows a trajectory determined by the actions and attitudes of their linguistic
communities. For Lozogan Zapotec, however, and as a member of this linguistic
community, I see two possibilities:
(1) Children play an important role in the cultural reproduction from Lozoga’
in LA. We can see what Lozogan paisanos do in favor of keeping their cus-
toms in that city. They and their children participate in festivities (“Santa
Cecilia” / “San Marcos”) and parties such as birthdays, christenings, wed-
dings, first communion; dance “brincadillo” with the wind band music; eat
food from Lozoga’ or Mexico (barbacoa, soup, bread, pozole, tamales, and so
on) or other dances (merengue, salsa); and sing with the Mariachi in Span-
ish. But Zapotec is at risk of losing a place in these American children’s lives,
despite it being a vital element in our Zapotec culture.
(2) In spite of the fact that Lozogan Zapotec is at risk, it is still alive at certain
moments for those children who understand or speak it a little or regu-
larly (in the family and kermeses organized by Lozogan paisanos). In that
sense, there exists a kind of refunctionalization, because the language still
has some functions. Also, the Zapotec language is useful for a conversation,
as in the example between ME (daughter) and LN (mother): both of them
are bilingual—one speaks two languages, and the other speaks Zapotec a
little but understands very well. Moreno (2006, p. 59) points out that ses-
quilinguism is “the ability to understand a language without speaking it”
(my translation). Zapotec is still active because it allows the communication

between ME (who understands it) and LN (who speaks it). Each one speaks
in Zapotec (LN) and Spanish (ME). If the Lozogan Zapotec linguistic com-
munity wants to maintain and preserve the language, there needs to be
a broadly based intervention project involving older Zapotec speakers and
members from LA and LZ interested in preserving Zapotec knowledge from
and in this language. It is still possible to activate Zapotec in American chil-

dren who understand and speak it a little or regularly, but that opportunity
will not remain forever.
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the Recovering Voices Project of the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, DC, in spring 2013, through Gabriela Pérez Báez
(Curator of Linguistics, Department of Anthropology).
Notes
1. Its official name is “El Nigromante” and belongs to the Municipality of Playa Vicente,
Veracruz. Lozoga’ is a term that its inhabitants coined when founding the community,
more than a century ago, because of the many Quercus trees in their new place.
2. Figure 6.1 was taken from Bernal’s Ph.D. thesis (2016, p.133), and was designed by
Luis Ángel Aguilar Orea, based on INEGI’s and own information.
3. I.e., when somebody looks after cattle that belong to someone else, but, when these
animals are sold, profits are divided between caretaker and owner equally, after
re-investing in the same quantity of cattle as at the beginning.
4. Abbreviations: MT (mother tongue), L2 (second language), L3 (third language), and
L4 (fourth language).
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CIESAS-DF.
7
ADRIFT IN AN ANGLOPHONE WORLD
Refugee Families’ Language Policy Challenges
Diego Navarro & John Macalister
Introduction
For the millions of people around the world who every year embark on the
process of transnational migration, the experience of integrating and settling
into a foreign land carries an assortment of challenges. Migration, as a prime
promoter of intercultural and language contact (Geraghty & Conacher, 2014),
often requires the adoption or adaption of new ways of behaving and thinking.
However, this is rarely an easy transaction. It is extremely difficult to shed
one’s seemingly natural ways of being, just as the process of accepting and wel-
coming unfamiliar cultural conventions can be quite problematic. Thus, life for
a migrant can be difficult and raises the question, why migrate? What would prompt
someone to leave the comforts of a familiar life and move to a foreign country? Why would
you put yourself through this discomfort ? Possibly, the primary reason for migrating
is economic, as individuals driven by the hope and promise of a better life choose
to leave behind their historically situated homes, culture, and language.
There are times, however, when the decision to migrate is not a choice one is
making completely freely. There are situations when migration is more an act of
necessity than of personal interest. For some people, migrating to a new country
is the consequence of a grave and often dangerous situation. Under these circum-
stances, migration becomes less of a choice about lifestyle and improved oppor-
tunity and more about life and death. For the approximately 17,000,000 refugees
worldwide (Edwards, 2014) fleeing some sort of danger in their home countries,
the migration experience is markedly different from other groups of immigrants.
For over 60 years the United Nations has defined a refugee as someone who has
a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,

nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is
116 Diego Navarro & John Macalister
outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear,
is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.
(United Nations, 1951)
As a migratory population, refugees present a unique set of challenges both at

the individual and at the societal level. For example, some scholars working with
refugees have identified unique types of trauma and stress associated with their
migratory experiences (Adkins, Sample, & Birman, 1999). Also, within the larger
refugee categorisation system, there are inevitably different types of refugees.
Some refugees are eventually able to return safely home, some are able to remain
for the rest of their lives in the adopted country, while others are relocated to a
third country through a process known as ‘resettlement’ where they are granted
permanent settlement, including the right to become a citizen of that country.
Research conducted in New Zealand, one of the handful of nations partici-
pating in the resettlement programme, has produced valuable work regarding
refugees and their efforts to settle and integrate into a new country. Some studies
have compared the resettlement experiences of recently arrived refugees (i.e.,
six months to two years) with established refugees (i.e., over five years in the
host country) in terms of adult education (Dunstan, Roz, & Shorland, 2004).
Other work has looked at health care issues and refugees (Lawrence & Kearns,
2005). Because the majority of ‘resettled’ quota refugees arriving in New Zea-
land are from non-English-speaking countries (NESB), language-related issues
have been consistently identified as significant obstacles to successful integration
(Benseman, 2012; Watts, White, & Trlin, 2001, 2002). Many of the findings
in the New Zealand context mirror the research around the world looking at
refugee resettlement, particularly in regards to the language-related struggles
(Simpson & Whiteside, 2012; Watkins, Razee, & Richters, 2012). Resettlement
refugees, seeking a new life within a foreign country, are often required to move
to places where the dominant language is not their own and thus become lin-
guistically marked—an experience which can be particularly difficult to manage
for adult populations. Moreover, these language-related issues are exasperated by
the fact that New Zealand as an emerging super-diverse nation (Blommaert &
Rampton, 2011) remains without an official language policy despite calls and
obvious need (Benseman, 2012; Waite, 1992).
Another important language-related issue facing refugees in New Zealand
(also intimately linked to the lack of a national language policy)—and one that
has been under researched in a New Zealand context—is the management of
trying to learn an additional language while maintaining a native one. A recent
publication from the Office of Ethnic Affairs (2014) is one of the first to ever
look explicitly at this interplay. The report is, as they state, an attempt to con-
tribute to the ‘understanding of the impact that the language skills of migrants
have on their ability to participate in and contribute to New Zealand society’,
with a particular focus on ‘the relationship between English language ability and
Adrift in an Anglophone World 117
socio-economic success in New Zealand; and the relationship between acquiring

proficiency in English and the retention of heritage languages’. While represent-
ing a valuable piece of work and an important first step, a lot more research is
needed to understand the experience of this unique group of migrants and how
they manage the process of learning and maintaining a language, and how this
affects settlement and integration experiences.
Another important consideration for the successful settlement of refugees is

the educational backgrounds of these individuals. A large number of refugees
immigrate with limited (often severely limited) formal education (Benseman,
2012). In fact, Blaker and Hardman (2001) report that 80% of adult quota refu-
gees in New Zealand (since 1995) have not completed a primary school educa-
tion. This lack of experience with formal learning can create a host of issues, as
some research has found in fact that individuals with limited education growing
up find it much more difficult to navigate formal study (Bigelow & Schwarz,
2010). It is safe to assume that in most cases, where formal education has been
lacking, experience with language education is also severely limited. Thus, refu-
gees, adult refugees in particular, are not only linguistically marked, but the
challenges they face in trying to learn a new language often prove beyond their
capacity to manage. When the migration process brings with it the added chal-
lenge of learning an additional language, the question of what language(s) to
speak with the children in the home becomes significant and far-reaching in its
effects. It becomes a balancing act between wanting to learn the dominant L2
so as to establish oneself in the community, and trying to maintain a hold on a
language and culture which may no longer be used on a day-to-day level. It is a
question that every migrant family finally makes a decision about, consciously
or otherwise, and one which carries long-lasting effects.
This chapter considers the situation facing non-English-speaking migrant
families settling in largely monolingual, English-speaking New Zealand. The
specific focus is on one particular type of migrant: single-mother refugees. In
fact very little work has specifically explored the language challenges faced by
single-parent families (Hernandez, 1993; Landale & Oropesa, 1995). It is the hope
of this chapter to shed light on the experiences of these marginalised individuals.
The participants in this study are monolingual Spanish-speakers with limited
opportunities for social engagement beyond the home, while their children are
attending school and participating in the wider society where English is every-
where. The challenges and opportunities for Spanish-language maintenance and
English-language learning in the home are explored through interview data
gathered over a one-year period.
Background
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refu-
gees (UNHCR) ‘only a small number’ of the United Nations’ member states
take part in the refugee resettlement programme (UNCHR, n.d.). Essentially,

the resettlement process transfers refugees ‘from an asylum country to another
State that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent settle-
ment’. Resettlement of refugees is necessary when the country they originally
sought refuge in proves unsafe or is for whatever reason unable to provide ade-
quate care and protection. New Zealand Immigration reports that New Zealand
is one of only 26 nations from the 193 UN members that accepts refugees
through a quota-based resettlement programme (Immigration New Zealand,
n.d.). Since 1997, New Zealand has been consistent in accepting 750 refugees
per year (plus or minus 10%). These individuals are selected in accordance with
the recommendations made by UNHCR. New Zealand’s Refugee Quota Pro-
gramme adheres to a category system which is comprised mainly of Women-
at-Risk (a minimum of 75 places); Medical/Disabled (up to 75 places); UNHCR
Priority Protection (450 places) (UNHCR, 2014). The 750-person quota consists
of up to six yearly intakes of approximately 125 people. In 2011, Colombian
refugees were identified as one of the populations prioritised for resettlement.
White (2011), in a research paper commissioned by the UNHCR, highlighted
the severity of the ‘continuing and changing’ conflict hundreds of thousands
of Colombians face on a day-to-day basis (p. 1). She argues that not only has
the number of Colombian refugees f leeing conf lict not declined but also the
number of people seeking refuge in other countries has steadily been on the rise
(p. 8). The vast majority of these refugees flee to the bordering nations of Ecua-
dor or Venezuela. Unfortunately for many, conditions in these countries are
not much better. Support and assistance remain ‘inadequate’ with many refugees
suffering from discrimination and personal safety concerns. As a result, the New
Zealand government through its commitment to the resettlement programme
has made a concerted effort to assist Colombian refugees in their efforts to
re-establish a safe and stable life. Since 2007, 582 Colombian refugees have
resettled in New Zealand.
Context
This research takes place in an adult ESOL context in Lower and Upper Hutt (cit-
ies in the greater Wellington region, New Zealand). Although New Zealand is
becoming a ‘linguistically diverse’ nation as a result of ‘successive migrations and
immigration policies’ (Spence, 2004) and has two official languages (NZ Sign
Language and the Maori language; see McKee & Smiler, this volume), English
remains the predominant language of communication. According to a report by
the Office of Ethnic Affairs (OEA) (2014), the majority of migrants, including
refugees, entering New Zealand arrive from countries where English is not their
first language (p. 1). Therefore, it can be assumed that the refugees arriving in
New Zealand will need to develop the ability to communicate competently in
English if they wish to carry out daily tasks and eventually integrate into society.
With that said, the role of English in New Zealand, along with the perceived
need for refugees to ‘acquire’ it, is quite contested and carries a host of issues,
including ‘linguistic imperialism’ (Canagarajah, 1999) and the potential loss of
the migrants’ native/heritage language (Seals, forthcoming). Nevertheless, as the
OEA report details, migrants’ English-language ability correlates directly with
employment and earning capacity, as well as their ability to ‘socialise and cul-
tivate a sense of belonging in New Zealand’ (p. 23). This, for better or worse,
highlights the importance of learning English in New Zealand. With that said,
the extent to which refugees do develop the necessary English skills remains an
issue—particularly for adults. The OEA (2014) document, which specifically
examined the role of ‘language and integration’ in New Zealand, explains how
‘a migrant’s ability to acquire proficiency in English will decrease as his or her
age at migration increases’ (p. 14). Moreover, beyond age, the report argues
that educational background will also affect the acquisition of English. In other
words, the more education a migrant has had before arriving in New Zealand,
the easier it will be for the migrant to learn English. While initiatives have been
proposed by the New Zealand government to support the English-language
needs of individuals from non-English-speaking backgrounds, these initiatives,
which have been criticised for their ineffectiveness, are aimed almost exclusively
at student-aged children (Franken & McCormish, 2003). According to The Adult
ESOL Strategy, a government policy document on refugees and migrants in New
Zealand, around 200,000 adults ‘can speak English but not as well as they could’
(Ministry of Education, 2003, p. 2). The document also indicates that there were
around 17,000 families with children where either one or both parents could
not speak English. Roach and Roskvist (2007, p. 45), in their more recent study
on ESOL provision for adult immigrants and refugees in New Zealand, explain
how 88,000 people do not speak English well enough to carry out an English
conversation on everyday matters.
Both policy and practice reflect the belief that to make the most out of the
experience of living in New Zealand, individuals should be able to use English
effectively. The inability to communicate in English while living in Welling-
ton will inevitably result in a variety of personal, social, and socio-economic
challenges. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of current research available which
has empirically investigated adult refugees and their experiences with learning
English in New Zealand. The few studies that have been conducted (Altinkaya &
Omundsen, 1999; Benseman, 2012; Roach & Roskvist, 2007; Watts et al., 2001)
have all highlighted the shortcomings of the English provisions offered for
adults. In fact, according to Altinkaya and Omundsen (1999), the inability of
these provisions to (linguistically and socially) prepare adult refugees for life in
New Zealand ‘has the potential to create an underclass of refugees who subse-
quently experience significant direct and indirect discrimination’ (p. 7).
The Study
In this chapter we aim to extend the understanding of the challenges refugee
families face in their attempts to manage the learning of an additional lan-
guage and the maintenance of their first language. A longitudinal ethnographic
approach with key elements of narrative and case study inquiry was adopted in
order to capture the complexity of this phenomenon in action over time and
across contexts.
Data was gathered over a 16-month period. The principal method used for
gathering the data was in-depth (O’Reilly, 2009; Seidman, 2006), unstruc-
tured (Berg, 2001; Mishler, 1986), ethnographic interviews (Heyl, 2001). Heyl
(2001) in distinguishing ethnographic interviews from other types of interviews
explains that the former are based on an established relationship with a partici-
pant. Establishing a relationship, she argues, is dependent on both time and on a
sensitive and respectful exchange of views between equals. Another important
distinguishing feature of ethnographic interviews is that they are unstructured,
allowing participants to guide the research in personally meaningful directions.
In this regard, these lengthy conversation-like interviews allowed for a nuanced
picture of the participants’ experiences of navigating various language-related
challenges to be created. Finally, these interviews were also integral in serving
as a primary source of observation, allowing the first author to spend hours with
the participants in (and occasionally out of ) their homes.
For this research, all interviews were conducted in Spanish, the participants’
L1. The first set of interviews was transcribed verbatim in Spanish. Next, the
interviews were listened to again and translated directly into English, while
concurrently constructing rich descriptions of the interviews. However, over
time this transcription-translation process was revised. Large chunks of thick
description in English were supplemented by verbatim Spanish transcription.
The English descriptions provided context, and the Spanish text represented the
actual language used within the interviews. Later, this approach shifted further
where we were essentially creating English transcriptions with large chunks of
Spanish in areas where the talk was particularly thick with content relevant to
either the research questions, participant relevant themes (which we came to
know over time working with them), and other emerging concepts. The large
chunks of Spanish were included when something was particularly relevant or
significant (e.g., talk related directly to elements of their approaches to learning
English; talk related directly to their approaches to using Spanish). As mentioned
above, along with transcriptions, the first author also created detailed descrip-
tions of all the interviews. These descriptions coincide with the initial stages of
formal thematic/content analysis (Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2014; Dörnyei,
2007). Through repeated listening and reading of the transcripts, he compiled
extensive notes, or memos, on topics as they emerged from each discussion in
an effort to further develop ideas. Dörnyei (2007) proposes that these ‘analytic
memos’ are essential in facilitating second-level coding and can contain ‘the
embryos of some of the main conclusions to be drawn from the study’ (p. 254).
Since the focus of this chapter is on the challenges of balancing additional lan-
guage learning with language maintenance, the majority of the descriptions are
in direct reference to this phenomenon.
This chapter will focus on two participants who share significant situational
similarities. Both are single mothers with three children of similar age. Both had
been living in New Zealand for 20 months at the start of the study and can thus
be considered ‘recently arrived’ in the new country (Dunstan et al., 2004). They
are both also essentially monolingual Spanish-speakers with limited opportuni-
ties for social engagement beyond the home. However, their children are attend-
ing school and participating in the wider society where English is everywhere.
Below, we provide a brief narrative description of the study’s two principal par-
ticipants. All names are pseudonyms.
Samantha
Samantha is a single mother with three children: Sebastian, Sofia, and Jimena
(7, 11, 16 years old, respectively). Unlike other Colombian refugees who arrived
together in larger groups, Samantha and her children came to New Zealand on
their own. They were the only Colombian family present for this particular
induction, and Samantha did not meet any other Colombians for the six weeks
of her orientation in Mangere, Auckland. As a consequence, her connection to
the Colombian community living in and around Wellington was not as strong
as others. She mentioned this as a positive fact, however, preferring not to mix
too much with other Colombians. That said, she did have close connections
with one or two other Colombians and mentioned them throughout our time
working together.
Samantha’s main reason for seeking resettlement to New Zealand was the
medical condition of her youngest child, Sebastian. He had a severe medical con-
dition, and, while living in Ecuador, she was worried about his safety. Samantha
was told that while she was living as a refugee in Ecuador, Sebastian would not
be able to receive the necessary treatment for his survival, and that it was unlikely
he would live past the age of 15. This motivated her to apply for a third country
resettlement programme. She said she did not know anything about New Zea-
land before arriving, only that the medical treatment for children with her son’s
condition was very good. She had searched online for information about New
Zealand’s medical care for children with similar conditions to Sebastian.
Samantha left Colombia when a family friend suggested she move to Ecua-
dor where life was calmer and more stable and less dangerous. It sounded like
a good idea, and so she moved to Ecuador, received refugee status, and lived
there for close to 15 years, working mostly in restaurants. Now that she was in
New Zealand, she said she wanted to give her children the best opportunities for
success, and, when referring to other Colombian families she knew, she dispar-
aged how lazy they were with their children in regard to their school work and
English.
Constanza
Like Samantha, Constanza is a single mother with three children (Mateo, Paula,
and Tomas). They were 6, 12, and 17 at the start of the study. She arrived in
Mangere as part of a group of Colombians and often spoke fondly of this initial
period in New Zealand. She confessed to really enjoying her time in Mangere
because she appreciated the convenience of having ‘everything done’ for her. In
Mangere incoming refugees have an interpreter available for them to explain all
about the orientation and even to accompany them when they venture out to the
city. She said she also enjoyed meeting the refugees from other countries, and,
even though they could not verbally communicate, they used a lot of gestures
and did their best to communicate with each other.
Constanza, while loquacious in regards to her language-related activities in
New Zealand, rarely talked about the experiences in her life which led her to
apply for refugee status (both to Ecuador and to New Zealand). She did mention
that she had always wanted to live in an English-speaking country. She seldom
had Colombian friends over to the house, although she did occasionally meet
other Colombians on arranged picnics and trips. Constanza was often critical of
the time she spent with other Colombians as a problem for her English learning.
Overall, she did not spend much time with others, and led more or less a rather
isolated life.
In her descriptions of her childhood, Constanza says she was on her own from
a very young age and never finished primary school. She says she travelled all
over Colombia, working wherever she could, and mostly always on her own. She
seemed proud of how much of Colombia she had seen and was enthusiastic about
travel (both domestic and international). She seldom spoke about her parents or
siblings. It was surprising after several months into the study to hear that she had
a sister who was interested in moving to New Zealand. She said life in Ecuador
was very hard because Colombians were frequently discriminated against. Con-
stanza, Paula, and Mateo all met regularly with different psychologists for what
she explained as different reasons. She said she often had terrible migraines and
had trouble sleeping. A lot of these issues she said were directly related to her
problems with learning and using English.
Having introduced the key participants, we now turn to the interview data.
In the following sections, we provide background to Samantha and Constanza’s
prior educational experiences and to the ways these mothers and their children
managed English-language learning and Spanish language maintenance.
Education and Formal Language Learning Experiences

Samantha came from a very large and poor family. When she was growing up,
her family’s economic situation was difficult. They worked on farms and strug-
gled to provide beyond basic necessities. However, despite these socio-economic
challenges and the lack of opportunity for improved living conditions, the value
of basic education was recognised. As a result, she, along with three of her sib-
lings, did attend primary school. The picture Samantha paints of her educational
experience in Colombia, though, is quite negative, and, as a result, she placed
little value on this formal education:
Back in our time we studied so as not to stay at home my mother would

say that we had to at least study primary but we didn’t see I mean at least I
thought and why am I going to study? To wash dishes? To work on a coca
farm? Others would say you don’t need to study to work on a farm why
waste that time?
(initial interview)
During the interviews, Samantha mentioned no prior language learning experi-

ences while growing up in Colombia. When asked explicitly, she said that ‘in
those days English was not taught in schools’. However, around the age of 14
or 15, Samantha moved from Colombia to Ecuador. In Ecuador, as ‘an adult
woman’, while attending secondary school, where English classes were compul-
sory, she first experienced formal language education. However, the quality of
the classes was poor, and she did not feel she learnt anything of value. The focus
of the lessons, typical of a lot of foreign language education in primary and sec-
ondary schools, was not on learning to use the language but more on completing
translation activities, conjugation work, and passing written exams. In fact, these
English classes were all carried out in Spanish, with minimal (if any) opportu-
nity to speak or listen to English. Having spent a significant amount of time
‘learning’ English but not being able to use the language seems to have resulted
in a negative evaluation of formal foreign language learning. However, even
though she critiqued the quality of her English education, she admits to having
developed an interest in English from this exposure—an interest which she says
ignited her ‘dream’ to one day live in an English-speaking country.
Like Samantha, Constanza had no experience of formal language learning in
Colombia. Throughout her narrative of her time in Colombia, she presents what
she refers to as an ‘unstable’ upbringing. She describes a nomadic life for her first
15 years, moving often to new locations with her mother. At the age of 15, Con-
stanza separated from her mother and began to live independently. As a result
of this constant moving, her formal education was quite sporadic. She explains
that she stopped going to school completely from around the age of 14. But even
before, she did not attend school on a consistent basis and was rarely at one place
for a prolonged period of time. She laments her past for lacking ‘opportunity’
and explains how if she had been born in a ‘different situation’, she would have
‘enjoyed studying’. However, she was able to acquire a basic education, includ-
ing literacy skills. In terms of language education, Constanza mentions no prior
formal language learning experiences while growing up in Colombia. In fact,
like Samantha, she remarks that in ‘those days’ English was not taught in schools:
D: In Ecuador or in Colombia did you study English or nothing?

C: No not me no because there at that time almost they didn’t teach English no
now these days it’s when they are teaching English in the schools also since I
was in school for only a short time.
(initial interview)
At around the age of 30, Constanza ‘escaped’ to Ecuador after receiving threats
on her life. She lived there illegally for over a decade, before obtaining refugee
status. When asked about her language learning experiences in Ecuador, she
responded by explaining that ‘life was even harder than in Colombia’. Unlike
Samantha, whose language learning experiences increased in Ecuador, Con-
stanza’s accounts of life in Ecuador offer no evidence of L2-related experience.
Instead, what she portrays of her time in Ecuador is a picture of intense dis-
crimination and ongoing struggle for her and her children to survive. Thus,
Constanza has no formal language learning experience prior to arriving in New
Zealand.
Both Samantha and Constanza’s lack of experience or exposure to language
learning meant that they were less than adequately prepared for the realities of
having to manage their own, and their children’s, language learning with mini-
mal external support once they were settled in New Zealand. In the next sections
we discuss language practices in the home, first for English, then for Spanish.
Becoming English-Language Speakers

The language-related challenges for these adults were compounded by the fact
they were single mothers with three children. Their lives, as Constanza makes
clear when explaining why she does not always have time to do the homework
related to her English classes, are busy.
C: But it’s like I also have a lot of things to do at home haha and I get home and
it’s gotten late and I haven’t done the homework and I haven’t done this other
thing and then I feel sleepy and I don’t do it.
D: Yeah.
C: It’s that I am here alone! I have to cook to tidy up the house . . . every-
thing . . . everything is up to me!
D: With three kids as well.
C: With three kids . . . there is no one to help.
While they were provided with limited English-language learning support

through government channels, the fact that almost every encounter outside the
home required them to use English meant that that language was a constant
presence in the home, as Samantha illustrates in this account of working together
with her children to prepare for a shopping expedition.
D: And how did you do things . . . how did you enter your class . . . and the
shopping, things like that . . . what happened?
S: . . . The shopping . . . we would pick up and translate with the dictionary.
D: I don’t believe it?
S: Haha, yes . . . we would look in the dictionary the name of the things and
we would write it in English on a little piece of paper.
D: Perfect. Here in the house . . . so you would prepare . . .
S: We prepared here in the house . . . the Spanish on the side and the English
in the front . . . so we would go to the supermarket and we would look for
well the name . . . the name in Spanish and we looked for the English name
‘Ah ok, this thing is called this’ or this is like this . . .
D: Without any help . . . the four of you.
S: Yeah the four of us . . . we would do this. We prepared the lists here first and
the same when . . .
(initial interview)
Over time, however, the children, who were at school and thus much more
immersed in English, became a key language resource in the home and outside.
The mothers would ask them questions relating to vocabulary and pronunciation,
as in the examples below, and the children would initiate advice or correction.
D: And with the children, you aren’t yet speaking any English with them?
C: With them . . . no . . . no . . . almost nothing . . . no no.
D: You never ask them how do you say this in English?
C: Oh yeah I do that—‘How do you say this?’; ‘How do you say that?’ and then
they tell me . . .

S: Yeah, at least . . . for example in my classes last week when we were having
a farewell ceremony as it was my last class and I had to say goodbye . . . my
kids, I say to Jimena and Sebastian ‘What should I say here?’ and so I prepared
what to say exactly . . . hahaha.
D: And did it work out well?
S: Yes, yeah. I prepare . . . when I leave the house and I know I am going to have
to use English so I prepare myself to see what to say.
Language use in the home was, therefore, mixed, and in neither home was
there an explicit family language policy. It would, of course, have been impossible
for a one parent / one language policy to have been adopted, given that these
were single-parent households. While the mothers tended to use Spanish with
their children, the children demonstrated greater facility in switching languages,
depending on who they were interacting with, and where. Samantha spoke often
of her children’s language use, and her family will be the main focus here.
Her youngest child, Sebastian, did not know Spanish well (no doubt reflect-
ing his age at migration) and had picked up English easily. He read for pleasure
in English, used English with his friends at church, and seemed to be relied on by
his mother as a translator/interpreter, despite his young age. (This also, interest-
ingly, appeared to be the case with Constanza and her youngest child, Mateo.)
One effect of Sebastian’s limited proficiency in Spanish was that it compelled his
mother to use English with him on occasions when she wanted to communicate
something important, as here: ‘Yes . . . and I thought I will tell him my dream
in English because in Spanish he won’t understand . . .’.
Like Sebastian, the eldest child, Jimena, had also picked up English easily,
which her mother attributed to her having learned English while in Ecuador.
Very soon after they arrived in New Zealand, Jimena was reading books and
watching TV in English. Unlike her brother, or her younger sister, however, she
tended to use Spanish rather than English with friends at church.
The middle child, Sofia, was regarded by her mother as having the greatest
difficulty in learning English, although she enjoyed reading in English; she would
often be found reading in bed in the morning when her mother went to wake
her, for example. Her siblings seem also to have shared this view of their sister as
a less-accomplished English language learner, for, while the children used a mix
of the two languages when talking with each other, Jimena and Sebastian used
more Spanish when talking with Sofia, more English with each other. Language
use was, thus, dynamic and fluid within the home, as the following makes clear.
D: And when the three of them talk? For example I know that Sebastian and
Sofia speak in English but for example, Sebastian and Jimena?
S: In English—the two of them speak more in English . . . with Sofia they speak
more in Spanish.
D: OK.
S: Aha . . . between Sofia and Sebastian . . . Sebastian speaks to her more in
English, Sofia sometimes responds in Spanish . . . that one doesn’t like speak-
ing much in English . . . however when she talks . . . Jimena and Sofia speak
more in English . . . Jimena makes her speak in Spanish and when Sebastian
and Jimena speak it is only in English.
Being Spanish Speakers

As the previous section has established, English, being the dominant language
of the society in which they found themselves, had a clear presence in the home.
The home was a place both where English was used as a language of com-
munication, particularly between the children, and where language learning
occurred, particularly for the mothers. These were, however, Spanish L1 fami-
lies, with links to other Colombian families, and with the opportunity to join
community events where Spanish could be spoken, most notably church (see also
Revis, this volume). This opportunity was accessed more by Samantha’s family
than by Constanza’s. Samantha was very religious and went to church every
week. Constanza had switched to an English-speaking church, and her children
no longer accompanied her (an interesting moment occurs when Constanza is
explaining that one of the reasons for this is that the children do not under-
stand; Paula rejects this characterisation and interjects, ‘I understand English’).
Samantha, however, lamented the children’s language use at church, where only
Jimena, the eldest child, spoke Spanish with her peers:
S: But this is the problem . . . [when] the kids go to church and all the little ones
get together and they don’t speak Spanish!
D: They speak in English?
S: Yes, they don’t speak Spanish . . . hahaha.
D: Why not?
S: They only speak English.
All the same, Samantha seemed to believe that the children would maintain their
Spanish language, at least in part through their church activities. This belief, it
should be pointed out, she maintained despite the evidence of English-language
interference in Sebastian’s Spanish pronunciation.
D: And . . . are you worried that he may lose his Spanish . . . or does it matter
to you?
S: . . . Well, I am sure he won’t lose his Spanish because his bible studies are in
Spanish . . . and so I say he won’t forget and also I MAKE him read the only
letter he pronounce is ‘la c—ca; ca o co o cu . . . he uses the English instead;
he says ‘que’ . . . instead of saying ‘ca’ he says ‘que’. So in that he does have a
little trouble.
Constanza, on the other hand, had doubts about her children maintaining
Spanish. She seemed to recognize that, at least for Paula and presumably Mateo
as well, Spanish had not been sufficiently well-established prior to migration.
C: Of course, yeah . . . I think they’ll forget and they also may forget how to
write . . .
D: Yeah . . .
C: Because my daughter she . . . when we just arrived from Ecuador she had just
learned how to write . . . because she was very bad . . . took like five years
studying but finally at five years she just learned how to write . . . when we
left for here she just learned how to write . . .
D: In Spanish . . .
C: In Spanish . . . and now I don’t know—she doesn’t practice or anything . . . so
I am afraid that . . .
D: She will lose it . . .
C: That she will lose it.
The only child in these two families who showed a determined commitment
to maintaining Spanish was Tomas, Constanza’s eldest. He appeared to recognize
the need to learn English but did so without enthusiasm.
D: And Tomas . . . how is he going with his English?

C: The same . . .
D: Getting better?
C: Getting better . . .
D: He likes it or he doesn’t like it?
C: He doesn’t like it . . . I don’t know he is learning because he has to . . . because
he says ‘I hate English—I love my Spanish!’ Hahaha . . . and now what is
going to happen with kind of thinking? He says ‘I hate English I love my
Spanish’.
Both Constanza, in her comment ‘now what is going to happen’, and Saman-
tha clearly view the learning of English as necessary and desirable. It seems prob-
able that Tomas is seen as a singular and possibly difficult case, for the two
mothers have talked about his attitude to language learning.
D: Yeah . . . oh, it is really interesting. That’s great . . . because I was talking

with Constanza’s son he is still having problems with English . . . he has his
classes he likes school but I don’t know if . . . I also don’t know if he has many
friends . . . no? It is difficult . . .
S: No, Tomas used to be friends with [Sofia] and what she told me is that at
least, he doesn’t dedicate himself to study . . . nothing to do . . . he gets home
and he wants nothing to do with English . . . it is all . . . he watches movies
in Spanish; he talks in Spanish, he talks on the phone in Spanish. . . . Every-
thing in Spanish and I tell Constanza well tell him yourself to try to change
to watch movies in English she says no that he doesn’t want anything to do
with English at all . . . so he goes to school because he has to . . .
Discussion and Concluding Comments

Unlike more middle-class, better-educated migrant families, the two families
that are the focus of this chapter faced particular challenges that, we suggest,
may be specific to refugee families and thus deserve greater recognition in policy
development and implementation. The first of these is that, as a result of their
own educational experiences, they are ill-prepared for the challenges of language
learning in a new environment. The second is that, as single parent households,
they must be responsible for all aspects of their own and their children’s lives.
Although similar in a number of ways, Constanza and Samantha were also
different in important respects. Constanza was the more laissez-faire of the two.
She said she never helped her children with their homework and was not even
aware whether they had homework. In fact, it was not uncommon for her chil-
dren to be out of school during the week for no other reason than they did not
want to go. She always cleaned after them and admitted that she did not want
her children to experience too hard a life. And her home, she said, was an almost
exclusively Spanish-only environment. Samantha, on the other hand, and as was
noted earlier, allowed and even encouraged mixed language use in the home;
she was actively involved in English-language learning in the home, asking her
children to explain words to her, and at times to speak to her in English.
Neither family, however, had an explicit policy governing language use in
the home, and for both families the need to learn English, in order to participate
in the wider society, was recognised as important. In both families the chil-
dren were positioned as a language-learning resource for the mothers, with the
youngest child in each family seeming to have an important role as translator/
interpreter, and both mothers used ‘rehearsal’ as a means of preparing for
encounters with the wider society where English was needed to achieve a goal.
This can be seen, for example, in Samantha and her children preparing to go to
the supermarket. During the interviews with the first author, Constanza used
much more English than Samantha, mostly to either inquire about the correct
way to say something (a type of rehearsal) or to see if she had made a mistake in
some language-related interaction she was describing (a type of checking). Con-
stanza’s children, though, were reportedly less willing to help their mother than
Samantha’s were.
Five of the six children in these two families appeared comfortable with
learning English, and only Tomas seemed reluctant, possibly resisting, to develop
a new identity as an English-language speaker. For him, it may be speculated,
he wanted his primary identity to be that of a Spanish speaker. By contrast,
the two youngest children, Mateo and Sebastian, appeared to be in the process
of becoming English-dominant bilinguals. Even at church, a potential site for
Spanish-language maintenance, the younger children were preferring English to
Spanish for communication with their peers. In both families, then, the pattern
of language shift identified by Fishman (1970) seemed to be underway.
As both parents held weak impact beliefs (De Houwer, 1999), in that they
did not believe they held much sway over their children’s language use, it is
perhaps not surprising that this was the case. Constanza, as noted above, does
not appear to seek to influence her children’s language use (although she does
invest considerable time and effort into her own English-language learning);
just as she accepts her children’s unwillingness to accompany her to church, she
accepts their reluctance to help her manage the language demands of life in New
Zealand—‘but when I want ask them to explain something to me . . . haha they
lose interest . . . they ignore me they don’t want to help they get angry! they
get upset . . . “se ponen bravos” . . . haha . . .’. However, this statement should
not be taken as absolute; there are certainly recorded instances in the interview
data of Tomas correcting his mother’s English in the home. As mentioned by
Macalister and Mirvahedi (this volume), family language policy is dynamic, and
can be messy.
For Samantha, her impact beliefs can probably be expressed as a willingness to
facilitate the learning of English. It was, however, Constanza who provided the
clearest expression of this belief when talking about the effect of new Colombian
families arriving and their children attending the same school as hers: ‘well not
that good because they get together there and they start speaking Spanish . . . and
while they are learning English they shouldn’t be speaking in Spanish . . . there
are a lot of Moms that prohibit . . .’.
For the two families focussed on in this chapter, then, and following Spolsky
(2004), the belief that English is important, a belief shaped by the environment
outside the home, influences language practices inside the home and the moth-
ers’ efforts to manage language use in the home, though not equally successfully.
In both families, a successful family language policy is one where all members
of the family can use English well and, through proficiency in the language,
access opportunities in New Zealand society. To help Samantha, Constanza, and
their children achieve this goal, it seems likely that better provision of English-
language learning support would be very welcome, along with an understanding
that it is not necessary to forsake Spanish to become a proficient English speaker.
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PART II
Language Policy
Opportunities in Family
8
HOW RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGIES AND
PRACTICES IMPACT ON FAMILY
LANGUAGE POLICY
Ethiopians in Wellington
Melanie Revis
New Zealand hosts a growing number of immigrants who contribute to the

cultural and linguistic diversity of the country. These diverse ethnic communi-
ties have also significantly shaped the religious landscape of the country and
contributed to the creation of churches, temples, and mosques in which the
respective ethnic languages often continue to be used. Religious identification is
widespread among parts of the immigrant population. While almost half of all
European New Zealanders reported that they had no religion, 83% of those who
identified as Middle Eastern, Latin American, or African were religious (Census,
2013a). Religious institutions have the potential to provide a space for upholding
the migrants’ cultures and languages, and to foster identification. Although the
link may not be straightforward, these strong means of community cohesion
undoubtedly affect the ways in which family members construct their home
language policy.
Taking account of the impact of religion on family language policy therefore
proves useful as we widen the scope of families participating in family language
policy (FLP) research and thus respond to King’s (2016) call to include families of
more diverse backgrounds as well as less well-known languages. Previous stud-
ies of FLP typically focused on so-called ‘elective bilingualism’ (Piller, 2001) in
middle-class families that considered bilingualism to be an additional asset for
their children. A few recent articles (Curdt-Christiansen, 2013) focused on non-
elite transnational families exhibiting ‘circumstantial bilingualism’ (Schecter &
Bayley, 2002). However, there is a scarcity of sociolinguistic research both about
the Ethiopian diaspora worldwide (but see Weldeyesus, 2009) and also more
generally the African population in New Zealand (see Meager, 2005).
In this chapter I draw on ethnographic data from my involvement with the
Ethiopian community in New Zealand and investigate how family members’
136 Melanie Revis
language ideologies and practices are shaped by their religious identifications and
practices. I use language ideology to refer to “a mediating link between social
structures and forms of talk” (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994, p. 235). Investigat-
ing the impact of religious beliefs and involvement in religious practices on lan-
guage ideologies in the Ethiopian community is particularly interesting because
language, culture, and religion are historically and socially intertwined in the
Ethiopian context, and investigating the effect this has on language maintenance
in the Ethiopian diaspora can open up fascinating insight from one community
into the motivational and instrumental value of religious institutions. This topic
merits further elaboration in the state of art of studies about family language
policy.
The Impact of Religion on Family Language Policy

Family language policy is concerned with private language planning (Piller,
2001). Religious beliefs and practices may influence FLP at a number of different
levels. According to Spolsky’s (2004) influential model, language ideologies are
the first of three components constitutive of language policy. Second, policies
are expressed through language practices as individuals make linguistic choices.
Third, policies sometimes comprise active intervention strategies, so-called
language management, in order to change existing language practices. While
the latter two components may shed light on the actual micro-negotiations at
the family domain, studying language ideologies provides a background and
potential reasons for both practices and management. Language ideologies are
constantly (re-)shaped as individuals are embedded in an ecological system and
interact with their social and linguistic environment (Mühlhäusler, 2002; Spol-
sky, 2004, p. 7), and they may significantly influence to what extent and where
people use a language (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009).
A variety of factors may impact on people’s ideologies about language and
their ensuing home language practices. For example, widespread language ide-
ologies may trickle down to the family domain and affect parents’ and children’s
language choices. Canagarajah (2008) shows how Sri Lankan Tamils who had
migrated to the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada struggled to
transmit Tamil to their children, and he argues that the sociohistorical context
shaped intra-familiar language practices in favour of English. In addition to soci-
etal language ideologies, specific economic considerations and personal experi-
ences have been assessed in several studies covering a wide range of communities
(see King & Fogle, 2013). These different types of ideologies tend to have a more
or less direct impact on the ways in which families establish language practices
in the home.
While religious identifications have been less researched in FLP studies, they
may be influential factors in the formation of language ideologies. Smolicz’
(1992) theory of core values has repeatedly produced findings showing that
Ethiopians in Wellington 137
religion is a value in many communities which its members must adhere to in

order to be included in the group. For example, religion and clan served as core
values for the Somali community in Australia, and language and (Orthodox
Christian) religion were core values for Macedonians (Clyne & Kipp, 2006).
Smolicz argues that if a language is a core value of a community, it is more likely
to be maintained in an immigrant context. One reason for this, he maintains,
is that the community will take more precautions against losing the language if
they perceive the language to be linked to their ethnicity.
The same positive effect on language maintenance may be achieved when a
religion is inherently linked to a particular language (Fishman, 1991; Paulston &
Watt, 2012). Fishman mentions languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, San-
skrit, and Ge’ez, which have all been “holy vessels” (Fishman, 2002, p. 17) as
they have transported written and oral religious traditions. Such an ideological
function as a ‘sacred language’ (Karan, 2011) even allowed Hebrew to undergo a
revitalising process from being a dead language to being actively adopted as the
official language of the State of Israel (Spolsky & Cooper, 1991).
An overview of the most important relationships between language and reli-
gion in the Iraqi Arab community in New Zealand is given by Tawalbeh (2014).
While he highlights the intrinsic relationship between Arabic as the language of
the Quran and Islam, he lists five additional religious-linguistic connections. For
his Iraqi participants who had all arrived in New Zealand as refugees, Arabic was
not only the language spoken by Prophet Mohammad but also a language with
eternal usefulness as the language spoken in Paradise. Children were encouraged
to learn Arabic to please their God. Moreover, it was part of general Arab iden-
tity and served for the performance of religious obligations. For example, prayers
had to be recited in Arabic, and understanding what was said in the mosque
was facilitated by knowledge of Arabic. These religious convictions promoted
literacy activities in the home domain to foster the children’s knowledge of Ara-
bic. The positive effect on heritage language use of this practical outworking of
the religious-linguistic relationship has been corroborated by other research in
Arab communities (see Kipp & Clyne, 2003, p. 38; Gogonas, 2012). Altogether,
Tawalbeh’s points represent values of Arabic that comprise inherent religious-
linguistic relationships, connections between culture and religion, and opportu-
nities for practical use of the language.
Research in predominantly Christian communities has also shown that prac-
tical involvement in a religious community may provide a space for minority
language use outside the home (see also Woods, 2004). For example, Orthodox
Churches tend to be particular to one ethnic group (such as the Greek Orthodox,
Russian Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox denominations) and thus incorpo-
rate ethnic traditions, values, and languages. Holmes, Roberts, Verivaki, and
‘Aipolo (1993) showed that the Greek Orthodox Church in Wellington served
as an important meeting point for community and contributed to prolonged
Greek maintenance. Similar patterns of prolonged Greek maintenance have been
138 Melanie Revis
attested in other societal contexts for Greek communities, with the Orthodox
church being a driving factor for language maintenance (e.g., Komondouros &
McEntee-Atalianis, 2007). While a number of studies discuss the role that the
Greek and Macedonian (Clyne & Kipp, 2006) Orthodox Churches play in help-
ing families to speak their heritage language, descriptions of the linguistic main-
tenance within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo1 Church have been scarce.
The existing descriptions about language policies within the Ethiopian Ortho-
dox Tewahedo Church produce a complex picture. Weldeyesus (2009) investigated
the impact of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Denver on cultural and linguis-
tic maintenance in the community. He identified the three Ethiopian Orthodox
Churches as different communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Each church played
a key role in providing a faith community for adults and teaching children about
Ethiopian religion, culture, and language (2009, p. 146). A similar result highlight-
ing the link between the Orthodox Church and its language is reported by Nida
(2007), who describes the superior roles of Ge’ez and Amharic in an Ethiopian
Orthodox congregation in Los Angeles. Overall, however, more research is needed
to provide insight into the role of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in
the transmission of Amharic.
While the research described above has posited a close relationship between
language and religion, religious groups may differ in how strong they perceive
the link to be. Woods (2004) furnishes case studies of 16 ethnic churches in
Australia and discusses the ways the heritage language is kept ‘pure’ in church
services or mixed with the societal language. She looks not only at the impact
of these churches on language maintenance but also at the role language plays to
constitute these churches. Protestant Churches seem to affect language mainte-
nance positively mostly because of the space they create for community mem-
bers to use their ethnic languages. Although these churches generally do not
attach ideological value to ethnic language use and regard it instead as a “mat-
ter of convenience” (Holmes et al., 1993, p. 19), the fact that the church ser-
vice is conducted in the ethnic language creates a social space for the language
to be used. Protestant churches may thus also facilitate language maintenance
because they tend to expose children to secondary socialisation in the com-
munity language.
Taking account of all these findings, the nature of the exact driving factors
for language maintenance is still unclear—whether it is the close link between
religion and language followed by home literacy activities, the institutional sup-
port provided by the religious organisations, or a general derivation of identity
claims resulting from the adherence to a particular religious grouping. What can
be said, however, is that these religious factors together have been shown to exert
a very positive influence on the maintenance of heritage languages.
By focusing on the impact of religion on family language policies in the
Ethiopian community in Wellington, this chapter contributes a sociolinguistic
perspective on the maintenance of a less well-known language, Amharic. In

order to facilitate greater understanding of the context of this investigation, I
provide background knowledge about Ethiopia and the arrival of the Ethiopian
diasporic community in New Zealand before discussing my findings.
Background
The Sociolinguistic, Political, and Religious

Situation in Ethiopia
This section outlines some of the rich history of a country that is most often
remembered for its poverty and famine. Ethiopia, one of the few countries in
Africa never to be colonised, ended its monarchy under Haile Selassie with a
coup in 1974. Thereafter, a military Marxist junta under the leadership of Men-
gistu Haile Mariam assumed rule of the country, brutally murdered many of its
opponents, and caused others to flee. The junta was overthrown in 1991, and a
political multi-party system was established. On the one hand, the country is
generally described as “stable” (e.g., Green, 2011), characterised by a multi-party
democracy. On the other hand, the same party has repeatedly won the elections
since 1991, gaining 100% of votes in the last election, and the country has over
the years produced a high number of refugees fleeing from political persecution.
Other factors that have caused the exodus of refugees were a long-time drought
in the country that brought famine, as well as war with Eritrea in the 1990s,
resulting in the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993. Some Ethiopians
who have stayed and remained politically active members of the Opposition par-
ties have been incarcerated and killed (Green, 2011).
The country has a linguistic diversity of 87 different languages (Ethnologue
Ethiopia, 2016), with Oromo, Amharic, Somali, and Tigrinya showing the high-
est number of speakers. Members of the Amhara ethnic group, which is the main
focus of this investigation, comprise approximately 27% of the population (Cen-
sus, 2007). While they do not have the numerical majority, they have a power
status that is superior to that of other ethnic groups in the country. Since 1994,
the country’s president, Meles Zenawi, and his successor, Hailemariam Desalegn,
have established Amharic as the language of the government but essentially pro-
moted ethnic and linguistic diversity. As a result, multilingualism is the norm,
and the current government promotes mother-tongue education in addition to
Amharic and, at a later stage, English. Although this suggests that most Ethiopi-
ans leave school at least bilingual, if not multilingual, research in the education
system has contested this idea (see Heugh, Benson, Bogale & Gebre Yohannes,
2006; Woldemariam, 2007). It has shown that while multilingual education pro-
vides the legal framework, its implementation has faced a number of problems.
Factors are, for example, the lack of resources in the ethnic languages and the
140 Melanie Revis
teachers’ generally low English proficiency (a language in which they are sup-
posed to teach). Since students typically also have no exposure to English outside
the classroom, they often leave school with very little knowledge of English
(Heugh et al., 2006).
Previous literature indicates that cultural identity and religion are closely
connected in Ethiopia (Fargher, 1996) and in Ethiopian diasporic communi-
ties (Weldeyesus, 2009). Ethiopians often proudly report that their country
embraced Christianity long before many European nations became Christian.
Christianity was first introduced to Ethiopia in the fourth century by Fru-
mentius, a Syro-Phoenician Greek, who became a slave to the king of Axum
(in what is now located in the North of Ethiopia), yet was later chosen to be a
bishop. Due to Frumentius’ influence, King Ezana of Aksum instituted Chris-
tianity as the state religion (An, 2015). It was during that time that, accord-
ing to Ethiopian tradition, Frumentius translated the Bible into Ge’ez, a South
Semitic language and the official language of the Axumite kingdom. While the
traditional language of the Ethiopian church is Ge’ez, many Ethiopian Ortho-
dox Churches have nowadays shifted to using Amharic for certain parts of the
liturgy (Wagaw, 1999, p. 76). Overall, Orthodox Christianity is recognised by
many as the true Ethiopian religion (Fargher, 1996), and a close link exists in
public discourse between Ethiopian identity and affiliation with the Orthodox
Church.
Ethiopians in New Zealand

New Zealand, as a country based on a bicultural foundation, is becoming increas-
ingly multicultural, with Census (2013b) data indicating that 25.2% of the popu-
lation was born overseas. The ensuing linguistic and cultural diversification is
backed by a few governmental moves. For example, the Department of Labour’s
Settlement Strategy (2007) gave a general call to New Zealanders to accept
and respect new migrant cultures. However, New Zealand’s linguistic ecology
currently offers few niches for minority languages to be used outside ethnic
organisations. Instead, the government’s claims that it is essential for migrants
to master English in order to participate in the social and economic life of New
Zealand (Department of Labour, 2009) seem to postulate English proficiency
as a criterion that decides ‘inclusion’ or ‘exclusion’ in society (see Heller, 2003;
Shohamy, 2006). Moreover, migrants are usually expected to use English in
public domains and to adjust to prevalent language use norms (Holmes, Marra &
Vine, 2011, p. 158). While these arrangements do not preclude the maintenance
of individual languages, they indicate some pressure to use the language of the
majority group.
The New Zealand government maintains links with Ethiopia through devel-
opment collaboration. Further, a noteworthy Ethiopian diaspora has settled in
New Zealand as part of the refugee quota programme under which the gov-
ernment annually takes in about 750 refugees (Beaglehole, 2013). Ethiopians
began settling in Wellington in the early 1990s. While the initial influx mostly
comprised quota refugees, many of the later migrants arrived through family
reunification programs, under which residents with a refugee background have
the opportunity to bring their immediate family members to New Zealand.
Only few Ethiopians arrived individually as asylum seekers. The most recent data
show that 1,245 people identify as Ethiopians, and 237 of these live in Welling-
ton (Census, 2013c). Ethiopian diversity is certainly reflected in the community,
which consists of several ethnic groups, notably the Oromo, the Tigrayans, and
the Amhara. Estimates from community leaders put the number of Amhara in
Wellington at 100. While both younger and older community members tend to
represent their culture at cultural events in the city, Census (2013c) data suggests
that those born in New Zealand are less likely to speak Amharic than those born
overseas.
Methodology
Data Collection
This chapter forms part of a larger study investigating family language policies in
the Ethiopian and Colombian refugee communities in New Zealand. It was car-
ried out under the paradigm of ‘linguistic ethnography’ (Rampton, 2007). This
is reflected as I focus on a particular linguistic topic within the two communi-
ties and situate the data in a postmodern context, allowing for complexity rather
than homogenous structure to be revealed in the data. Overall, I interviewed
29 caregivers and 17 of their children in the two communities, and I obtained
recordings of naturally ccurring home interactions from three mothers in the
Colombian community.
This chapter is based on ethnographic observations and semi-structured
in-depth interviews conducted with 14 Ethiopian caregivers of children under
12 and with nine children between six and 12 years. I conducted participant
observation between 2012 and 2015 as I attended refugee events, church groups,
and events run by the Ethiopian community and held a workshop for the com-
munity about transmitting Amharic to their children. I also visited a few families
to observe their home interactions. Meeting community members was facilitated
by my previous friendship with one Ethiopian family, and the subsequent snow-
ball approach through which my participants referred me to others. My previous
visit to Ethiopia with the purpose of learning Amharic helped create rapport
during the observations and interviews.
The following table provides information about the background and compo-
sition of the 14 families.
142 Melanie Revis
TABLE 8.1 Background and Composition of the Families
Number of Number of Religious affiliation Number of Type of entry

children caregivers years in New
Zealand
Family 1 1 1 Ethiopian Orthodox > 10 Quota refugee
Family 2 1 2 Ethiopian Orthodox 11 Family reunification
Family 3 1 2 Ethiopian Orthodox > 10 Family reunification

Family 7 2 1 Ethiopian Orthodox > 20 Family reunification
Family 8 2 2 Protestant 13 Family reunification
Family 10 2 2 Ethiopian Orthodox 8 Asylum seeker
Family 12 3 2 Ethiopian Orthodox 5 Quota refugee
Data Analysis
Data was analysed both by addressing questions about language maintenance
that had been formulated during the preparation process and by using thematic
analysis. To investigate the influence of the Orthodox Church on FLP, I used
the approach of a ‘community of practice’ (CofP). The first criterion for a CofP
is to have a shared goal, involving a commitment to work towards it and to be
accountable to others for the practices towards that end (Holmes & Meyerhoff,
1999, p. 175). A second characteristic of a CofP is the mutual engagement of
its members in a project, which typically requires regular interaction (Wenger,
1998, p. 73; Holmes & Meyerhoff, 1999, p. 175). A third characteristic of a CofP
is the existence of a shared repertoire (Wenger, 1998). The concept of a CofP has
been used extensively in different contexts. It allows for a dynamic analysis of
people’s linguistic ideologies and practices in a group situation, and it is therefore
a valuable tool to investigate ways in which church members socialise each other
into a social, cultural, and religious Ethiopian identity.
In the next section, I discuss in which regard the members of the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church constituted a community of practice, and how their engage-
ment in this community shaped their language ideologies and practices.
The Ethiopian Orthodox ‘Community of Practice’

Communities of practice are “groups of people who share a concern or a pas-
sion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regu-
larly” (Wenger, 2015). The members of the Orthodox Church represented a
community of practice (CofP) who had a joint enterprise and who showed
mutual engagement and a shared repertoire. In this section I discuss these three
modes of belonging to the community. I also suggest ways in which these impact
on the transmission of Amharic, both in the church and at home.
Essentially, the Orthodox CofP was linked through a joint enterprise. The
church was to a certain extent a ‘heritage centre’ (Weldeyesus, 2009, p. 215)
where participants were able to maintain and re-construct their Ethiopian iden-
tity in a diaspora context. This was done as they celebrated their religion in the
form of regular church services and festivals, followed Ethiopian norms and
values, provided a domain for Amharic language use that was regulated by overt
language rules, and promoted home practices involving Amharic.
The Ethiopian community was supportive and strong. Numerous church activi-
ties, children’s birthdays, weddings, and football matches provided occasions which
“enable[d] engagement” (Wenger, 1998, p. 74) and contributed to “community
maintenance” (Wenger, 1998, p. 74). Most events, however, were initiated not by
the recently founded official Ethiopian community but by the Orthodox Church,
which held regular services and united its members for special festivities. Such
events included celebrations associated with Christian traditions. For example, the
Orthodox Churches held a vigil at Easter: community members celebrated a church
service with chants, readings, and prayers on the Saturday evening before Easter
until the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, followed by fellowship and a meal
of injera (a type of sourdough typically eaten with stew). For Meskel, which accord-
ing to Ethiopian tradition signifies the ‘finding of the true cross’ on which Jesus was
crucified, the Orthodox community gathered at a beach and lit a bonfire around
which they danced and chanted, re-enacting what is annually done on a big scale
at one of the central squares in Addis Ababa and in several churches throughout
Ethiopia. Church conferences also provided an incentive for a few to travel in order
to connect with the Ethiopian Orthodox communities in Auckland and Christ-
church. The wide array of events seemed to strengthen community cohesion and
assisted members in developing close-knit networks. These strong ties encouraged
the maintenance of ethnic values and norms (see Milroy & Milroy, 1992).
While these events occurred regularly throughout the year and involved
a large number of community members, weekly church services united the
core members of the community. These took place on Sunday mornings and
were followed by a time of socialising. They were highlighted as providing the
otherwise very occupied community members with a time of rest and engage-
ment with each other. For some, they were one out of a number of events at
which they spoke Amharic, whereas, for others, they were the only occasions
on which they met with other Ethiopians. For example, for two of the boys
in the community, who lived at driving distance, contact with other Ethio-
pians outside the home was restricted to the church, where they occasionally
assumed special ministerial roles. These common events provided a space for
the language to be used. Spolsky argues that “religious observances help main-
tain languages after immigration” (2004, p. 49). In the Bourdieusian sense, the
144 Melanie Revis
Ethiopian Orthodox Church functioned as a ‘market’ where Amharic was the

legitimate language (Bourdieu, 1977).
Due to its religious belief system, the church functioned as an ethnically inclu-
sive place at which the wider habesha community was united. One participant
stressed: We don’t even mention at church who’s from Eritrea and who’s from Ethiopia.
We don’t do that in my religion, we don’t differentiate. Most practices in the church
such as praying and singing were tied to Amharic, reinforcing its legitimacy
even for church members who belonged to a different Ethiopian ethnic group.
The church thus provided a venue where Amharic was no longer a minority
language as it was in the wider New Zealand context but rather a prestigious
majority language that successfully competed with other ethnic languages.
The status of the language was also raised by weekly teaching sessions about
Amharic and the Orthodox religion. These activities provided a platform where
children came together in an ethnic and religious atmosphere, and were recog-
nised as a great help for the children to learn more about their heritage.
• The church is really helping the kids, we always meet in the church, Saturday
and Sunday morning, they speak Amharic, so it’s really helping the kids.
• Saturday afternoon the kids do language, Bible, singing. They teach drums.
As this participant’s comment implies, the volunteer teachers taught the chil-
dren not only the alphabet but also Amharic church songs, Bible stories, and how
to play traditional instruments. Although the intent was to teach the children
the language, this was seen critically by some: they speak in Amharic, so they call
it teaching, but they don’t really teach the ha hu (the alphabet), they teach them mostly
the Bible in Amharic.
While the Orthodox Church represented a place where ethnic and linguistic
differences were overlooked in favour of religious unity, the comment suggests
that the language teaching sessions were also in some regard a place of exclu-
sion. Activities to encourage and foster cultural and linguistic maintenance were
strongly anchored in the Orthodox religion. As a result, only members of the
Orthodox CofP sent their children to be educated in the Saturday school. Sara,
my only Protestant participant, lamented that her daughter had little opportunity
to learn Amharic, but also added concerning the weekly event at the Ortho-
dox Church: We are not thinking of sending her there. The reason is religious, they
are not going to stop teaching only the alphabet, they meet in the church. Conversely,
when asked about including members of other religious groups in their Amharic
classes, one Orthodox participant reasoned: They’ve got their own church or mesquit
(mosque), so they can do there. If they ever wanna teach their kids, it is better to teach
where they belong, you know, doesn’t have to be my church. So if they really want to
do they can do it that way. This comment, though only voiced explicitly by one
participant, suggests that religion seemingly outranked in importance commu-
nal efforts to maintain Amharic and may have posed a barrier to any poten-
tial united language maintenance endeavours. For this reason, another more
peripheral member of the Orthodox CofP asked for a non-religious organisation

that would teach Amharic: But the Orthodox Church at the moment, I’m not against,
but is it including Muslims or Protestants? Most of Protestants wouldn’t come there, but if
it’s language most of them would come. The Orthodox Church was therefore a place
where language teaching was successfully taking place, but where it was de facto
restricted to children from Orthodox families.
A CofP also has a shared repertoire, which includes experiences, languages,

discourses, and ways of addressing recurring problems. The Orthodox CofP
shared a diasporic discourse of religious re-enactment of Ethiopian traditions and
used Amharic as the medium of communication, regulated by overt language
management.
First of all, religion was typically linked to a re-enactment of Ethiopian cul-
ture, and comparisons between Ethiopia and New Zealand at a religious level
formed part of a shared discourse. Most importantly, many participants explained
that they missed the opportunity to go to church every day as they had done in
Ethiopia. Since their church building in Wellington was only rented, accessing
it was possible only twice a week. The scarce opportunities to practice reli-
gion were also immediately noted by one participant when asked about negative
aspects of living in New Zealand: I don’t know, can’t explain, in New Zealand not
too much religion, in Ethiopia everywhere you can see church because our culture or some-
thing like that we just see church everywhere, that’s our life: Here especially we don’t have
Ethiopian church here, we just use the Anglican church.
The lack of a church building of their own and the accompanying reduced
opportunities to attend church services were also noted by many others:
• There’s only one (church) in Wellington that we rent, but in Auckland there is three.
• Here we don’t have our own church, we just share from the Anglican church, so
we can’t always go in the time we want.
• In Ethiopia we had church three times a week, but here we only do twice, which
is Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.
Moreover, the lack of a priest in Wellington recurrently formed part of the dia-
sporic discourse about church:
• In Ethiopia we go to church every Saturday and Sunday, there was church on

Saturday in the morning too, but in here we don’t have priest so we can’t go in
the morning on Saturday. But in Ethiopia we have lots and lots of priests so we
could go every day.
• In Christchurch we had a priest, but they got no one in here.
Similarly, one participant explained that the greater opportunities to go to church

in Ethiopia rendered her visits there very pleasant:
I love when I go there, the culture, especially church every day you can go there,
here you can go every Sunday, and there’s no kidase (liturgical chanting) mostly,
146 Melanie Revis
once a year we have kidase, when it’s timqat (baptism), [. . .] we bring priest from
Auckland or sometimes from Australia, that’s when we have the big ceremony. So
I would love to go back it’s so nice.
Religion also served as a marker of identity that the participants wanted to rep-
resent to the wider society. For example, one mother reported that her daughter
used prayer in Amharic as a performance item when they were asked to give
a cultural performance in school. Although her daughter was one of the few
children in my data who could say only a few phrases in Amharic, she practiced
before the event to be able to recite the prayer in Amharic to represent her cul-
ture. Another participant explained that she had taken a New Zealander friend
to her church to introduce her to her culture. Still another woman expressed her
strong desire at the end of our interview saying: One wish that I have while I’m
living here as a kiwi I really want to have our church, then everybody can come along,
and show them what’s our new year, our Easter, those kind of things, that’s my dream, I
want to teach kiwi people.
In this respect, the heritage which participants wanted to express was first
and foremost associated with religious beliefs. This underlines the close connec-
tion between religion and culture that has been attested for Ethiopia in general
(Fargher, 1996).
Presumably due to the fact that the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
represents an ‘ethnic religion’ (Abramson, 1973) in which religious membership
is a core defining feature of ethnicity, the connection between religion, cul-
ture, and language was never overtly contested. Quite the opposite, one member
stressed the lack of usefulness of English in their church (I just tell them [the chil-
dren] not to use English, ’cause we don’t have any English prayer book, we don’t have
any book written in English) in favour of speaking only Amharic.
Given the participants’ strong identification with Ethiopia, and the link drawn
to language to provide a reason for this identification, it is hardly surprising that
the first generation generally considered Amharic their ‘we-code’ (see Gumperz,
1982) and used the language for habitual in-group communication. One par-
ticipant noted that Amharic use with other Ethiopians created positive feelings:
When you speak your own language with your people you feel good. You’re not
gonna meet a habesha person and speak in English, that’s not what our language
is, ’cause we have our own language and we have our own culture.
She explained that Ethiopians in New Zealand generally spoke Amharic with
other Ethiopians because it reflected their identity. A shared repertoire was
therefore considered important for establishing and expressing solidarity.
To underline the strong connection between religion and language, members
of the Orthodox CofP imposed an explicit Amharic-only policy for the church
(see Spolsky, 2004). One participant commented: I don’t like anyone there to speak
English, so I just tell them not to use English, ’cause we don’t have any English prayer
book, we don’t have any book written in English. Everything is just in Ge’ez and in
Amharic. The adults customarily used Amharic with each other in any case, but
for the children the rule acted as a restraining force on their use of English. One
girl reported:
We’re not even allowed to speak English at church ’cause they’re like “Stop speak-
ing English there”, you know when they’re joking, “you’re insulting me when you
are speaking English, I want you to speak only Amharic”. They just make fun
when we speak English.
She described receiving instant corrections after using English in the church. Her
claims were corroborated by other accounts from both children and adults, who
considered it their duty to ensure that the children used Amharic. While the
children could be heard using English with each other privately, their accounts
suggest that they willingly accepted the overt policy and recognised the legiti-
macy of Amharic for the church domain.
Overall, the members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church rep-
resented a CofP. Their shared goal of maintaining culture and religion, their
strong engagement with each other, and the different types of discourses they
shared provided a powerful frame for the use and transmission of Amharic.
Religion also transcended into their family language policy, where it was one
of the prime factors for strict language management and literacy practices that
involved Amharic.
Family Language Policy: Interweaving

of Language, Culture, and Religion
Religious ideologies transcended the domain of the church and reached the
home domain. Key findings concerned the positive beliefs about Amharic that
the Ethiopian caregivers held, their strong wish to pass on Amharic to their
children, and the high frequency with which they implemented explicit lan-
guage management in the home. The following figure, based on a model devel-
oped in Revis (2015), illustrates that the relative majority of families espoused
explicit management for their children to speak Amharic in the home, and
that their children followed suit. This is represented by the darker shade of
Scenario A.
The following quote exemplifies how one Ethiopian participant had positive
perceptions of the outcome of her family language policy. She expressed a sense
of comfort, security, and familiar territory as she related how she felt whenever
she was at home: To me, whenever I’m in this house, I don’t know where I am. It’s my
family, it’s my language, the culture, the food, everything it’s like Ethiopia. So I don’t
have any [New Zealand] culture in this house.
148 Melanie Revis
Child typically uses Amharic
A C E
management
Parental
Amharic None English
B D F
Child typically uses English

FIGURE 8.1 Language Management-Practice Scenarios in the Ethiopian Community
The participant suggested that when inside the home she forgot that she was
in New Zealand (I don’t know where I am) because the culture was only Ethiopian.
Part of the reason for this situation was the strict Amharic-only rule in the home
for her and the children:
Whenever they’re here, we don’t use English, we use Amharic, and we eat our
traditional food.
Her management seemed to be effective because one of her children stressed

repeatedly that the home domain was strictly Amharic for him. For example,
when I asked him whether he preferred to speak English or Amharic to express
his feelings when he was happy, he immediately asked whether I meant at home
or outside. His caregiver assumed an authoritative stance by repeating her previ-
ous statement about language management: Whenever they are around family or any
Ethiopian people, it’s Amharic. Otherwise it’s always English. She made it very clear
that their family could not neglect using Amharic because she considered this
the only way of preserving the language (see Fishman, 1991).
This significant effort to create a home environment where their children
could learn Amharic was surprising because all families repeatedly stressed that
Amharic had no prestige or usefulness in New Zealand. While maintaining
contact with the extended family was one of the reasons given for their language
maintenance efforts, the caregivers’ conviction that their children should learn
Amharic was recurrently traced back to its value as an integrative marker of
being members of the Ethiopian Orthodox religion.
Religion assumed a central role in my participants’ stories about the link
between culture and language, illustrating it as a core value in the community
(You know, Ethiopians, we are under religion, we respect religion; really in Ethiopia
we have stronger culture, because we respect people, we have religion). Interviews and
observations revealed the prominent role of religion in everyday life in general
and the elevated role of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopian society. Since lan-
guage, culture, and religion were considered core values, the wish to transmit
them to the younger generation was strong. This reflects Gogonas’ (2012, p. 115)
claim that language shift may be slowed down if language and religion are core
values. A number of participants listed the three values as a heritage that had to
be transmitted.
• That’s where they are from, they have to learn, they have to speak, they have
to know their language, their culture, their religion especially.
• In the future I have to teach him [. . .] Amharic, religion, culture.
• I’m trying to take them every Sunday to church so they will get used to the religion.
One of these participants emphasised that she considered it her own indi-
vidual responsibility to teach her now three-year-old son language and religion
at home in the future:
In the future I have to teach him reading, speaking, writing Amharic, I have to
teach him Amharic, religion, culture.
[Will you do it alone or in group?] I just have to do it myself at home [. . .]
because I just want to teach him language, culture, religion, respect. I just have to
spend my time with him, maybe half an hour or one hour after his homework, I
have to teach him these things. That’s my plan.
One example of religious practices transcending into the home domain were
literacy practices that arose from the shared repertoire within the church. Some-
times the children were given a homework assignment which involved them
reading the Bible in Amharic: Sometimes in the church they give us a question, so
we read our Bibles, they are in Amharic, so we read Amharic in our Bible. In order to
strengthen their children’s Amharic literacy skills and practice their religion,
some participants regularly asked their children to read and/or copy passages
from the Bible or a hymn book (They’ve got a prayer book which they read night time
and morning). In addition, religious posters in many people’s homes showed Bible
verses in Amharic and thus included the language in the linguistic landscape in
their homes.
Christianity also provided a frame of reference for dealing with difficulties
and illnesses and thus introduced the Amharic language into different life situa-
tions which often took place privately in the home. First of all, the Bible, which
every family owned in Amharic, offered norms of conduct for several par-
ticipants, which one participant explicitly mentioned when discussing lending
150 Melanie Revis
money to friends: I’m happy to help anybody as long as it’s a human, that’s what my
mum teach me, that’s what the Bible says. Second, prayer was a substantial part of the
shared repertoire of the community. One family had to send their daughter to
hospital on arrival to undergo surgery on her eye, and they attributed the positive
outcome to communal prayer. The community members’ dedication to praying
for each other further contributed to Amharic use because the language of prayer
was Amharic. One participant explicitly stated that prayer in Amharic seemed to
bring her closer to God than praying in English. In this sense, Amharic may be
classified as a “sacred language” (Karan, 2011).
Overall, my data suggests that the home and the church, though they repre-
sent de facto two separate domains, are very closely connected and interwoven
in everyday practice and ideologies. Religion was repeatedly mentioned as an
overarching life philosophy and a motivational factor to transmit Amharic. The
concept of an Ethiopian Orthodox Cof P seems to be appropriate, because reli-
gious identification exceeds the physical domain of the church and affects the
language ideologies and practices that the members of the CofP hold and do in
private.
Conclusion
This article responds to two calls for research. First, it addresses King’s (2016)
invitation to expand FLP research to less spoken languages by centring the
investigation on Amharic. Second, it responds to Weldeyesus’ (2009) call for
investigating the ways in which Ethiopian churches in the diaspora socialise
their members into Ethiopian culture and religion. By doing so, it contributes a
religious-linguistic account of family language policy.
The Orthodox Church community in Wellington represented a community
of practice (Wenger, 1998) with the shared goal of maintaining their culture,
religion, and language in a diasporic context. They engaged with each other
at weekly church meetings and annual festivities, with the church providing a
physical space where members could uphold cultural traditions and communicate
in Amharic. This corresponds to the findings about the Greek Orthodox Church
in Wellington (see Holmes et al., 1993). Further, the Orthodox CofP shared dif-
ferent types of repertoires, such as a discourse about re-enacting Ethiopian culture
in a diasporic context and the use of Amharic to establish solidarity. Amharic
use was regulated through unwritten rules as adult members had implemented
Amharic-only management for the church domain (see Spolsky, 2004).
Religious influences also transcended into the home domain. The Ethiopian
families in this study held language ideologies that were strongly influenced by
their religious identifications. Religion and language served as cultural core val-
ues (Smolicz, 1992), and church members showed keen interest in transmitting
them to their children. The example set by the language policy of the church
indirectly affected the caregivers’ motivation to establish explicit Amharic-only
management in the home. Their children’s language skills and home language
practices were also positively affected by the practice they received in church.
Amharic literacy practices in particular were linked to religious activities (see
Tawalbeh, 2014) such as reading or copying passages from a hymn book. Read-
ing the Bible and praying in Amharic represented further instances of religious
language use in the home. The impact of religion thus affected different layers
of family language policy.

Overall, the findings have shown that religious ideologies and practices were
a key component of culture for the majority of participants from the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church. Future analyses of family language policy may therefore be
greatly enriched by considering the impact of religion on language ideologies,
language practices and language management in the home.
Note
1. Tewahedo, a Ge’ez term, refers to the doctrinal belief that the human and divine nature
were in complete union as one nature in Jesus Christ (An 2015, p. 98–99). This belief,
though shared for example by the Coptic and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, distin-
guishes the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church from Protestant, Catholic and
other Orthodox Churches.
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9
“I SPEAK ALL OF THE LANGUAGE!”
Engaging in Family Language Policy Research

with Multilingual Children in Montreal
Alison Crump
Introduction
Family language policy (FLP) research has made important contributions to
understandings of how home language policies interact in complex nested rela-
tionships with economic and political processes outside the home (e.g., Curdt-
Christiansen, 2013; King & Fogle, 2013; Shohamy, 2006; Spolsky, 2009). Insights
into FLPs have come, in large measure, from examining parents’ explicit and
overt decision-making processes with respect to home language use and sup-
porting children’s multilingualism. While parents’ perspectives on FLPs are
clearly significant, so too are those of the younger members of the families.
This chapter draws on a qualitative inquiry I engaged in with three families in
their homes in the city of Montreal in the French province of Quebec (for more,
see Crump, 2014). The mothers of the families were Japanese from Japan, and the
fathers were Caucasian Anglophones (two from Canada and one from England).
At the time of the inquiry, the parents were following varying degrees of an
OPOL approach to FLP, meaning that their children were being socialized in
English and Japanese at home. The children attended daycare/preschool in French
or English. The four children went to a Saturday morning Japanese heritage lan-
guage school. In the chapter, I briefly describe the parents’ specific FLP strategies;
however, the focus of the chapter is the young children’s perspectives on language,
language practices, and language policies, both within and outside of the home.
Setting the Scene

At the federal level, Canada is a majority English-speaking country with an
official English-French bilingual language policy. The province of Quebec,
“I Speak All of the Language!” 155
however, has one official language—French. I begin with a necessarily brief

overview of language policy planning that was designed to protect and promote
French language and culture in the province of Quebec, starting in the 1960s.
This decade saw the advent of birth control, which led to a rapid decline in the
Francophone (Catholic) birthrate. At the same time, there was an increasing
influx of immigrant families to the city of Montreal, most of whom enrolled
their children in the English (then Protestant) school system. Altogether, this fed
increasing fears among French separatists of becoming demographic and linguis-
tic minorities (for more, see Levine, 1990). The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s
was characterized by a series of violent and terrorist acts, fuelled by language
politics. A series of language bills were proposed in the 1960s and early 1970s to
try to protect and secure the dominance of French language and culture. How-
ever, none dealt with what had emerged as the biggest threat to the survival of
French—immigrant Anglicization. That is, all parents maintained their right to
choose the language of education of their children (English Protestant or French
Catholic), and immigrant parents almost entirely chose English. Bill 101, the
Charter of the French Language, was passed on August 26 in 1977, and, like
preceding language laws, it decreed French language public signage to ensure a
French linguistic landscape in Montreal. But the key article that defined Bill 101
was the end of freedom of choice in language of education for immigrants. This
included a Quebec clause that limited English education only to children whose
parents had received their elementary education in English in Quebec (this was
overturned in 1984 by the Supreme Court of Canada and restated as the Canada
clause). Bill 101 put immigrant Anglicization in check, and immigrants, over-
night, became fodder for the survival and future of French language and culture
(Sarkar, 2005). Needless to say, Bill 101 marks a significant turning point in the
language and identity politics of Montreal.
In the post–Bill 101 era, Montreal has unpredictably become the city in North
America with the highest rate of trilingualism (Lamarre, 2003). Yes, Montrealers
are learning French as per Bill 101, but they are also responding to a strong pull
towards English as the language of the Canadian and international economy. And,
as Montreal is the city where over 85% of immigrants to Quebec settle (Statistics
Canada, 2006), many are investing in maintaining heritage languages as markers
of family and community belonging. Official language policy in Quebec, while
powerful, is not the sole factor in parents’ family language planning for their
children’s multilingual development and maintenance (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009;
Riches & Curdt-Christiansen, 2010). Parents’ strategies for language maintenance
are shaped by their own beliefs about language, which are influenced by per-
ceived market values of the languages in their children’s present and future lives.
For example, even though Bill 101 does not officially extend to preschools and
daycares, Lamarre (2003) noted that parents often make daycare choices largely
on the basis of the language(s) spoken there. The use of daycare as a language
learning strategy reflects parents’ awareness of the socio-economic, political, and
156 Alison Crump
market value aspects of languages in Quebec and beyond. I wanted to understand

how young children are navigating these social contexts as well. What are their
understandings of language policy both inside and outside of the home?
A Social Ecosystem Approach to LP

Many language policy (LP) scholars have challenged the macro-micro dichot-
omy in LP studies (e.g., Fishman, 1972; Pennycook, 2010; Ricento & Hornberger,
1996; Shohamy, 2006; Spolsky, 2009). The most recent trend in reframing the
macro-micro dichotomy in LP research appears to be an ecological perspective
to capture diversity and pluralism of language use. It accounts for different layers
of nested social relationships and moves away from dichotomous relationships. It
connects language practices to language ideologies and written policies; in other
words, it provides a way to integrate and understand relationships among the
three components of language policy (ideology, practices, management). How-
ever, for me, the term ‘language ecology’ still conjures up an image of languages
interacting, rather than people.
To bring the focus to the doers of languaging, I have drawn inspiration from
Pennycook’s (2010) theory of the locality of language practices and Lemke’s
(1995) ecosocial systems perspective. Pennycook argued that all practices are
local, but not equal in terms of the amount or directionality of power. A the-
ory of locality offers a perspective on how so-called macro-level discourses are
taken-up, propagated, or challenged through so-called micro-level interactions.
This dialogic interaction always occurs locally, though the effects of local prac-
tices can have more or less impact. I see this as a continuum that ranges from
local-high impact at one end, where boundaries are defined and the tone for
social interaction is set, to local-low impact at the other, where those boundaries
are negotiated and performed.
As with Pennycook’s theory of locality, Lemke’s (1995) ecosocial systems per-
spective places individual interactions at the center and “shows us that we are
primitively enmeshed in and depend for our origins and continuing existence on
a hierarchy of levels of interaction and transaction with multiple environments”
(p. 81). For Lemke, each interaction is “a ‘patch’, a mini-ecosystem containing
human organisms in interaction with their social and material environments”
(p. 79). In other words, individuals’ social interactions have traces or elements
of one another and create a larger ecosocial system, three-dimensional “webs of
social relations” (Lemke, 1995, p. 30). FLP can benefit from this social ecosystem
perspective in its focus on individuals’ local practices, which are informed by
language ideologies and rules (the three components of LP).
Before moving on, I’d like to briefly describe how I am using the term ‘ideol-
ogy.’ I see ‘ideology’ as the workings of power in everyday life, as a “complex,
conflictual and contradictory social practice” (Paré, 2002, p. 58). This perspec-
tive of ideology is important for understanding how individuals have agency
to create, resist, and respond to language policy as they express the beliefs and
values of the different communities to which they belong. In other words, ideol-
ogy has to do with how common sense ideas come to be taken for granted, and
which support the power of certain social groups (Lemke, 1995). Clearly, FLP
is implicated with power relationships, ideologies of language, and perceptions
of cultural and symbolic values of languages. In my inquiry, I explored young
children’s understandings of the interrelated dimensions of language policy (ide-

ologies, practices, management) inside and outside the home.
Methodology
The inquiry drawn on in this chapter took place between December 2012 and
June 2013 (for more, see Crump, 2014). I used an exploratory case study approach
(Yin, 2012) with four Japanese-Canadian children to explore how they under-
stand language policies and their multilingualism in different social settings. I
did this inquiry with Japanese-Canadian children because they are a population
I am familiar with (I have two Japanese-Canadian daughters), and this gave us
common linguistic and cultural reference points. I made contact with the par-
ticipating families through personal connections and a call for participants on a
forum for Japanese Montrealers (www.frommontreal.com).
I made six home visits to the Evans and the Moore families and four to the
Dale family (they will be introduced shortly). Visits ranged between one and
two hours. In the first visit with each family, I spoke only with the parents. I
spent the remainder of the home visits engaging with the children. The mothers
were always present, but generally stayed in another room. In addition to gain-
ing informed consent from the parents, I negotiated assent from the children on
an ongoing basis. I was always on the lookout for signs of disinterest in talking
to me or engaging with me. This was never the case—the children were always
happy to see me and enjoyed the visits.
Doing Research With Children

The guiding principle of my inquiry was a commitment to doing research with
children, not about them (Crump & Phipps, 2013). There is value in gathering
and documenting parents’ perspectives, yet there is also a danger of interpret-
ing such data as representative of children’s own understandings and meanings.
I wanted to foster the spontaneity and unpredictability of engaging with young
children in an organic way; thus, I did not ask pre-scripted questions to which I
expected a particular answer but rather showed I was genuinely interested in the
children’s lives and experiences. This approach helped the children feel comfort-
able expressing themselves and their desires and gave them the space to share
insights and perspectives that would have been very difficult, if not impossible,
to elicit through a controlled interview or elicitation approach.
158 Alison Crump
There were several types of activities I engaged in with the children, which
were productive for generating1 data. I took a craft bag with me to each visit,
stocked with paper, markers, pencil crayons, books, a felt storyboard, and card
games. I invited the children to look through the bag and take out anything they
wanted. Sometimes they did, but, often, we played with their toys or games, or
looked through their books. The data were generated through a creative and
playful approach to engaging with young children. I audio recorded the home
visits on two digital voice recorders (one in a pocket, and one was often a toy).
Transcribing and Interpreting the Data

Interpretation of the data began with doing the transcriptions. Transcribing is a
situated act that involves making decisions about what is transcribed (interpret-
ing) and how it is transcribed (representing) (Bucholtz, 2000). Perhaps the most
important decision I made with respect to interpreting the audio recordings was
that I always did the transcriptions within 24 hours of each home visit. Meaning
was co-created through multiple modes, such as speech, silence, movement, ges-
tures, and drawings. Thus, I chose not only to transcribe what was said but also
to represent nonverbal actions by including descriptions of these in square brack-
ets in the transcripts. Another aspect to consider in my transcriptions was how
to deal with multilingual languaging. The children and I spoke mostly English
together, but our languaging was often playful and fluid. In the transcripts, I did
not want to represent boundaries between languages that we did not perceive in
the moment of communication by using transcription conventions (bold, under-
lining, etc.). As such, I wrote all spoken dialogue in the same font and typeface.
In total, I had several hundred pages of transcripts. When the first stage of
interpretation (i.e., transcription) was complete, I read through the transcripts and
highlighted and coded moments (vignettes) when the children were talking to
me about language (their own, or others’, language use and practices). This open
coding process (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) was relatively straightforward, as relative
to the amount of time we spent making car noises, train noises, or negotiating
turns in a board game or card game, the language-themed interactions were few.
Findings
I present and discuss the findings for each case (family). In the section that fol-
lows this one, I provide summary discussion that draws out the common threads
that emerged in the data.
Moore Family2
The Moore family is made up of Natsumi (mother—Japanese) and Ian (father—
Anglophone Canadian) and their three children: Aya (age 2), James (age 4), and
Oscar (age 9). James, the middle child in his family, was the child participant in
this inquiry. Oscar was at school during the home visits, and Aya stayed with her
mom for the most part. Natsumi teaches Japanese at the same Saturday morning
Japanese heritage language school her children attend, and Ian is a doctor.
During the first home visit (Dec. 1, 2012), Natsumi talked about several
explicit and intentional decisions she made to support her children’s multilin-
gual language development, with a clear emphasis on Japanese. James attended
two English daycares part-time because Natsumi felt that if he went to day-
care full-time, he would not be at home enough to speak Japanese. In addi-
tion to attending Saturday Japanese language school, the family tries to take a
trip to Japan every year. Natsumi’s children know they have to speak to her in
Japanese, though she admitted that she sometimes forgets and talks to them in
English, especially if her husband is around. Ian doesn’t speak Japanese, so mostly
English is spoken at home on the weekends, and her three children speak English
amongst themselves.
Natsumi talked about wanting her children to be able to speak French in
addition to English and Japanese. She is relying on the French immersion pro-
gram in elementary school to provide that language education (her children
qualify for English education because Ian did his elementary school education in
English in Canada). She would have liked to send James to a French or bilingual
daycare but commented on the difficulty in finding one in the part of Montreal
where she lives. Many advertise as bilingual, but, as she said, “[the] kids speak
English, and especially at his daycare, most teachers are English. Many of them
don’t even speak French at all” (home visit 1, Dec. 3, 2012). When I asked Nat-
sumi if James has any awareness of French, she replied, “No. It’s embarrassing.
We recently went apple picking and everyone was speaking French and he said in
a very big voice, ‘why are they speaking French?’ ” (home visit 1, Dec. 3, 2012).
James and I got along easily. He was eager to show me around his house and
show me his favourite toys and books. We played a lot with his toy car set and
drew pictures of cars. James was often sad when I left—I think that undivided
attention was something quite special for him. The following vignettes show
some of his perspectives on language and language policy.
James Speaks Japanese (Home Visit 2, Dec. 5, 2012)

[James and I are in Aya’s bedroom, sitting on the city map carpet on the floor
and playing with toy airplanes. James started the following conversation, which
was one of the first things he ever said to me.]
JAMES: I speak Japanese.

ALISON: You do? Who do you speak Japanese with?
JAMES: At Japanese school.
ALISON: At Japanese school?
JAMES: Yeah, and with the teacher. . . .3 [We continue to play with the toy
airplanes.]
160 Alison Crump
ALISON: Do you like Japanese school?

JAMES: Yeah.
ALISON: What do you do there?
JAMES: Play.
ALISON: Do you sing songs?
JAMES: Yeah.
ALISON: What songs?

JAMES: Uh, I don’t know. Like Twinkle Twinkle.
ALISON: But in Japanese, right? [I start to sing the song.] Kira kira hikaru.
JAMES: [He does not react to me singing in Japanese.] Yeah, that one. Hey, look
at the Mini Cooper! . . .
ALISON: Do you speak Japanese with anyone else?
JAMES: Yeah.
ALISON: Like who?
JAMES: Like Baba and Jiji (Grandma and Grandpa).
ALISON: And what about with your sister?
JAMES: She speaks, uh, she’s two.
ALISON: Yeah, she’s two. . . .
ALISON: Do you speak Japanese with your Mommy?
JAMES: Yeah! She’s Japanese! That’s a jumbo. [He is pointing at an airplane in
his library book and the conversation weaves back to focus on airplanes
and pilots.]
In this vignette, I see that James has fairly strong associations between language
use and places (e.g., Japanese at Japanese school) and with certain people (e.g.,
his Japanese grandparents). He knows that he has to speak with his mom in
Japanese. When he told me about the song he sings at Japanese school, he told
me about it in English (the language we were communicating in) but did not
react when I sang it to him in Japanese. At home, this kind of fluid languaging
is commonplace for him. Later in this visit James told me that his dad speaks
English and some French and that his mom speaks Japanese, English, and French.
Just as James’ bilingualism is normal to him, so too is the diversity of linguistic
repertoires of each member of his family.
Which Language Where (Home Visit 3, Dec. 10, 2012)

[James is playing with my camera, taking pictures of his toy cars. He looks
out the window to the cars parked on the street and finds my car. He tells me
about his friend, Miyu, who has a Mazda, which he pronounces in Japanese:
Ma-tsu-da.]
ALISON: Is Miyu a friend at school?

JAMES: Yeah.
FIGURE 9.1 James’ Toy Cars
ALISON: Which school?

JAMES: Japanese school. [He is taking more pictures of his toy cars.] . . .
ALISON: At the train school [one of his daycares], does anyone speak Japanese to
you?
JAMES: Japanese school they speak Japanese. Train school they speak English.
And, Jen’s school [the other daycare] they speak English.
ALISON: No French.
JAMES: No French. Oscar’s school is French. And the train school is English. . . .
ALISON: Do your friends at the train school know you speak Japanese?
JAMES: Nope.
James expressed strong understanding of the rules of language practices in dif-

ferent places. He responds with his language practices to the extent that his
friends at the “train school” do not know that he speaks Japanese. He adjusts his
language practices to fit the norms of language use in each place.
Japanese in Japanese School (Home Visit 4, Dec. 12, 2012)

[James and I are sitting in Aya’s room, on the carpet, drawing pictures of people
and colouring them in.]
162 Alison Crump
ALISON: When I go to Japanese school, because I’m going to go there soon with
Mia (my daughter), am I allowed to speak English?
JAMES: In my class? No. They speak Japanese.
ALISON: Do you ever speak English there?
JAMES: No.
ALISON: What happens if you speak English?
JAMES: They get mad. They will get mad.

ALISON: Okay. Well, I’ll practice then. What about Mommies and Daddies, do
they always speak Japanese too?
JAMES: My mom speaks Japanese and my Dad doesn’t speak Japanese.
ALISON: And that’s okay?
JAMES: That’s not okay. [He calls to his mom, in Japanese, to come into the
room to see the picture we drew, which has a drawing of him on each
side.]
JAMES: [to Natsumi] Kore ga James no cranky face. (This is James’ cranky
face.) [He flips the page over to show her.] Kore ga James no happy
face. (This is James’ happy face.) [Natsumi comments, in Japanese, that
she prefers the happy face and then leaves the room.]
In this vignette, James showed, as above, that he understands that he has to

speak Japanese at Japanese school. He feels that his teachers would get mad
if he speaks English and thinks it is not good that his dad cannot follow the
‘speak Japanese at Japanese school’ rule. Yet, as he shows in this vignette, as
with above, there are, on the one hand rules and boundaries, and, on the other,
there are actual language practices. James knows the rules of language use and
seems to have quite strict boundaries around what language belongs where, but
I found that his language practices at home were quite fluid when switching
from talking to me and his mom.
I Love English! (Home Visit 6, Feb. 22, 2013)

[Natsumi comes into Aya’s bedroom, where James and I are looking at a globe.
He is showing me where Japan is—it is the “sausage”—and where Canada is.
Natsumi is holding a book that has a large pen on it. The pen says words of the
pictures in the book when it touches the pages.]
NATSUMI: It’s in English and Japanese.

ALISON: Oh cool! What do you do with this? [I ask James, and he shows me
how it works on a page with sea creatures on it. He is using it in
English.] Do you play with this in Japanese?
NATSUMI: That’s why I bought it, but he only uses it in English.
JAMES: Because I LOVE English!
NATSUMI: We were shopping the other day in a very French store and the people
said ‘Bonjour’ and he said ‘I only speak English.’ [She seems embar-
rassed by this. James continues to play with the book.]
In previous visits, James told me that he speaks Japanese and expressed a strong
affiliation with Japanese language and the people he speaks it with. This was the
first time I heard him position himself as someone who loves English. It seems,
from Natsumi’s comment, that James does not have a very good sense yet that
French is the majority language in Montreal. He has been socialized in English
and Japanese, but he has not had a lot of exposure to French yet.
The Evans Family

The Evans family is made up of Sayumi (mother—Japanese), Peter (father—
British), and their two children: Henry (age 6) and Elizabeth (age 4). Sayumi and
Peter met in Montreal, and, since neither of them did their elementary school
education in English in Canada, their children are not eligible to attend English
schools. Both parents are highly invested in and intentional about supporting
their children’s trilingualism, but especially Japanese and French. Sayumi talked
to me at length in the first home visit (Dec. 11, 2012) about some of their con-
scious decisions regarding how to do this.
When Henry was two years old and Elizabeth was six weeks old, the fam-
ily moved to Japan for two years, where both parents taught English. At
this time, the children were socialized in two languages. When the family
returned to Montreal, they found an alternative French preschool for Henry
to attend in the mornings. At the time of the inquiry, both children were at
the preschool part-time. To further support their children’s French, Sayumi
and Peter hire a French babysitter to come to the house once a week for two
hours.
Sayumi and Peter decided that they would speak their respective first lan-
guages with their children. However, Sayumi said that English is used most at
home because Peter does not speak Japanese. Outside of the home, her guideline
is that if there is someone else there who speaks only English, she will too, but
the conversations between her and the children should be in Japanese. She says
the children used to speak mostly Japanese with each other, but now it is more
of an equal mix between English and Japanese, with some French.
The children attend Japanese classes on Saturday mornings at the Japanese
Language Centre. Also, each year, the family rents a room to a student from
Japan who has come to Montreal to study English. As Sayumi said, having
another person in the house who speaks Japanese “gives a lot of dimension to
the language” (home visit 1, Dec. 11, 2012). Sayumi can see how this will help
support their children’s Japanese in the future.
164 Alison Crump
Henry and Elizabeth were both easy to engage with from the moment I met
them. Henry was an animated storyteller. Elizabeth communicated less with
words and more through physical connection. She often sat on me, did hand-
stands on me, and hugged me. The following vignettes show some of their per-
spectives on language and language policy.
Elizabeth Speaks a Lot of Japanese (Home Visit 2,

Jan. 17, 2013)
[The three of us are sitting on the hardwood floor in the hallway, just outside
the dining room. Henry and I are playing a board game called City Square Off.
Elizabeth is watching and is turning the cards over for us. We are talking about
their friends at school.]
ALISON: Does anyone else at your school speak Japanese?

ELIZABETH: Um, yes. But my Japanese girl goed somewhere.
ALISON: Where did she go?
ELIZABETH: Vancouver.
ALISON: That’s far away.
HENRY: There’s one in grade 7. I know him. His name is Ryota-kun.
ALISON: And he’s Japanese?
HENRY: Yes. His mom is from Japan. He speaks the same languages as us.
ALISON: The same three. French and English and Japanese. So when you see
him, what language do you talk to him in?
HENRY: Any language.
ELIZABETH: And the Vancouver one too.
ALISON: You speak to her in any language or in Japanese.
ELIZABETH: Japanese and English and French. . . . I speak a lot of Japanese.
HENRY: Okay, put it down. [He brings our attention back to the game we
are playing.]
Henry and Elizabeth seem to have a good awareness of their abilities to language
flexibly with others who speak the same languages they do. They do not put
strict boundaries around which language they will speak with their friends who
have the same language resources. Although school is a French place, their lan-
guaging seems to be determined more by the people they are with, at least on the
playground. In this conversation, Elizabeth identifies herself as someone who is
multilingual, but she emphasizes that she speaks a lot of Japanese, echoing what
Sayumi told me in the first visit.
I Speak All of the Language! (Home Visit 2, Jan. 17, 2013)

[Henry has gone into the kitchen to play with his football cards. Elizabeth and
I have cleaned up City Square Off, and I take it to the dining room to put it on
the table. The table is covered with crafts. Elizabeth picks up a paper purse that
she made with her friend from school and tells me that the string handle fell off.]
ALISON: Who is your friend?

ELIZABETH: Diana. [She is trying to tape the string back onto her purse.]
ALISON: What language do you speak with her?
ELIZABETH: English and French. Look! [She fixed her purse.]

ALISON: Great! It works again.
ELIZABETH: It opens here. [She shows me that the purse has a pocket. She puts it
down and then starts to run down the hall to the kitchen.] I speak all of
the language! I speak all of the language! [I follow her to the kitchen.]
Here, Elizabeth shows pride in her multilinguality. She plays with her friend
from school in English and French, but she also knows “all of the language.” She
knows which language resources are most appropriate in certain social contexts
to connect with and engage with her friends.
Mixing Languages With Friends (Home Visit 3, Jan. 21, 2013)

[We are sitting on the hardwood floor in the hallway beside the dining room.
Henry has been showing me his photo albums from when he was younger. He
points to his friend Eric and tells me that he has a Francophone mom and an
Anglophone father from Ottawa.]
ALISON: When you’re playing with Eric, do you speak English or French?
HENRY: Both.
ALISON: How do you know which one?
HENRY: I don’t really know.
ALISON: Yeah, you just mix.
HENRY: Yeah. [He starts to tell me a long story about a camping trip he went on.
Later, he shows me his class picture.]
ALISON: Your school is a French school, right?
HENRY: Yeah.
ALISON: Do you have to speak French all the time?
HENRY: Not all the time.
ALISON: What about when you play outside?
HENRY: Anything.
ALISON: If you’re playing with friends in English and other friends come who
speak French, do you keep speaking English?
HENRY: Both. [He turns the page in his album and points at another picture and
starts to tell me another story.] This is when I got a leech on my knee.
In this vignette, Henry shows himself to be a very confident multilingual, who

does not feel a lot of strict boundaries around his languaging and can shift his
166 Alison Crump
practices appropriately to the situation. Although school is French, he does not

feel restricted to speak only French when playing with his friends on the play-
ground. In this visit, Henry was more interested in telling me stories than talking
about language.
Henry Speaks English the Most (Home Visit 5,

Feb. 14, 2013, 1–3pm)

[We are lying on the grey shag carpet in the living room, colouring in a per-
son with different coloured markers, which represent different languages, and
creating a story. This opens up a space for Henry to talk to me about his own
multilinguality.]
HENRY: Elizabeth speaks Japanese the most. . . . I speak English, then Japanese.
ALISON: And what about French?
HENRY: Yeah, and Spanish.
ALISON: So, English the most and then Japanese?
HENRY: Then French, then Spanish. A bit of Spanish. Maybe I could do two ears
like you. [He colours in the ears on the drawing to represent his small
knowledge of Spanish.]
FIGURE 9.2 Henry and Elizabeth Drawing

ALISON: Two ears of Spanish. . . . Do you ever speak in French when you do
activities? Or just at school?
HENRY: Just at school. Sometimes when I have a friend come over.
ALISON: What about when you go shopping to the store, do you speak French?
HENRY: To who?
ALISON: To the people in the store.
HENRY: If they speak French to me, I speak French to them. [He says this in a
tone that suggests that I have asked him a silly question.]
Henry pointed out that he and Elizabeth have different abilities in their lan-
guages. His comment is in line with my earlier observation that Elizabeth identi-
fies most strongly with Japanese (her mother noted this as well). Though Henry
and Elizabeth have been socialized in the same language environments (same
parents, same FLP, same schools), they order their abilities differently. This shows
that language socialization is not a one-way street, where children are passive
recipients of language, but, rather, they are active agents. Also, they see their
own competencies as gradable or measureable, which shows a sophisticated met-
alinguistic awareness in these young children.
In this conversation, Henry described French as a school language but later
added that he speaks French in public spaces (stores) if other people speak French
first. He seems to understand that French is the majority language and that there
are certain places where French is most appropriate. This echoes Quebec’s lan-
guage policy, Bill 101, which mandates that French be the language of use in
public places and education (with the exception of those who qualify for English
education).
The Dale Family

The members of the Dale family are Yuki (mother—Japanese), Marco (father—
Italian-Canadian from Montreal), Taichi (age 4), and Kazu (age 18 months).
Yuki was teaching math and science at the Japanese Hoshuko (full day Saturday
Japanese language school in Montreal). Marco, an engineer, grew up in Mon-
treal and speaks English, French, and Italian. When Taichi was born, Yuki and
Marco had not planned what languages they would speak with him, and they
just did what felt natural. Marco said he chose to speak to his children in English
and not French “because daycare is French, so I knew he’d get it with a native
speaker [and] because my accent is not native” (home visit 1, Feb. 3, 2013). He
would like the children to be “perfectly fluent” in English and French and to be
able to “get by in Japan” in Japanese. He would like them to also learn Italian
when they are older.
Like the other parents, Taichi’s parents have made explicit decisions about
how to support their children’s multilingual language development. For exam-
ple, they always chose extra-curricular activities (e.g., cross-country skiing)
168 Alison Crump
offered in French. Marco seemed especially concerned about Taichi maintaining

his French, whereas Yuki worried about Japanese. Taichi, like the other children,
attends the Japanese Saturday morning heritage language school.
Taichi and Kazu went to a French daycare fulltime during the week, so sched-
uling visits was somewhat of a challenge. My first home visit was on a Sunday
afternoon. The whole family was at home, but I spoke mostly with Marco, and
we were sitting in the living room where Taichi and Kazu were playing on the
carpet around us. At tea time, Yuki came out of the kitchen and spoke to me.
The first thing she said to me was, “I really want to know what should we do
about keeping languages, Japanese” (home visit 1, Feb. 3, 2013).
Yuki told me that before last summer’s trip to Japan, she spoke English
and Japanese to Taichi, but he started to always reply in English. She realized
she needed to change her approach and began to speak only Japanese. She has
noticed a big difference in Taichi’s Japanese. The family makes annual trips to
Japan for most of the summer and stay at Yuki’s parents’ house.
In order for me to visit Taichi, Yuki had to take him out of daycare. Although
Yuki said it was no problem and that it was something “special for Taichi” (home
visit 3, May 24, 2013), I hesitated to impose on the family too much. This is why
I made four visits to Taichi, instead of six, as I did with the other families. At
each visit, it took a little while for Taichi to warm up to me, and as Yuki said,
“He’s shy, but he was talking to you!” (home visit 3, May 24, 2013). Here, I share
some of his guage policy.
Totoro Picks a Book (Home Visit 2, Feb. 8, 2013)

[I am in Taichi’s room with him, and he starts jumping on his bed and throwing
his little Totoro—stuffed animal—at me to catch. I am beside his bookshelf and
notice that the books are arranged according to language: English, French, and
Japanese.]
ALISON: Let’s calm down a bit and do something quiet. Do you want to read a
book with me? . . . [Taichi is poised to throw the little Totoro at me
again.] Don’t throw it, okay. Taichi, come here. Is Totoro going to pick
a book? Or Taichi’s going to pick a book? [This gets his attention and
he starts to calm down.]
TAICHI: Totoro! [He laughs.]
ALISON: Does he need a Japanese book or an English one or a French one?
TAICHI: A Japanese book. [I hold up a board book because I think I could
handle reading it in Japanese.] These are baby Japanese books. . . .
ALISON: Can Totoro read in English?
TAICHI: No!! [My question is clearly ridiculous.]
ALISON: Can Totoro read in French?
TAICHI: No!! [Again, my question is absurd.] . . . You pick.
FIGURE 9.3 Totoro Watching Us Read
ALISON: Me?
TAICHI: No, Totoro pick.
ALISON: Okay. [I pick up the Totoro book—it is based on the film. I have the
same book at my house and have read parts of it. I read the title.] Tonari
no Totoro.
170 Alison Crump
TAICHI: But it’s very long.

ALISON: What’s this? [I pick up another board book about food.]
TAICHI: Baby.
ALISON: Okay. [I read some book titles out loud.]
TAICHI: Um, I think this one. [He takes a book off the shelf.]
ALISON: Fushigi hakken ehon. (Discovery picture book.) Oh, I see. [I flip
through some pages.] It is a picture book of insects. . . . Okay, are we

going to read this one?
TAICHI: Yeah.
ALISON: Here or in the living room?
TAICHI: In the living room. [We walk to the living room. He is carrying his two
Totoro stuffed animals, the big one and the little one.]
ALISON: This is Totoro’s pick. Can the little Totoro sit still?
TAICHI: He wants to play a lot.
ALISON: He wants to play a lot. [He throws it against the wall. His mom comes
out of the kitchen and tells him to be gentle.] Okay, let’s read this book.
[We sit down on the mats in the living room, leaning against the sofa.
As I read the book in Japanese, he often corrects my pronunciation.]
Earlier in the visit, Taichi established that no one at daycare knows Totoro because
they are not Japanese. In this vignette, he rejects the possibility that Totoro could
read a book in English or French. Totoro’s book choice had to be in Japanese. In
his strong reactions to my suggestions, Taichi expressed clear boundaries around
his languages and where they can fit and with whom. By correcting my pronun-
ciation, Taichi positioned himself as an expert Japanese speaker.
Everything Is in French (Home Visit 3, May 24, 2013)

[Taichi and I are sitting at a round table in the children’s section of the local
library. He is playing a board game called Blockus by himself. I am watching.]
ALISON: Last time I saw you, you were doing cross country skiing. I guess not
now, there’s no snow. Do you remember doing skiing? [He nods]. Did
you like it?
TAICHI: We talked in French when we were doing ski.
ALISON: Oh yeah?
TAICHI: My school too! Everything in French for me! Everything in French.
[He sighs and makes a disappointed face.]
ALISON: Everything in French? . . . What about TV? Do you watch TV some-
times in French?
TAICHI: Everything in French.
ALISON: Everything in French? What’s in English?
TAICHI: Nothing in English.
ALISON: But you’re talking to me in English. What about at home? Do you

speak English at home? [He nods.] What about with your brother? Does
he say some words now? [His brother is 18 months old.]
TAICHI: Yeah, just in Japanese he says some words. . . .
ALISON: Does your dad talk to you in French?
TAICHI: [He is looking for blocks. I wait for him to say something]. He don’t
talk, I talk better than my Daddy in French.

ALISON: You do?
TAICHI: He knows just a little bit. [He returns to putting the blocks on the
board.]
In this vignette, Taichi shows his expertise in French. This is interesting because
Marco grew up in Montreal and learned French and English in school and con-
siders himself to be trilingual. At the same time, Taichi expressed frustration at
the amount of French that has been planned for him; he does everything outside
of home in French and watches TV in French at home. Taichi seems to feel the
weight of this family language planning and expressed some regret that “nothing
[was] in English.”
Key Learnings
Though I interpreted the data for case (family) separately, there were some recur-
ring themes that were common to all of the families, with respect to both the
parents and the children. All the parents followed an OPOL approach; that is, the
children speak Japanese with their mom and English with their dad. However,
English is the most common language in the three homes because the dads don’t
speak Japanese. Their strategic approach to FLP treated languages as separate
entities with different sets of rules around them, reflecting a monolingual ide-
ology, even though the goal is multilingualism. The parents all made explicit
choices and decisions with respect to how they would invest in and support their
children’s multilingual language development. They seemed to invest the most
resources (time, money, and effort) into the language(s) they felt were most likely
to be minoritized (Japanese) or important for their children’s futures (French).
There was no discussion about efforts to support and maintain English, which
suggests that family language contexts and practices are just as, if not more, pow-
erful in determining parents’ decisions about their FLPs than official language
policy.
Like their parents, the children expressed clear ideas of languages as count-
able and measurable entities, reflecting the same monolingual ideology, though
they clearly have multilingual language practices. When it comes to language
management, the children all seem to have a clear sense of rules related to lan-
guage use, such as what to speak with whom and where. Taichi, for example,
has a keen awareness of his parents’ language planning, which is to emphasize
172 Alison Crump
his exposure to French. James, too, knows the rule that he has to speak Japanese
with his mom and at Japanese school. Henry and Elizabeth appear to have a
more flexible understanding of the expectations around their language use at
preschool. This must be a reflection of the language rules and ideologies that
are circulating there. The children’s language practices beyond their interactions
with their parents are shaped by their understandings of socially constructed
boundaries, which are tied up with their understandings of language ideologies

and language management. Their language practices are also shaped by their
own individualities and agencies to draw on their linguistic resources in creative
ways. The children language in response to their local social contexts in ways
that are not always predictable from the perspective of adults, and, in so doing,
they contribute to the social ecosystem of those contexts.
The children all seem to have an implicit awareness of a hierarchy of their lan-
guages (as fixed entities that can be ordered), which puts Japanese lower down
than French and English. This socially dictated hierarchy is not, however, how
the children order their languages. This points to boundaries and hierarchies that
are constantly being negotiated, and the children do this with ease, positioning
themselves as confident multilinguals who can language monolingually in some
places (e.g., daycare) and with some people (e.g., Baba and Jiji), or who can
language fluidly with others (e.g., at home with me, with some friends, with
siblings).
Taking a social ecosystem approach to LP, I was able to explore how children’s
language practices are nested within higher-impact local practices, such as par-
ents’ language management, language rules at daycare or preschool, and Bill 101.
What the children interpret as possible with respect to their languaging in dif-
ferent social contexts is informed by their own language ideologies and the rules
they associate with interactions in certain places or with certain people. I found
that these young children are deeply attuned to their social environments and
express their individualities and agency as they play with and position themselves
through their ever-changing language repertoires.
Concluding Reflections
What I have shared in this chapter is certainly not the only method of engaging
meaningfully in research with children; there are endless creative ways to engage
with young children and give them a space to share their perspectives on their
lived experiences.
Becoming multilingual is a multisite language socialization process (Lamarre,
2003) that is heavily influenced by market forces and the symbolic and material
resources of a language (Bourdieu, 1991). The young children in this inquiry
showed a sophisticated degree of metalinguistic awareness, and they expressed
their own understandings and experiences of how they are navigating these
broader social forces. Thus, I argue that children’s perspectives can help advance
theoretical understandings of the relationships between language policy inside

and outside the home.
Notes
1. Qualitative researchers commonly talk (and write) about ‘collecting’ or ‘gather-
ing’ data. To me, these terms suggest that data are waiting, ready to be plucked and
stored at the researcher’s convenience. This is not an apt description of the negotiated,
improvisational, creative, and dialogic process I engaged in with the children. Instead,
I prefer, like Graue and Walsh (1998), to speak of generating data.
2. All names are pseudonyms.
3. Ellipsis indicates time passing.
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10
DYNAMIC FAMILY LANGUAGE
POLICY
Heritage Language Socialization and Strategic

Accommodation in the Home
Corinne A. Seals
Introduction
During the United States’ most recent full census data collection in 2010 (reported
in 2011), there were over 291 million people aged five and over living in the
country (Ryan, 2013, p. 2).1 Of these, over 60.6 million people reported speaking
a language other than English at home, and over 900,000 reported speaking the
Russian language at home (Ryan, 2013, pp. 2–3). This number makes Russian
one of the top-ten languages spoken in the United States. Its vitality is further
confirmed when comparing the number of Russian speakers across the years:
173,226 Russian speakers in 1980, 241,798 speakers in 1990, 706,242 speakers in
2000, and over 900,000 speakers by the end of 2010 (Ryan, 2013, pp. 3–7). Fur-
thermore, over 26,000 students were enrolled in Russian language classes in the
United States in 2009 (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin, 2010, p. 16).
However, while the language situation for Russian in the United States is
growing ever stronger, other Slavic languages do not receive the same recogni-
tion. The Ukrainian language, for example, is spoken by over 41 million people
worldwide (Lewis, 2009), is a heritage claimed by over 900,000 people in the
United States, and is spoken in the United States by over 275,000 people in
diaspora communities (US Census, 2004; Seals, 2014). Ukrainian has also gone
through a period of regaining legitimacy in Ukraine through Ukrainisation
during the past 25 years, replacing the politically dominant Russian language
from the Soviet era (see Seals, 2009). However, Ukrainian still has little to no
visibility in most of the United States, where only 35 community-run Ukrai-
nian educational programs exist, all in areas with large diaspora communities,
and there are only a handful of mainstream programs, all housed at universities
(Seals, 2014). Therefore, in most of the United States, Ukrainian speakers are
offered Russian courses only—not Ukrainian. As these two communities have a
176 Corinne A. Seals
long contested history and only share 62% of their lexicon (Bilaniuk & Melnyk,
2008, p. 70; Seals, forthcoming), the lack of Ukrainian visibility and resources
threatens its vitality in the United States.
In the United States, then, Ukrainian-speaking families face multiple levels of
linguistic negotiation—that between their minority languages and the majority
language (English), as well as that between their own minority languages (e.g.,
Ukrainian and Russian). How do these families manage their linguistic practices
and beliefs about their languages in their homes, as evidenced through linguistic
accommodation or non-accommodation? Furthermore, what do their language
practices in the home tell us about how various family members socialize each
other into the family language policy?2 The current chapter investigates these
questions by looking to two linguistic ethnographic case studies of Eastern-
European (Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking) families in the United States.
Review of Language Socialization and

Linguistic Accommodation
Research in language socialization and linguistic accommodation has repeatedly
pointed to the strong effect that children’s peer language preference has on their
home language use. In schools in the United States, where English is the most
common and most preferred language used among peers, this peer preferred
language can, and often does, lead to a language shift among children of émigré
families. As a result, regardless of their home language or first language, these
children often shift their preferred language to English (Brenneman, Morris, &
Israelian, 2007; Seals, 2013). Thus, while children may continue to accommodate
their language use for their parents to varying degrees depending on the fam-
ily and child, the children of émigré families themselves often prefer English
with each other, and this preference shows itself through sibling-sibling language
socialization and accommodation in English (e.g., de la Piedra & Romo, 2003;
Seals, 2013).
Sociolinguistic accommodation can best be explained via accommodation theory
as put forth by Giles and Coupland (1991: 60–61): “[linguistic] accommodation
is to be seen as a multiply-organized and contextually complex set of alterna-
tives, regularly available to communicators in face-to-face talk. It can func-
tion to index and achieve solidarity with or disassociation from a conversational
partner, reciprocally and dynamically.” When the bilingual children of émigré
families use the parents’ dominant language when in their presence, this can
serve to accommodate to their parents’ language preference, indexing solidarity.
Likewise, when the children who prefer English use English with each other,
they too can show accommodation to each other and index their solidarity with
one another.
Yet what happens when parents who prefer the heritage language and siblings
who prefer English are all involved in the same conversation? Depending on the
Dynamic Family Language Policy 177
languages chosen for interaction, the children can show preference to accommo-
date to their parents, they can show preference to accommodate to their siblings,
or the parents can accommodate to the children, showing the complexity of
family language policies within the family but between different members. The
sociolinguistic accommodation that occurs can provide insight into the ethnic
and linguistic identities of the speakers (e.g., Giles & Powesland, 1975; Myers-
Scotton 1983; McNamara, 1987; Giles & Coupland, 1991; Seals, 2013; Seals, 2014;
Li, 2006). A preference for English could index a stronger American, English-
speaker identity at that moment, while a preference for Russian could also index
a more macro, overarching Russian ethnic and linguistic identity. Language
choice can be, and often is, an important cultural marker, which helps display
the speaker’s preferred identity to the speaker’s audience (Rampton, 1996). As
the children in this study have continued to develop proficiency in both English
and Russian at their school, but Ukrainian only at home, their language choice
and use at home provides insight into their multilingual identity negotiation.
Additionally, the languages used by their siblings or parents when speaking with
them shed further light on how they are positioned as language speakers in their
homes.
Finally, language choice within these multilingual families can serve more
specific interactional purposes. For example, as shown later in this chapter, lan-
guage choice can be used between siblings to socialize each other into pre-
ferred language practices. Also, children’s alignment with their parents’ preferred
language(s) can be used not only to index solidarity with parents but strategically
in efforts to capture their parents’ attention, make demands of their parents, and
increase their chances of receiving a response from their parents. Parents can use
language choice as well—for example, to assert authority over their children in
conversation, among other interactional purposes.
When members of an immigrant group enter a new society, such as the fami-
lies in this study, social identity is affected as the families negotiate their place
in their adopted environment (McNamara, 1987). The choice to use and/or
maintain the families’ heritage language(s) can also be affected, depending on
perceived social status of the home language(s). Therefore, it is not just children
who are socialized by their parents, and parents by their children (Schieffelin &
Ochs, 1986; Duff, 2003; Hwang, 2003; Kim, 2008); the entire family is also
socialized by the dominant society.
Methodology
Participants
Two families took part in this linguistic ethnographic case study from 2010 until
2013. The first family consists of seven children, two of whom were key partici-
pants in the study—Alla and Elena. Alla (fifth of seven children) was six years old
at the start of the study and identified herself as Ukrainian; Ella (fourth of seven
children) was nine years old and identified herself as Ukrainian-American. They
lived with their mother (Ukrainian from Ukraine) and father (Ukrainian from
Ukraine). The second family consists of eight children, one of whom was a key
participant in the study—Darya. Darya (eighth of eight children) was ten years
old at the start of the study and identified herself as Russian-American. She lived
with her mother (Latvian from Latvia)3 and father (Ukrainian from Ukraine).
As this chapter details, the children in the two presented case studies are
socialized differently into the family language policies in their homes depend-
ing on how their parents position them as speakers of their various languages
(English, Russian, and Ukrainian). This is turn seems to contribute greatly to
each child’s confidence in multilingual language abilities. Additionally, the level
of interaction that the parents provide in the heritage languages influences the
children’s use of these languages, both with their parents and with their siblings.
Home Language Data

The data for the current chapter come from audio recordings of naturally
occurring interactions inside the families’ homes, collected between October
2012 and January 2013. Recordings were made twice per week for six weeks,
totalling 21 hours of recorded home data. The method that I employed was based
on the success that I had in previous research in systematically collecting natu-
rally occurring home interaction with minimal researcher interference (Seals,
2013). For the present study, Alla, Elena, and Darya each wore an audio record-
ing wristwatch and recorded at home for an hour each day during days that
were previously agreed between the children, parents, and myself. In addition to
minimizing the researcher interference and collecting naturally occurring data
in the home, this method had the added benefit of recording all interaction that
the focal children were exposed to during that hour, as the recorder was on their
wrist and therefore went where they did.
From the data that resulted, it became clear that there were two types of lan-
guage socialization and identity negotiations occurring within the home. The
first was between the children and their parents, and the second was between
the children and their siblings. The languages chosen were different between
the children and parents than they were between the children and their siblings,
with Russian and Ukrainian having more presence in interactions with the par-
ents than with the siblings, who used English almost exclusively between each
other. The choice and use of language by the interlocutors spoke strongly to the
sociolinguistic accommodation that each was willing to make for the others,
with the children most often showing preference for accommodating to each
other through the use of English rather than to their parents through the use of
Russian or Ukrainian.
Data and Analysis
Socialization and Accommodation Between Siblings

First, the home data show that the majority of interaction within both families
was between siblings. Additionally, the children in Alla and Elena’s home used
English with each other for the majority of the time, and the children in Darya’s
family used exclusively English when speaking with each other. Having been
socialized into the use of English with peers at school, they continue these social-
ization practices in their home.
An example of English socialization from school being continued by the sib-
lings at home can be found in Example 1 below. In this example, Elena is helping
her younger sister Alla to understand mathematical fractions.
EXAMPLE 1 Elena Helps Alla Practice Math at Home4
(00:03:39)
1 Elena: So we c- I’m going to color in, about, six.
2 Four, five.
3 NOW what goes up here?
4 Alla: Four.
5 Elena: How many did I color in?
6 Alla: Six.
7 Elena: So you get it now?
8 How about you do one to me now.
9 Alla: Okay.
10 Elena: (yawn)
11 There we go.
12 Oh, can we do one more real quick?
13 Alla: Yeah.
14 Elena: Okay.
15 Alla: Because I just forgot.
16 Elena: Okay. So you got a donut.
17 Alla: Mhm donut.
18 Elena: Um-
19 Alla: That’s a ‘B’?
20 Elena: No.
21 Alla: That’s a ‘C’.
22 Elena: And this is a half a donut.
(00:04:15)
In the above example, Elena leads Alla in math practice, taking on the role of
teacher. Elena even checks for comprehension with Alla, eliciting answers from
her like the teachers do at her school, as shown in lines 3 and 5. The siblings con-
tinue practicing math and provide side commentary to their primary discursive
topics in lines 12 and 15, all the time using English. Their mother is next to them
in the kitchen putting away dishes while they go over the lessons at the table, but
they never switch away from English, thus showing their strong preference for
English with each other. The same preference for English is shown between the
siblings in Darya’s family, though space constraints limit the examples in each
section.
The children in each family express their strong English language preference
by even socializing younger siblings into its use. In Example 2 below, Alla is
attempting to help her younger sister Masha, who is four years old, fix the com-
puter. Masha has not yet attended school, so her language socialization is based
on interactions with her parents and siblings in the home.
As will be explored further below in Examples 6 and 7, Masha uses Russian
in the recordings whenever she is making a demand of a family member, most
likely stemming from the fact that she can elicit a response from her mother by
using Russian, and Russian is the language that she has been primarily social-
ized into by her mother at home. In the below example, Masha has been angry
EXAMPLE 2 Alla Socializes Younger Sister Masha Into English Language Use While
Fixing the Computer
Transliteration Gloss
(00:21:26)
1 Alla: (singing)
2 Masha: Не может сделать! Nye mozhyet sdyelat’! It won’t do it!
3 Alla: I know!
4 Preparing-
5 Prepare-
6 Masha: Можно деть! Mozhno dyet’! You can put it!
7 Alla: Wait! Wait! Let’s see something.
8 Top twenty.
9 Tiny baby video.
10 (. . .)
11 Okay.
12 (laughter from video)
13 @@
14 Aw, so cute.
(00:22:00)
and crying for quite some time because the computer will not play the YouTube
videos that she wants to watch, and Alla has been asked to come help her. Imme-
diately in line 2, Masha says in frustration, “It won’t do it!” in Russian, and Alla
immediately responds in line 3 with “I know!” in English. Masha then yells in
frustration at Alla again in line 6 in Russian, and Alla immediately responds once
more in English in line 7. Alla then narrates her actions to her sister in English in
lines 8 and 9 and provides an evaluation of the video in English in line 14. This
pattern is often repeated throughout the data, with Masha speaking English with
her siblings, but then getting frustrated and talking to her siblings in Russian.
However, despite the language Masha uses, her siblings almost always respond to
her exclusively in English, showing their process of socializing Masha into the
siblings’ preference for English language use.
The pattern of English language socialization by émigré siblings is com-
mon in the United States (e.g., de la Piedra & Romo, 2003; Brenneman, Mor-
ris, & Israelian, 2007; Seals, 2013), and the focal children in this research were
undoubtedly socialized into sibling-to-sibling English language use by their
older siblings as well. Capturing exclusive English-language use amongst the
siblings in Example 1, accompanied by the language socialization of a younger
sibling in Example 2, gives evidence of the home language socialization pro-
cesses that lead to siblings positioning each other as English speakers. This posi-
tioning also then leads the siblings to reinforce each other’s identities as primarily
English-language speakers and to accommodate to this identity through English
language use with each other.
Socialization and Accommodation Between

Children and Parents
Throughout the data, the majority of times that any of the children used a lan-
guage other than English in the home was when communicating with their
parents. As their parents are from Eastern Europe and natively speak Ukrainian
and Russian dominantly, as well as some Latvian and Belorussian, the children’s
use of Russian, and at times Ukrainian, is a show of goodwill towards their par-
ents. By using these languages instead of their preferred English language, they
accommodate to their parents linguistically and show solidarity with them.
Before first demonstrating the children’s use of Russian and Ukrainian to
accommodate to their parents, I will show one of many examples of the parents
demonstrating their clear preference for these languages. The children all show
a preference for English throughout the data, so their parents’ continued use of
Russian and/or Ukrainian in these situations positions them clearly as native
speakers of the languages. Additionally, by not feeling the need to accommodate
to their children’s socialized preference for English, the parents position them-
selves as authority figures in the home, understanding English but not needing
to accommodate to the social majority language. Example 3 below shows Alla
EXAMPLE 3 Elena’s Mother Continues in Russian After Elena Switches to English While
They Drink Tea
(00:02:55)
1 Mother: Добре. Dobre. ‘Good.’
2 Добре Elena. Dobre ‘Good.’

3 Elena: Да. Da. ‘Yes.’
4 Mother: Mhm.
5 Elena: But I need to add flour!
6 But I-
7 It needs sugar in it.
8 Mother: Only чуть-чуть sugar. chut’-chut’ ‘a little’
9 Не много. nye mnogo ‘not much’
10 Alla: And me.
11 Мother: [1Просто чуть-чуть sugar]. Prosto chut’-chut’ ‘Just a little’
12 Еlena: [1Now: you put sugar in it].
(00:03:08)
and Elena’s mother’s preference for Russian and Ukrainian, even after her chil-
dren have switched to English during the interaction. She has just made tea for
the children, and she begins the interaction with Elena in Ukrainian. All under-
lined text in Cyrillic with transliteration and a gloss is a use of Ukrainian, while
Cyrillic text that is not underlined is a use of Russian.
In line 1, Elena’s mother tastes the tea and says in Ukrainian that it tastes
good. She then specifically addresses this comment to Elena in line 2, indirectly
requesting Elena’s agreement. Elena agrees in line 3, but she uses Russian, indi-
cating the connection that she makes to both Ukrainian and Russian being her
mother’s native languages. It may also indicate Elena’s greater comfort with Rus-
sian, as she rarely used Ukrainian in the recorded data, but she did use Russian.
Her mother then confirms Elena’s response in line 4, and Elena quickly follows
her response in line 5 elaborating on her answer in English by saying she needs
to add flour, which she corrects in line 7 to show that she meant sugar instead of
flour. Her mother then responds in lines 8 and 9 with Russian and English intra-
sentential codeswitching, showing both her partial accommodation to Elena’s
choice of English and the fact that she noticed Elena’s use of Russian instead of
Ukrainian. Additionally, by codeswitching intrasententially between the two
languages, she shows a mastery of the grammars of both English and Russian
by switching between the languages without violating the grammatical systems
of either language (Poplack, 2000; Grosjean, 2010). Finally, she maintains her
choice of Russian in line 9 and again in line 11, despite her children’s use of Eng-
lish with each other, again displaying her preference for her native languages over
English, and despite her clear understanding of and abilities in English. Parental
preference for the Russian language is likewise shown in Darya’s home data.
Having established the parents’ preference for Russian and Ukrainian over
English, I turn now to the children’s use of Russian, instead of their preferred use of
English, when speaking with their parents. As previously mentioned, the children
do not always use Russian with their parents. In fact, Alla and Elena make more
use of English than Russian with their mother. However, there are repeated times
throughout the data when the children and their siblings choose to use Russian or
Ukrainian when speaking with their parents, thus accommodating to them.
In Example 4 below, Elena is speaking to her baby sister, Natalya, in English
and then begins to address her mother, also in English. However, she stops mid-
sentence and translates herself into a mix of Russian and Ukrainian to complete
her interaction.
Elena first addresses her sister in line 1, saying in English that her two new
teeth are pretty, already showing her socializing Natalya into sibling to sibling
English language preference. She then continues her description of Natalya’s new
teeth in line 2, this time addressing her mother. However, she interrupts her-
self and switches instead to Russian in line 3. Elena interrupts herself again at
the end of line 3 because she has not used the grammatical case that she wants,
and, receiving her mother’s encouragement in line 4, she continues in Russian
in line 5. Elena stumbles with her Russian in line 5, though, and slips momen-
tarily back into English before continuing in Russian and then switching again
into Ukrainian, making a grammatical gender error with “pobachyv” before
stumbling once more over the Ukrainian word at the end. Her mother confirms
her understanding of what Elena said, though, in line 6, positively recognizing
Elena’s accommodation efforts. Elena’s mixed use of Russian and Ukrainian is
EXAMPLE 4 Elena Accommodates to Her Mother’s Preference for Ukrainian and Russian
While Talking About Her Baby Sister
(00:04:21)
1a Elena: So pretty with the two
1b little teeth sticking out.
2 You can actually see them, actu-
3 Когда смеется- Kogda smyeyetsya- ‘When she laughs-’
4 Mother: Mhm.
5a Elena: смеялся, in uh, smyeyalsya ‘laughed’
5b ней- ней роті nyey- nyey roti ‘her- her mouth’
5c побачив зуб- зуби. Pobachyv zub-zuby ‘I saw tooth-teeth’
6 Мother: Mhm.
(00:04:33)
most likely due to a limited vocabulary in each language, shown by her stum-
bling over some of the words. Additionally, it is possible that Elena is not fully
aware of the differences between Ukrainian and Russian, instead seeing them as
just what her mother speaks, a single native tongue of sorts. Regardless of the
reason behind Elena’s switch from Russian to Ukrainian, she makes an effort to
use these languages, even though she has some difficulty, to accommodate to her
mother’s language preference and show familial solidarity with her as they talk
about her baby sister.
Darya also uses Russian when speaking with her mother, despite her over-
whelming preference for and abilities in English. In Example 5 below, Darya is
getting ready for bed, and her mother is reminding her about something that she
is to do the following day.
Even though Darya’s mother was not recorded in this interaction, it has pre-
viously been established that Darya prefers the use of English and in fact uses
English exclusively with her siblings. Therefore, it is not surprising that Darya
begins her response to her mother in line 2 in English. She then repeats herself,
however, in Russian in line 3, accommodating to her mother’s language prefer-
ence. Her mother keeps talking to her about the point, however, as is evidenced
by Darya’s quickly growing frustration in lines 4 and 5. She again repeats “I
know!” in Russian in line 5, drawing out the vowels, showing her expressive
use of the language and positioning herself as a speaker of it. Darya then agrees
with her mother in line 6 and confirms in Russian in line 7 that she knows she
is supposed to do something the next day. By using Russian, Darya is showing
her mother that she understands what was said to her, likely also in Russian. This
again positions her as knowledgeable of the Russian language and aligning with
her mother as a speaker of the language. Having satisfied her mother’s concerns,
EXAMPLE 5 Darya Switches to Russian When Responding to Her Mother
(00:24:23)
1 Darya: Mhm.
2 I know, Mom.
3 Да, я знаю. Da, ya znayu ‘Yes, I know.’
4 Mo:m!
5 Я зна:ю:! Ya zna:yu:! ‘I know!’
6 ‘Kay.
7 Завтра, я знаю. Zavtra, ya znayu. ‘Tomorrow, I know.’
8 Okay.
9 Love you.
10 (yawns)
(00: 24:46)
Darya says her final bedtime remark, “Love you” to her mother, which is in
English, reestablishing her own language preference before bed.
Strategic Accommodation
While the children usually use Russian and Ukrainian to align with their parents
positively, they also at times made use of this alignment to capture their parents’
attention and increase their chance of receiving a response. Since the children
use English almost exclusively with each other, their use of Russian or Ukrainian
would signal to their parents that they are most likely the intended audience and
capture their attention quickly. This technique was especially used in the homes
when the children would argue with their parents or make a plea for something,
times when they especially wanted to be listened to.
Example 6, below, is an example of such a strategy. In this example, Elena
and Masha are sitting at the table with their mother while she is trying to get
all of the children to go to bed. When she addresses Masha, Masha makes her
argument in Russian.
In line 1, the children’s mother has addressed Masha while the children are
going to bed, indicating that Masha too should be heading to bed. Masha responds
with “What?” however, showing her lack of intention in going to bed. Ignor-
ing this, their mother addresses Elena in Russian in line 3 to ask if she is awake,
indicating that she is falling asleep. Elena responds that she is not and pushes her
chair away from the table in line 5, suggesting that she left for bed. Masha then
EXAMPLE 6 Alla and Elena’s Mother Tries to Get All of the Children to Go to Bed, But
Younger Sister Masha Talks Back in Russian
(00:03:43)
1 Mother: Masha.
2 Masha: What?
3 Mother: (to Elena) Ты не спишь? Ty nye spish’? ‘Are you awake?’
4 Elena: Uh uh.
5 (chair is pushed from table)
6 Masha: У меня что-то. U menya shto-to. ‘I’m having something.’
7 Mother: (to Elena) No?
8 (to Masha) Masha.
9 Masha: Mama:
10 Mother: ##? Да. Da. ‘Yes.’
11 Masha: (whines)
(00:03:54)
interjects in Russian in line 5, as the last one left at the table, to provide her argu-
ment for why she should not go to bed yet. Turning again to Masha in line 8,
the children’s mother again says her name in a stern tone, indicating that Masha’s
argument will not work. Masha then pleads with her mother in line 9 in a drawn
out use of the Russian pronunciation of “mom”. Her mother again indicates that
she will not be swayed in line 10, and Masha finally leaves to bed while whin-
ing in line 11 because of her failed attempt to negotiate. While unsuccessful in

achieving her aim of staying up later, Masha still saw the use of Russian as a strat-
egy for aligning with her mother and possibly arguing for what she wants.
Masha uses this strategy at other times as well, such as that shown in Exam-
ple 7, below. In the following example, Alla is again trying to help Masha with the
computer, but she becomes unsure of what to do next when her attempts fail to
turn the computer back on. When Masha hears this and becomes frustrated, she
pleads in Russian for assistance, knowing that her mother will hear and respond.
In lines 1 and 2, Alla explains to her mother in English that the computer is
not working. Understanding her and again asserting her preference for Russian,
Alla’s mother responds to her in Russian. Alla then tells her mother in English
in line 4 that she cannot do what is asked of her, reasserting her own preference
for English. Her mother then asks a clarification question in Russian, making
sure that in fact the computer will not turn on. Addressing Masha now in line 6,
EXAMPLE 7 Younger Sister Masha Uses Russian to Align With Her Mother and Plead
for Help
(00:15:43)
1 Alla: Mom, the computer’s hibernating,
2 and it still has red on it.
3 Mother: Hm, не знаю. ######. nye znayu. ‘I don’t know.’
4 Alla: I can’t ‘cause it won’t turn on!
5 Mother: Он не работает? On nye rabotayet? ‘It doesn’t work?’
6 Alla: No, wait, I need to type.
7 Masha: Yes, you CAN draw it.
8 Alla: Elena делала. dyelala ‘did’
9 Masha: MO:M!
10 Mother: В чем дела? V chyem dyela? ‘What’s wrong?’
11 Masha: Alla!
12 Помочь мне. Pomoch’ mnye. ‘Help me.’
13 Mother: Помочь ей, Аlla, да? Pomoch’ yey, Alla, da? ‘Help her, Alla, ok?’
(00:16:09)
Alla tells her in English to wait. Beginning to get frustrated, Masha argues with
English, using the sibling-to-sibling preferred English language. Alla tells her
sister now in Russian that their older sister Elena previously did what Masha is
asking of her, and Masha becomes infuriated, yelling for their mother in English
in line 9. Asking what is wrong in Russian in line 10, Masha accommodates to
her mother’s language preference and pleads for help in Russian in line 12. Lis-
tening to her request, her mother tells Alla in Russian in line 13 to help Masha.
Therefore, by using Russian to accommodate to her mother, this time Masha saw
her desired results. Her mother listened to her request in Russian and used her
authority to tell Alla that she had to continue helping Masha.
Much as Masha uses Russian in the data to capture her mother’s attention when
arguing or making a request, her mother uses English for a similar purpose. In
Example 8 below, Masha is struggling to open a jar and is becoming frustrated.
EXAMPLE 8 Alla and Elena’s Mother Issues Directions in Russian to Her Children and
Then Switches to English to Contradict Younger Sister Masha’s Argument
(00:38:52)
1 Masha: You guys!
2 I can’t OPEN THIS!
3 Mother: Elena, приде. pridye ‘come’
4 (rattling sounds)
5 Elena: I can’t open it either.
6 Masha: Me EITHER!
7 (cries)
8 Mommy!
9 Bl-
10 Mother: Дюжей. Dyuzhyey ‘Strong.’
11 Дюжеешь налево. Dyuzhyeyesh’ nalyevo. ‘Strong to the left.’
12 Дюжей. Dyuzhey ‘Strong.’
13 Дюжей этот- Dyuzhey etot- ‘Strong there-’
14 Дюжей. Dyuzhey ‘Strong.’
15 Дюжей! Dyuzhey! ‘Strong!’
16 Этот- Etot- ‘That-’
17 Ненадежный держишь. Nyenadyezniy ‘You don’t hold
dyerzhish securely.’
18 Masha: Yes I am!
19 Mother: No, you’re not.
(00:39:20)
Her mother turns to help her, telling her in Russian to turn it strongly, but then she
switches to English when she too becomes frustrated, thus having the final word.
Masha addresses her siblings in English in lines 1 and 2, accommodating to
them in an attempt to elicit their help in opening the jar she is struggling with.
Stepping in in line 3, their mother tells Elena in Russian to come help her sis-
ter. Elena tries but then responds in English that she is unable to open it either.
Frustrated, Masha continues her complaints in English in lines 6 through 9 until

interrupted by her mother in line 10. Her mother tells her to turn the lid strongly
in lines 10 through 15, repeating the term over and over again in Russian, trying
to get Masha to turn the lid with more force. Becoming frustrated herself, she
tells Masha in Russian in line 17 that it is not working because she does not hold
it securely enough. Disaccommodating her mother and arguing back in English
in line 18, Masha frustrates her mother even further, leading her mother to argue
back to her in English in line 19, effectively ending the argument and further
discussion. Thus, the children’s mother’s use of English in the above example is a
power move that silences further argument by making sure that she is listened to.
Parental Accommodation to Child Language Preference

While Alla and Elena’s mother may primarily use English as a strategy for cap-
turing her children’s attention and making sure that they are listening to what
she is telling them, she also occasionally chooses English to accommodate to her
children’s language preference and show her alignment with them, much as Alla
and Elena use Russian when speaking to her. As the children understand their
mother when she speaks Russian and Ukrainian, her use of English, especially
when it is in passing and not regarding a serious issue, is an elective decision.
She does not have to use English to still take part in the casual conversation,
but, when she chooses to do so, she is recognizing her children’s preference for
English and accommodating to this.
In Example 9 below, siblings Nika, Masha, and Alla are again playing with
their baby sister Natalya. Their mother is present and talks to Natalya in both
English and Russian, already positioning the baby as a bilingual speaker in
the home. Their mother then addresses her older children in English to voice the
baby, effectively aligning with her children and simultaneously positioning the
baby as a primarily English speaker like her older children.
In lines 1, 3, 5, 9, 10, and 15, older sister Nika repeatedly attempts to draw
her mother’s attention to baby Natalya’s tongue which has become purple from
candy the children are sharing. Each time Nika addresses her mother, she uses
English, her preferred language. Her repetition is a sign of trying to get her
mother’s attention, though, and not because of a lack of understanding, since
Nika never switches to Russian, which she knows how to speak. Her mother
also speaks in English to baby Natalya in lines 4 and 6, positioning Natalya as
an English speaker. Thus, Nika’s continued use of English could also be seen as
marking solidarity with her sister, especially since Nika interacts fondly with her
EXAMPLE 9 Alla and Elena’s Mother Uses English to Accommodate to Her Children as
a Show of Goodwill
(00:00:24)
1 Nika: Her face is all purple. [1@@]
2 Mother: [1Na:talya].
2
3 Nika: [ Look at her face.]
4 Mother: [2Hello:]
5 Nika: Mama, look at her mouth [3I mean].
6 Mother: [3Hello:]
7 Natalya: (babbling)
8 Mother: Как дела? Kak dyela? ‘How’s it going?’
9 Nika: She has a purple tongue.
10 Look at her tongue [4Mama].
11 Mother: [4Привет]. Privyet. ‘Hi.’
12 Natalya.
13 Это Ната:ля. Eto Natalya. ‘It’s Natalya.’
14 Nika: @@@@
15 Did you see her tongue? It’s purple.
16 Natalya: (babbling) Ah ah ah.
17 Mother: Ah.
18 Nika: @@@@@
19 Mother: And she- I have everything, purple.
20 Masha: @@
(00:00:54)
sister throughout the recorded data. Their mother then switches to Russian to
address Natalya in lines 8, 11, and 13, socializing Natalya to her own preferred
language use and positioning her as a speaker of Russian as well. Then, after
Nika points out Natalya’s purple tongue in line 15, their mother voices baby
Natalya in English in line 19 to say that all of her is purple from the candy. By
using English to voice Natalya, of whom the other children are also already so
fond, their mother socializes Natalya into English language use with her siblings,
socializes the children into English language use with Natalya, positions Natalya
as an English speaker, and shows solidarity herself with her children by accom-
modating to their preferred language.
Discussion of Findings
Throughout the course of this chapter, I have presented examples of home lan-
guage use from two Eastern European émigré homes in the United States. As
shown throughout this chapter, the children are socialized into language use
within their homes within two interactional groups: child language use with
parents, and sibling language use with each other. Additional analysis outside
the scope of this chapter showed that the children have more interaction with
their siblings than with their parents, and that sibling interaction occurs almost
exclusively in English. In fact, for the children in Darya’s family, recorded sibling
interaction was exclusively in English. Use of heritage languages by the children

was reserved primarily for interaction with their parents, and the data from
Alla and Elena’s family show that their parents continue to use their preferred
languages of Russian and Ukrainian, despite the children’s continued in-home
English language use, even around their parents. By continuing to use Russian
and Ukrainian in the home, the parents expose their children to the heritage
languages, encouraging heritage language maintenance.
Analyzing discourse examples from the recorded in-home data provided fur-
ther insight into the language use patterns in context. The discourse revealed
that the siblings constantly socialize each other into English language use in
the home and even socialize younger siblings who have not yet started school
into this language preference. Additionally, the sibling-to-sibling preference for
English is so strong that the siblings would continue speaking with each other
exclusively in English, even when in their parents’ presence. By continually
acknowledging each other’s preference for English in the home, the siblings in
both families build solidarity with each other as multilingual speakers of Russian
and English who prefer English, their primary language with peers at school.
Regardless of the children’s preference for English, they still found reasons
to use Russian and Ukrainian in their homes. Russian was used by all of the
children throughout the data when talking with their parents as a means of
accommodating to their parents’ language preference and thus showing solidar-
ity with them. Additionally, Alla and Elena’s younger sister Masha repeatedly
used Russian to capture her mother’s attention when arguing or issuing requests.
She would attempt to use this same technique with her older siblings as well, but
her siblings’ preference for English overpowered Masha’s attempts in the end, as
they continued the process of socializing her into English language use during
sibling interaction. Similarly, Alla and Elena’s mother made use of English to
either have a final say in an argument with her children or otherwise empha-
size her authority over them, or to show solidarity with them. Recognizing her
children’s preference for English, she also voiced her baby using English, therein
positioning the baby alongside her siblings as primarily English language speak-
ers, in contrast to her own identity as a Russian speaker.
Perhaps one of the most important findings when analyzing the data for this
research, though, comes from observing the interactional shifts that occurred in
the children’s moment-to-moment speech within their homes, and how these
shifts show the dynamic complexity of family language policies in action. In
both homes, the children would use their heritage languages to show solidarity
with their parents, and even use the home languages at times in a bid for control
over the situation to get what they wanted. Elena and Alla’s younger sister Masha
in particular used Russian for this latter reason. She even used Russian in attempts
to convince her siblings to do things for her, not realizing that the language of
social capital (Bourdieu, 1986) with her siblings was in fact English. English was
in fact the language of preference between the siblings in both of the homes.
They socialized each other into English as a preferred language so much so that
they would talk over Russian or Ukrainian music in English when communicat-
ing with each other.
The children were not the only ones to find language choice a useful tool
for interactional shifts, however. The dynamic family language policies in these
émigré homes revealed that Elena and Alla’s mother would most frequently use
Russian with her children, but she also occasionally made use of Ukrainian or
English. In particular, she would use English when commanding attention from
her children, such as when having the final word in an argument and effectively
ending the discussion. She also used English at times as a sign of solidarity with
her children, such as when she used English to voice her baby when the children
were playing games with her, thereby simultaneously joining their conversation
and laughter while also positioning the baby as a future English speaker like her
children, in contrast to herself who she positions as a Russian speaker. The impli-
cation of this socialization is that while currently many families in the United
States speak Russian or Ukrainian in the home (cf. introduction), it is likely that
home interactions will shift to English within the next couple of generations
for these families, reflecting findings elsewhere of family language shift in the
United States (see Seals & Kreeft Peyton, 2016).
Concluding Remarks
This chapter has used in-home case study data from two Eastern European émi-
gré families in the United States to investigate the dynamic complexities of fam-
ily language policies in action. By using theoretical frameworks of language
socialization and linguistic accommodation, it was possible to uncover how dif-
ferent interlocutors make use of different languages in the home for a variety of
purposes. Additionally, while parental preference for the home languages of Rus-
sian and Ukrainian could lead to an assumption that there is an implicit heritage
language policy in these homes, the interactional data in fact proved that the
family language policies are dynamic, responding to the primary interlocutors
in a conversation and their interactional goals.
On a larger level, the data from this study also support previous findings of
sibling-to-sibling language socialization (e.g., de la Piedra & Romo, 2003) and
language choice and use being used for solidarity amongst interlocutors (e.g.,
Giles & Coupland, 1991; Myers-Scotton, 1993, 2003, 2006; Seals, 2013). Further-
more, the findings of the present chapter add to these previous research findings
by showing that different purposes can underlie language choice and use when
there are two home languages in addition to the majority societal language.
Elena and Alla’s family used both Ukrainian and Russian at home with their
mother in addition to English, but Russian retained its status as the language
of power over Ukrainian. Additionally, Russian was used by the siblings when
wanting something from their mother, much like English was used by their
mother when closing debate in a conversation. Additionally, Russian was used in

the home much more frequently than Ukrainian, showing its stronger currency
as a language of value in their home, which is no longer in Ukraine but in the
United States, where Russian is recognized far more often than Ukrainian. Thus,
family language policies are realized dynamically within the home and cannot
be fully understood without reference to the larger society in which the families
live.
Notes
1. The US Census collects language data for only individuals aged five and over. There-
fore, the total population that I report is also of those aged five and over, for comparison.
2. For an overview of family language policy, see Fogle & King (2013); King & Fogle
(2013), and King, Fogle, & Logan-Terry (2008).
3. The only time the mother’s Latvian background came up in the ethnography was in
the initial demographic collection stage, and when a Ukrainian friend remarked that
her Ukrainian reflected her Latvian roots. The mother and other family members of
this family put much more emphasis on English, Russian, and Ukrainian. While the
mother’s suppressed Latvian could be an interesting study in and of itself, it is not the
focus of the current chapter.
4. Transcription conventions are:
Name: pseudonym of an identified participant
[1text]
[1text] simultaneous, overlapping talk by two speakers
### syllables of indecipherable speech
= latching, no gap between two turns
(. . .) short pause in speech
? rising final intonation
! strong emphasis, with falling intonation
. falling, final intonation
, low-rising intonation suggesting continuation
te:xt lengthening of the preceding sound
tex- an abrupt cut-off, with level pitch
TEXT loud volume, shouting
@@@ beats of laughter
(text) non-verbal actions or researcher notes
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11
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES, SOCIAL
CAPITAL, AND INTERACTION
STRATEGIES
An Ethnographic Case Study of Family
Language Policy in Singapore
Guangwei Hu & Li Ren
Introduction
The family is a language policy domain of paramount importance simply
because it plays a critical role in the formation and maintenance of a child’s
language ecology (Schwartz & Verschik, 2013). Like language policy in other
domains (Shohamy, 2006), family language policy (FLP) is constituted by lan-
guage ideologies, language practices, and language management mechanisms
(Spolsky, 2004, 2009). These three clusters of policy-constitutive factors are
interconnected and interact with each other in complex and dynamic ways.
This chapter reports on an ethnographic case study of the language beliefs,
practices, and regulating efforts of four immigrant and local Chinese families
in the multilingual society of Singapore. Specifically, the study aims to under-
stand these focal families’ language policy work by uncovering what language
ideologies they held, how these language ideologies shaped their language prac-
tices as manifested in mother-child interaction strategies and the actualization
of family social capital, and what explicit and deliberate efforts were made by
the parents to regulate their children’s and their own language practices and
language beliefs. A study of this nature can not only shed light on family-
internal mechanisms of language policy work but, more importantly, reveal
how external influences such as cultural norms, social beliefs, societal values,
socioeconomic conditions, educational practices, and sociolinguistic environ-
ments interact with and shape family-internal factors in the cultivation and/or
reproduction of linguistic capital in the next generation (Schwartz & Verschik,
2013; Smith-Christmas, 2016).
196 Guangwei Hu & Li Ren
Previous Research
A Tripartite Framework of Language Policy

As a young, rapidly growing field of inquiry, FLP centers on “explicit and overt
planning in relation to language use within the home among family members,
and provides an integrated overview of research on how languages are man-

aged, learned, and negotiated within families” (King, Fogle, & Logan-Terry,
2008, p.907). One theoretical framework that has informed much research in
the field (e.g., King et al., 2008; Ren & Hu, 2013; Schwartz & Verschik, 2013) is
Spolsky’s (2004, 2009) conceptualization of language policy as being constituted
by three dynamically interrelated components. The first component—language
ideologies—consists of deeply seated beliefs and assumptions about appropriate
language choice and practices in a societal, educational, and/or familial con-
text. As Spolsky (2009) points out, particular languages, their varieties, and/
or linguistic features have been accorded differing values and prestige, which
in turn rationalizes or justifies a deliberate language choice or specific changes
in language practice and management endeavors (Smith-Christmas, 2016). Such
language ideologies are not only influenced by the cumulative history of lan-
guage use in a family but also situated in and mediated by a wider social, cul-
tural, educational, and economic context (Canagarajah, 2008). As the second
integral component of Spolsky’s framework, language practices are what indi-
viduals in a community or, in the context of FLP, family members do with
language—that is, observable and regular language behaviors that they may be
consciously aware or unaware of. Spolsky (2009) notes that language practices
are de facto language policies because they provide the linguistic input and
models for language acquisition by the next generation. The last component of
Spolsky’s language policy framework—language management—refers to what
people try to do with language. Specifically, it comprises explicit and deliberate
efforts made by community/family members to modify language practices and/
or language ideologies as well as policy mechanisms (e.g., language testing and
medium of instruction) whose status as language policy devices often remains
below public consciousness (Shohamy, 2006).
As is apparent from the above description, the three language policy compo-
nents are interconnected and interact with each other in complex and dynamic
ways. How people think about language (i.e., language ideologies) is often
grounded in their day-to-day language practices on the one hand and can sanc-
tion certain language practices but disallow or undermine other practices on
the other hand (Ren & Hu, 2013). Language ideologies also provide the impe-
tus for and, consequently, underlie language management efforts. This does not
mean that the relationship between language ideologies and management efforts
is unidirectional. As a matter of fact, language ideologies may themselves be
the very target of language management (Spolsky, 2004). Language practices
are motivated by particular language ideologies; they can also give rise to new
Family Language Policy in Singapore 197
language ideologies (Smith-Christmas, 2016). Furthermore, language practices

are often what language management aims to change, but they also provide the
linguistic context or vehicle for implementing language management on other
occasions. Such a dynamic view of the interplay among the three language pol-
icy components makes it clear that “language and language policy both exist in
(and language management must contend with) highly complex, interacting and
dynamic contexts, the modification of any part of which may have correlated
effects (and causes) on any other part” (Spolsky, 2004, p.6). This tripartite frame-
work provides a useful analytic perspective on FLP by identifying influential
factors and illuminating their complex interaction.
The Role of Social Capital in Family Language Policy

One important factor that sustains and mediates the interplay among the three
FLP components outlined above is family social capital. According to Coleman
(1988), family resources that can affect children’s educational advancement,
including their language and literacy development, comprise financial capital
(physical resources), human capital (educational attainment of parents and other
key family members), and social capital (the network of social relationships exist-
ing in the family and between the family and other families/institutions in the
community). Of these different types of family resources, social capital is central
because it brings the other two types of capital to bear on the next generation’s
acquisition of human capital. As Coleman points out, “if human capital possessed
by parents is not complemented by social capital embodied in family relations, it
is irrelevant to the child’s educational growth [and for that matter, development
of proficiency in different languages] that the parent has a great deal, or a small
amount, of human capital” (1988, p. S110). Family social capital that is relevant
to children’s development can be further divided into within- and between-
family social capital (Hao & Bonstead-Bruns, 1998). The former takes the form
of parental and other key family members’ involvement in the child’s learning
and growth, such as engagement in joint family literacy activities and help with
the child’s homework. The latter comprises, among other things, close connec-
tions between parents of different families (e.g., parents keeping in touch with
the parents of their children’s friends; Coleman, 1988), attendance of heritage
language/complementary schools (Conteh, 2012; Li, 2006), and/or participation
in religious activities (Ruby, 2012).
Previous research (e.g., Dyk & Wilson, 1999; Hao & Bonstead-Bruns, 1998;
Ream & Palardy, 2008) has found that family social capital is related to higher
levels of educational achievement by children. Little research, however, has
focused specifically on how family social capital may influence the different
components of FLP and their interaction. In view of the reported relationship
between family social capital and children’s educational attainment, there is cer-
tainly reason to expect such family resources to be deeply implicated in the
dynamic process of FLP. Another gap in existing research on family social capital
is that the availability of such capital was rarely distinguished from the actual
utilization of the resources. The possession of family social capital does not guar-
antee its activation to influence children’s language acquisition (Ream & Palardy,
2008). Thus, the two are kept distinct in this study to obtain a more nuanced
perspective on the role of family social capital in FLP. Finally, most previous
studies relied on cross-sectional survey data and quantitative analyses to identify

the associations between family social capital and children’s learning and devel-
opment. Such studies, while yielding important insights, have not been able to
show how family social resources are capitalized on in various ways. To bridge
this gap, ethnographic research that draws on rich and thick data is needed.
Parental Interaction Strategies

Parental interaction strategies merit central attention in a FLP study because
they constitute language practices on the one hand and can be adopted as lan-
guage management devices on the other. Previous research indicates that the
cognitive and linguistic richness of parent-child interactions can play a vital
scaffolding role in children’s language and literacy development (Li, 2002). For
example, Heath’s (1983) seminal study of parental interaction strategies in three
different communities in the United States found that patterns of family interac-
tions in the mainstream community socialized their children into and, conse-
quently, prepared them well for the kinds of language use and language practices
required for schooling. By contrast, home interactions in the two working-class
communities differed markedly from school language and literacy practices
and contributed to the greater difficulty that children from these communi-
ties encountered at school. Subsequent studies (e.g., de Jong & Leseman, 2001;
Hoff, 2006) of parental, especially maternal, interaction strategies corroborated
Heath’s earlier findings in that they found parental interaction strategies pivotal
in children’s language, literacy, and cognitive development. A finding of these
studies that contradicts the common intuition about the need for parents to
simplify their speech to facilitate their children’s language acquisition is that
more complex parental speech has a beneficial effect on children’s language and
literacy development.
The counter-intuitive finding mentioned above can be explained with the
Psychological Distancing Model (Sigel, 2002) proposed to understand young
children’s cognitive development in the context of social interactions. The model
classifies verbal interaction strategies into three categories according to the psy-
chological distancing required—that is, the “mental separation of events or
instances in time or space” (Sigel, 2002, p.192). High-distancing strategies (e.g.,
strategies eliciting evaluations, causal inferences or dissimilarity/difference judg-
ments from children) require some level of abstraction and therefore are cogni-
tively demanding. By contrast, low-distancing strategies (e.g., those involving
the use of directives, eliciting repetitions, and seeking yes/no answers) “make
minimal demands on the child to separate self from the ongoing present and
involve minimal representation” (Sigel, 2002, p.197). Falling in between high-
and low-distancing strategies in terms of mental distance created for the child are
medium-distancing strategies, such as asking him/her to classify objects in view.
Studies informed by the Psychological Distancing Model (e.g., Bourdais, 2002;
Sigel, 1982) have found that parents’ use of verbal distancing strategies influenced
the development of young children’s linguistic and representational abilities. To
examine parent-child interactions in terms of psychological distancing relates
verbal interaction strategies to socio-cognitive demands on the communicative
processes a child engages in and allows for a microgenetic perspective on FLP.
Drawing on the theoretical and empirical work reviewed above, the present
case study of FLP in four families in Singapore set out to answer the following
research questions:
1. What language ideologies did the families hold? How did their language
ideologies relate to their language practices and management efforts?
2. What kinds of family social resources were available for the families? To
what extent was family social capital utilized to implement FLP?
3. What interactional strategies were found in the families? How did these strat-
egies facilitate or inhibit the children’s language and literacy development?
Methodology
Research Design
Given the focus of our research questions on the “what” and “how” of FLP
and our objective of revealing how external influences interact with and shape
language ideologies, practices and management efforts within the family, we
conducted an ethnographic, explanatory case study with a multiple-case research
design (Yin, 2009). As Yin points out, “case studies are the preferred method
when . . . ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions are being posed” (p.2) and are especially well-
equipped to study a multi-faceted phenomenon (in our case, FLP) that consti-
tutes “a complex and chaotic non-hierarchical system” (Spolsky, 2012, p.3). The
case-study method allowed us to draw on multiple sources of data (i.e., semi-
structured interviews, participant observations, recorded parent-child interac-
tions, and literacy artifacts) to develop an in-depth and holistic understanding of
FLP at work. Furthermore, the case-study research design, combined with the
adoption of Spolsky’s tripartite framework, enabled us to “benefit from the prior
development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis”
(Yin, 2009, p.18). While the case-study research design did not allow us to make
statistical generalization, it was able to yield rich data for theoretical general-
ization because of the principled sampling we did to select our case families.
Specifically, multiple cases—four middle-class Chinese families in Singapore—

were purposively selected to operationalize different sociocultural and family
backgrounds: two local Singaporean families vs. two recent immigrant fami-
lies from China and two teacher mothers vs. two non-teacher mothers. This
multiple-case design was based on “the logic of replication” (Yin, 2009, p.39)
and allowed us to make cross-case comparisons (i.e., local vs. immigrant fami-
lies; teacher vs. non-teacher mothers) to identify inter-family differences and

similarities. Such differences and similarities provided a basis for analytic gener-
alizations about contributing factors.
The Focal Families

Key demographic information about the four participating families is presented
in Table 11.1. In our examination of parental interaction strategies, we focused
on interactions between the mother, the main caregiver in each selected family,
and a focal child to control for possible child-related variation. As can be seen
from Table 11.1, all four focal children were of the same age (all born in 2003),
and, when data collection started in 2008, they were in their first year of kin-
dergarten. To protect the privacy of the participants, all names are pseudonyms.
TABLE 11.1 Family Profiles
Family A Family B Family C Family D

Family status Local Local Immigrant Immigrant
No. of children 2 3 2 2
Focal child Fiona Leo Steve Helen
Gender Female Male Male Female
Age at start 4,7 4,3 4,5 4,3
of study
Birth order 1st 2nd 2nd 1st
Mother’s Primary school Financial Primary school Accountant
occupation English teacher consultant Chinese teacher
Father’s Secondary school Police officer Pre-university Research
occupation English teacher English teacher associate
Mother’s BA BA BA BA
education
Father’s BS BA MA PhD
education
Dominant English English Mandarin Mandarin
home language
Presence of Grandparents Grandparents Grandparents Grandparents
grandparents living close to living close to living away from living away
the family the family the family from the family
Data Collection and Analysis

Taking an ethnographic case-study approach to examine a phenomenon as heav-
ily context-dependent as FLP, we adopted multiple methods of data collection:
participant observation, audio-recording of language and literacy activities,
semi-structured interviewing, informal interviewing, and collection of docu-
ments and artifacts. From July 2008 to December 2010, the second author visited
each participating family at least once every month, with each visit lasting two to
four hours. Participant observation was made during these family visits, moving
from descriptive observation to focused observation and then to selected obser-
vation. At the beginning stage, participant observation of a family was arranged
totally by the parents, and no specific requests were made regarding the types of
activities to be observed. As the research progressed and we learnt more about
the language and literacy lives of the families, efforts were made to arrange
observation of specific language and literacy activities—for example, parents
helping with homework, family outings, and joint book reading. For activities
such as bedtime story reading which could not be observed during family visits,
parents were asked to record the interactions at their convenience. At the later
stages of the data collection, when certain themes and points of comparison were
emerging from the analyses of the data collected earlier, selected observation was
conducted on particular activities and events to obtain more detailed and focused
data for further analysis and cross-case comparison. The participant observations
covered a wide range of language and literacy activities (e.g., reading storybooks,
doing homework, playing toys, having casual conversation, playing the piano)
that took place in different places (e.g., home, parks, churches, public librar-
ies, shopping malls, and playgrounds) and involved different individuals (e.g.,
parents, siblings, grandparents, and other families in the community). With the
parents’ approval, most of the participant observations were audio-recorded for
further analysis.
To complement and triangulate the observation data, the second author con-
ducted both semi-structured and informal interviews with family members
either in English or in Chinese, depending on the interviewees’ preferences.
Audio-recorded initial interviews elicited information about family history,
family social networks, participation in community activities, language choices
at home, family efforts to expose the focal children to the culture and literacy
of the two languages (i.e., Chinese and English) spoken by family members,
language and literacy practices at home, attitudes toward Singapore’s bilingual
education policy, beliefs about the values and statuses of Chinese and English,
educational aspirations for the children, perceptions about language learning and
family members’ roles in children’s bilingual and biliteracy development, and the
children’s academic performance at kindergarten/school. Subsequent interviews
were more informal and conversational, conducted to address any important and
salient topics or issues that had not been touched on in the semi-structured inter-
views, or any point of interest that had emerged during participant observation.
In addition, a variety of documents and artifacts were collected. These include

school reports, homework assigned by school teachers or private tutors, pictures
drawn by the children, photos of children’s books/magazines/flyers they read,
and photos of videos and cartoons they watched. These materials not only pro-
vided information about the types of language and literacy activities the partici-
pating children were involved in but were also evidence of their language and
literacy proficiency.
To identify the prevailing language ideologies in the participating families,
the interview data went through content analysis, together with the language
and literacy activities that the parents and other key family members engaged the
children in. The qualitative thematic analysis consisted in first identifying and
labeling topics/issues emerging from iterative reading of the data, then classify-
ing related topics into subcategories and finally grouping these subcategories and
themes at a higher level of abstraction through the method of constant compari-
son. These themes were taken to reflect the language ideologies of the participat-
ing families and were linked to their language practices and management efforts.
To determine both between- and within-family social capital, network anal-
ysis (Lin, 2001) was conducted on the interview data and observational field
notes to explicate the social connections and relationships between individuals.
Based on the network analysis, network maps were drawn to show important
“others” in the focal children’s language use and literacy lives. Not only family
members (e.g., parents, siblings, and grandparents) but also other individuals
and groups in the community (e.g., friends, other families, and interest groups)
were represented in the network maps. To help identify various forms of social
capital and their actualization in language and literacy activities in and outside of
each family, an inventory of social capital indicators was developed on the basis
of Coleman’s (1988) work on social capital and previous research (e.g., Israel,
Beaulieu, & Hartless, 2001). These indicators included family structure, family
size, the frequency of parent-child interactions, parental aspirations and expecta-
tions for the focal child, parental monitoring, parent-school connections, and
intergenerational closure.
Given the amount of recorded parent-child interactions (on average 30 hours
for each family) and to ensure comparability across the participating families,
only data collected from three types of mother-child interaction activities—
casual conversation, help with schoolwork, and joint book reading—were
analyzed for maternal interaction strategies in this study. These activities were
selected because they occurred more frequently across the families and elicited
more interaction strategies than other types of activities did. The maternal verbal
strategies identified in the data were coded according to an iteratively developed
coding scheme that included only high- and low-distancing strategies. Only
these two categories of distancing strategies were included because previous
research (e.g., Sigel, 1982) only found relationships between these two categories
of strategies and children’s language development. The high-distancing strategies
identified in the data included (1) eliciting evaluation, (2) eliciting causal infer-
ence, (3) eliciting similarity/difference judgment, (4) connecting with personal
experience, (5) extending, (6) asking open-ended questions, (7) eliciting alterna-
tives, and (8) using cognitive state verbs. The low-distancing strategies comprised
(1) using directives, (2) eliciting clarification, (3) eliciting repetition, (4) asking
simple What-questions, (5) asking yes/no questions, (6) labeling, (7) describing,
(8) eliciting pointing response, (9) demonstrating, and (10) eliciting completion.
Findings
Fiona’s Family
Fiona’s parents, her mother in particular, held a positive attitude toward the pro-
vision of bilingual education in Singapore’s school system and did not hesitate
to point out its positive effects on their children’s development, particularly in
the non-dominant home language (i.e., Chinese). Apparently influenced by the
Singapore government’s policy discourse, they viewed China as a big market and
proficiency in Chinese as important in providing job opportunities for their chil-
dren in the future. Consequently, they attached particular importance to Fiona’s
learning of Chinese and hoped that Fiona would be proficient in both Chinese
and English so that she would “find a job more easily in the future.” The parents
believed in the value of early exposure to literacy in the languages and were not
very happy with the way the Chinese class was taught at their daughter’s pre-
school. Because they were not proficient enough in Chinese, they sent Fiona to
Chinese tuition classes for more input and to “stir up” her interest level. They
also tried to create a bilingual home environment by asking Fiona’s grandparents
to speak only Mandarin to her when they came to take care of her once or twice
a week. There was a second reason for this request: the parents were worried that
the grandparents’ “low proficiency in English” would have negative linguistic
impacts on their children’s English if the language was the medium of commu-
nication between them.
Fiona’s parents had high expectations for her and hoped that she would attain
a higher level of education than they had. They took various opportunities to
make Fiona understand that “if she doesn’t achieve enough education, she may
end up in work that doesn’t pay well.” As school teachers, however, they found
the “input” Fiona received at school “inadequate” and took a proactive approach
to their daughter’s learning by engaging her in explicit and formal learning
activities at home and giving her extra assignments so that she could have a head
start in primary school. For example, in the last few months preceding Fiona’s
entry to P1, her parents increased the frequency of coaching her in spelling and
journal writing because, as school teachers, they knew that writing would be the
largest component of the school exams. They called themselves “kiasu,” a local-
ism meaning “afraid of losing out to other people.”
The literacy and educational beliefs that Fiona’s parents held motivated how
they utilized their family social capital in literacy-related activities at home. Fio-
na’s parents used to work as primary school teachers on a half-time basis so that
each could spend half a day with their children. After Fiona’s father switched to
full-time employment, the mother made every effort to coordinate her work
schedule with Fiona’s timetable so that she was available most of the time when
Fiona was at home. In this way, the mother was able to coach Fiona and supervise
her homework. The father was also involved in literacy-related activities with
his children by doing bedtime story reading and coaching them in their home-
work assignments during school holidays. A typical day for Fiona was packed
with a range of literacy-related activities. In the morning, her mother would
supervise her on the piano for about one hour or escort her downstairs for her
swimming class. In the afternoon after Fiona came back from kindergarten, her
mother would help her with homework from kindergarten (e.g., English spelling
and Chinese dictation) or assignments from her tuition classes. Then, her mother
would give her extra assignments to complete. When Fiona felt tired of school-
like learning activities, they would do art and craft together. After supper, Fiona’s
mother would ask her father to send her to Chinese and English tuition classes
near her home. Before Fiona and her brother went to sleep, the parents would
divide the work of storybook reading: the mother read English books to Fiona’s
brother, and the father read to Fiona, most of the time in English and sometimes
in Chinese. On weekends, the family often went to the zoos, public libraries,
science centers, reservoirs, and parks to provide the children with opportunities
of “learning through experiences.” After coming back from these trips, Fiona’s
mother would guide her to write English journals to recount the events and help
her to polish the draft after she finished writing.
With her paternal grandparents living nearby, Fiona had within-family social
capital extended outside of the nuclear family. The grandparents would come and
keep an eye on the children when both parents were away from home, and Fiona
visited them frequently on weekends. Proficient in Chinese, the grandparents’
regular interactions with Fiona provided her ample early exposure to the lan-
guage. In addition, Fiona’s parents frequently exchanged educational information
with their siblings who also had school-age children. For example, it was because
of her aunt’s recommendation that Fiona attended an English creative writing
class. At family gatherings, Fiona had opportunity to practice her Chinese with
some of her Chinese-speaking cousins. She also received Chinese children’s
books from her aunts and uncles. Since English was the dominant language at
Fiona’s home, all these were valuable resources for her to develop her Chinese
proficiency.
Besides within-family social capital, Fiona’s parents tapped into their social
connections in the church, workplace, and community for their children’s edu-
cational advancement. They had established a wide social network with other
parents in the community whose children were at Fiona’s age. The children went
to the same tuition classes or the same kindergarten. This intergenerational clo-
sure facilitated information sharing about schooling and effective child-rearing
strategies. Fiona’s parents also consulted their parent friends on such issues as
choosing primary schools and tuition classes for their children. Some of the
tuition classes (e.g., Chinese speech and drama) Fiona attended were recom-
mended by her mother’s friends. The English-speaking church that the fam-
ily attended also provided resources for Fiona’s English learning. In addition to
Bible-related activities in Sunday school such as listening to Bible stories, reading
children’s Bible, and going for choir practice, the church visits also provided
Fiona and her brother access to the church library. There were also workshops
run by the church for parents to learn about parenting, and Fiona’s parents were
active participants. In this way, Fiona’s parents actively exploited outside-family
social resources to facilitate their children’s bilingual and biliteracy development.
The parents’ educational beliefs and aspirations for Fiona clearly underlay
parent-child interactions around literacy-related activities. Of the four mothers
participating in this study, Fiona’s mother used a higher proportion of high-
distancing strategies (43.2% as opposed to 56.8% for low-distancing strategies)
than the other three mothers. Her most often used high-distancing strategies
were “using cognitive state verbs” (13.7%) and “eliciting causal inference” (10%),
whereas her most often used low-distancing strategies were “using directives”
(22.4%) and “asking ‘what’ questions” (9.1%). These strategies were consistent
with her belief in the need for children to engage in purposive learning at home
and her work as a primary school teacher who habitually exerted control over
interactional activities with children. The following except illustrated the typi-
cal interaction Fiona’s mother had with her. The literacy-related interaction was
clearly skill-oriented and resembled a school-like activity centering on certain “core
skills” (e.g., learning beautiful and useful phrases from storybooks). As a result,
the interaction was strongly purposive, aiming at knowledge and skill learning.
EXCERPT 1
After reading a story, Fiona’s mother was picking out some nice phrases from the storybook
for her to learn and use in her own writing.
Mother: Ok, after reading this story, what is something that you’ve learned from this story?
Fiona: Umm.
Mother: Is there any nice phrases that you learned and you think are quite nice?
Fiona: Umm, “rest in the pool.”
Mother: “Rest in the pool”? Is it a nice phrase? . . . Ok, there are some nice phrases here
that I’d like to highlight to you. Can you see these highlighted words? “Dry
golden sand shimmered in the desert.” If you write your composition, you write
in this way. Don’t say that there is sand in the desert. There is dry golden sand
in the desert that shimmered in the desert. Wow, really nice.
Leo’s Family
Leo’s parents were also in favor of the bilingual education policy in Singapore
because it gave their children more exposure to Chinese at school. Leo’s mother
explained, “the more, the better, for their benefits. I don’t speak Chinese to
them, so if there’s any at school who can teach them, they’ll have interest.” At
the same time, she admitted that she hoped that Leo could learn Chinese “not for
daily use . . . [but] for exam purposes” because Chinese as a main school subject
was important for school success. Notably, Leo’s parents were not actively
involved in his language and literacy learning before he went to K2. Later, they
changed their parenting style as a result of participating in online parenting fora
and reading books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s (2008) Outliers: The Story of Suc-
cess. They were converted to the parenting style known as “concerted cultiva-
tion” and were convinced of the importance of active parental involvement in
children’s success. Thus, Leo’s parents decided to adopt a “Chinese-only” policy
on Sundays to create a bilingual environment at home in support of their chil-
dren’s language learning, and Leo and his brothers were rewarded if they spoke
Mandarin at home. Due to the family members’ limited proficiency in Man-
darin and their long-established habit of speaking English at home, however,
this language policy was abandoned after several weeks. To compensate for the
lack of Chinese exposure at home, Leo’s parents enrolled him and his brothers
in Chinese tuition classes. They also transferred Leo from a community kinder-
garten to a private one because the latter “taught a lot more” and could “lay a
solid foundation for him” when he was in P1. When he reached school age, they
sent him to a reputable, single-gender Christian school that provided him many
opportunities to speak, give presentations, and do other academically challeng-
ing activities. Leo’s mother confided that “you know when we were young, our
parents did not give us much support in our learning. . . . Our kids . . . have our
support. They should be able to achieve more.” Messages like this were com-
municated to Leo and his brothers even when they were in preschool. At the age
of five, Leo already knew the different levels of higher education: first bachelor,
then master and PhD.
Like the other local child (i.e., Fiona), Leo had access to much within-family
social capital (e.g., literacy-related parent-child interactions). As a financial con-
sultant, Leo’s mother spent a great deal of time at home with the three children.
She worked at home and made sales calls while keeping an eye on her children.
Inspired by the “concerted cultivation” parenting approach, she would assign one
or two sets of practice papers (usually English or Math) every week for Leo to
complete in order to prepare him for more formal schooling in P1. Such assign-
ments were more frequent in school holidays. Once a week, the parents thought
of a topic for the three children to write an English composition. They would
brainstorm first by sharing with the children their ideas and gave marks and
comments (and sometimes requests for practicing the words that the children
spelt wrongly in their composition) after they finished writing. According to

Leo’s father, this was to prepare the children, especially Leo, for English compo-
sition in P1. The mother started to give Leo extra Chinese worksheets to com-
plete when he went to P1 because the parents felt the need to foster his Chinese
proficiency.
Joint story-reading with the parents was a routine activity in Leo’s family.
Books on dinosaurs were Leo’s favorites, and he had dozens of such books on
the bookshelf. Leo’s mother also borrowed children’s books for him from the
community library. Her record showed that 52 English books were read to Leo
in 2008. Because his parents used to read only English books to him, Leo also
read only English books. When Leo’s father was at home, he would play com-
puter games (e.g., Ninja Saga, Fresh Big II, and Monopoly) with the children. At
weekends, he sometime took the children to game arcades in shopping centers
for more fun. Both parents were also very supportive of Leo’s use of social media.
As a more skilled user of Facebook than his parents, Leo often used his mother’s
account to play games, post pictures, and add new friends. Although Leo did not
like Chinese or story-reading in Chinese, an E-learning program called LEAD
that provided game-like Chinese exercises online caught his interest. At first,
he finished the exercises as assignments but was later fascinated by the exercises
and enjoyed playing them repeatedly even when there were no assignments from
his teacher or his parents. Such interactions with techno-literacies provided Leo
with valuable resources for Chinese-language learning in an English-dominant
home environment.
Like Fiona’s parents, Leo’s parents also took advantage of available outside-
family social resources to facilitate Leo’s language learning. The English church
that Leo’s family went to on Sundays provided Leo with additional opportuni-
ties for English learning. Leo learnt Bible stories with other children under the
guidance of volunteer teachers. Leo’s mother gained educational information on
tuition classes from her church friends and colleagues. The mother also liked
discussion with her clients and colleagues about children’s education. She was
an active member of several virtual communities, too. One of them was an
online forum “Home School” established by “a group of parents who don’t really
leave teaching to school.” Leo’s mother found a great deal of information shared
“unselfishly” by those parents about good tuition classes and workshops, down-
loaded reading materials and other educational resources, and followed posted
links to other educational websites for children.
Compared with the other local mother (i.e., Fiona’s mother), Leo’s mother
used a lower proportion (37.3%) of high-distancing strategies and, conse-
quently, a higher proportion (62.7%) of low-distancing strategies. Like Fiona’s
mother, she also used “eliciting causal inference” most frequently (11.8%). Her
second most frequent high-distancing strategy (7.5%) was “eliciting similarity/
difference judgment.” She deployed the low-distancing strategy of “using
directives” much less often (12.4%) than Fiona’s mother (22.4%) did, but used
the strategy of “asking ‘what’ questions” most frequently (13.7%). In general,

her interactions allowed considerable room for negotiation with Leo, as illus-
trated in Excerpt 2, were less school-like but more relaxed and encouraging
(when compared with the interactions Fiona’s mother had with her), and did
not correct language use explicitly, as typified by Excerpt 3. Such an inter-
actional style contrasted with the more restrictive approach taken by Fiona’s
mother and might have been a “carry-over” from her work as a financial
consultant.
Steve’s Family
Of all the participating parents, Steve’s mother was the most enthusiastic about
bilingual education, telling us that bilingual education in Singapore was “the
greatest attraction of Singapore” as well as one of the reasons for her family to
come and stay in the country. In the mother’s eyes, “Singapore is a good place
for children’s education. As far as bilingualism is concerned, no other place is
better than Singapore. . . . Although students in Singapore are not very standard
in English pronunciation, their writing ability is as good as that of native English
speakers.” Steve’s parents spoke Chinese to him most of the time because “for us,
Chinese is easier.” Chinese was also important for its ethnic value as a mother
tongue for the family. For Steve’s mother, a child’s mother tongue made him
EXCERPT 2
Leo’s mother was asking which book he would like to read.
Mother: Which one would you like? Star Wars?

Leo: Umm, no.
Mother: You choose lah.
Leo: (Chooses Transformers)
Mother: Oh, you want Transformers? You like Transformers, right?
Leo: Yeah.
Mother: Ok~ (Starts to read the book)
EXCERPT 3
Leo’s mother was reading a story to him.
Mother: “Benjamin and his friend climbed the hill. Wheee! Flop-Ear whizzed up to them
on~”
Leo: “the slide”
Mother: “on~ her~ sledge” (Continues to read the story). “‘That looks fun!’ cried
Benjamin.Before Flop-Ear could say anything, Benjamin jumped aboard her
sledge.”
know “whether he’s a Chinese, Indian or Westerner.” She also saw an important
role of language (be it English or Chinese) in children’s intellectual development:
The development of a child’s intelligence depends to a large degree on the

development of his language. Language is 70% of the intelligence. That is
to say, whether your child is intelligent or not depends on his or her lan-
guage ability. If we foster the development of two languages in him instead

of only Chinese, his brain will be better developed. . . . So the earlier the
kid learns English, the better.
This explained her practice of reading English books to Steve since he was only
a toddler and the division of language use at home when Steve was in K1—the
father spoke most often in English and the mother in Chinese.
Like Fiona’s teacher parents, Steve’s teacher parents also saw a need for them to
play an active role in teaching languages and literacy at home. Furthermore, they
had a strong belief in the value of early childhood education because, according
to the mother, “the child’s intelligence is already fixed by six years of age. After
this age, the brain develops very slowly. The earlier the exposure, the more the
brain absorbs and develops.” Like Fiona’s parents, Steve’s parents were also in
favor of a proactive approach to preparing him for “all possibilities” in the future,
and the various tuition classes and enrichment programs that he attended were
part of the preparation. For example, although Steve’s mother was confident in
his Chinese proficiency, she still sent him to a three-subject tuition class that
included Chinese learning because she felt the need for him to practice for assess-
ment in primary school. Interestingly, Steve’s parents agreed that “Singaporeans
are kiasu” and described themselves as kiasu too: “we Chinese parents are also
sort of kiasu, or to be more exact, we prepare our kids for future competition.”
This psychology explained why they were extremely selective when choosing a
primary school for Steve. Their top criterion was that the school must provide
good bilingual education, and other criteria included strict school discipline, a
good learning environment with hardworking classmates around, and a long
history.
Like Fiona and Leo, Steve had social capital within his nuclear family. “After
work, my son is my first priority,” said his mother. Having a strong belief in
parents’ active role in reinforcing their children’s school learning at home, she
coordinated her coaching with the kindergarten curriculum and the tuition
classes Steve attended. She helped him with English spelling and Chinese dic-
tation, and coached him in completing assignments from his combo (English,
Chinese, and Math) enrichment class and abacus-mental arithmetic tuition class.
She would also go through with Steve what he learned at school to enhance his
mastery. Every day before he went to sleep, she would read storybooks to him
in Chinese and sometimes in English for half an hour. On weekends, she taught
him Chinese idioms with flashcards or supervised him in completing Chinese
and English worksheets purchased from bookstores. Steve’s father did not do
much coaching but often told Steve stories from his reading of Chinese historical
novels. In addition, he downloaded Chinese stories told by a famous storyteller
in China into Steve’s mp3 for listening after the routine bedtime story-reading.
Because Chinese was the dominant home language, Steve’s parents staged a home
language use policy when Steve was in his first year at kindergarten to give him
more exposure to spoken English, ease his learning at preschool, and facilitate his
intellectual development: the father spoke more in English because of his greater
proficiency in the language, and the mother more in Chinese. Thus, despite their
tight work schedule and Steve’s tuition classes on weekends, Steve’s parents made
full use of the time available for them and managed to engage Steve in a variety
of family literacy activities in both English and Chinese.
However, unlike Fiona and Leo from the local Singaporean families, Steve
had little within-family social capital outside of his nuclear family. Because his
grandparents and other relatives lived far away in China, he had little oppor-
tunity to engage in literacy-related interactions with them on a regular basis.
The family also had very limited between-family social capital. Steve’s parents
had only a small social network, consisting of families who came from China
or Malaysia and shared their minority and immigrant status. As a result most
playmates Steve had in the community spoke Chinese, and he did not have
many opportunities to practice spoken English with them. Despite their limited
social network, Steve’s parents did exploit their between-family social capital to
enhance his academic success. Steve’s mother learnt through her parent friends
about various tuition classes and other education-related matters.
As far as interaction strategies are concerned, Steve’s mother employed the
lowest proportion (33.8%) of high-distancing strategies among all four partici-
pating mothers. Among her most frequently used high-distancing strategies were
“eliciting causal inference” (11.3%) and “using cognitive state verbs” (10.6%). Of
the frequently used low-distancing strategies, “using directives” (21.1%) topped
the list, followed by “asking ‘what’ questions” (14.1%) and “eliciting repetition”
(11.3%). Like Fiona’s teacher mother, Steve’s mother took firm control over
literacy-related interactions with Steve by using directives and eliciting repe-
titions. She also made explicit efforts to teach language use during such interac-
tions, turning them into highly purposive and skill-oriented school-like talk,
as Excerpt 4 illustrates. Such an interaction pattern could be attributed to her
habitus as a primary school teacher of Chinese as well as her educational beliefs
in the need to develop children’s intellectual abilities at a young age.
Helen’s Family
Helen’s parents did not put much emphasis on the educational opportunities that
bilingual education made available to students in Singapore, though they did
think that such education was good for Helen and her younger sister because “at
least English won’t be as difficult for them as it is for us.” Although they did not
EXCERPT 4
During joint book reading, Steve’s mother was teaching him about a radical (i.e.,犭) used
in Chinese characters to designate animals.
Mother: 咱们看“狗屋倒了”。能找到“狗”字在哪儿吗？
[Let’s read “Doghouse Falling Down.” Can you find the character “dog”?]
Steve: 这儿
[Here]
Mother: 哎(nod)。看看这个 (points to the radical 犭in the character “dog”), 是动物,
是不是？这个是“狗”。猫呢，还是这个动物，然后再换别的，啊.
[Yes. Look at this. It means animal, doesn’t it? This is “dog.” And for “cat,” you
still use this, and then only the right part of the character is replaced, ok.]
speak much English to Helen at home, they were not concerned that she would
have difficulty picking up the language because it was “all English at school.”
Rather, they were more concerned about their children’s mastery of Chinese.
Helen’s mother was worried that her daughter might not be able to learn Chinese
as well as her counterparts did in China because she could “not be exposed to as
much Chinese language input as in China.” A researcher of language education,
Helen’s father believed:
Speaking English at home with the kid is pointless, and actually it may
not do her any good. She can speak English at school with teachers and
classmates and with friends downstairs. If we speak English to her it’s
intentional not natural. . . . Children’s code-switching behavior is context-
sensitive. A child may not be able to speak English when you require her
to do so, but when the context is right, for example, when she meets non-
Chinese friends downstairs, she will automatically use English.
Thus, although Helen’s father was very proficient in English, he seldom spoke
English to her.
Unlike the parents of the other focal children, Helen’s parents took a “hands-
off” approach and seldom coached her on school learning because they did
not want to give her too much pressure. This was also the reason why they did not
send her to tuition classes. Helen’s father explained that he and his wife did not
teach Helen Chinese or English intentionally at home because such teaching
would risk her losing interest in learning at school. Helen’s father held a readi-
ness view about children’s language and intellectual development, and did not
believe in the “nonsense” of developing children’s intelligence in early childhood.
“Only laymen believe in so-called intelligence development for young children.
For researchers like us, we know it’s completely nonsense. Children’s intelligence
develops naturally with no need of intervention.” The father held the same atti-
tude toward Helen’s English learning. “There is no need to push her and to be
worried about her lagging behind. She will be ready when the moment comes.”
Compared with the other focal children, Helen had less within-family social
capital actualized to facilitate her language and literacy learning. Helen’s mother
spent much of her after-work time preparing for international accounting exam-
inations, whereas Helen’s father worked long hours on projects from his research
center or his own PhD project when he was at home. Because of such after-work
preoccupations and the parental beliefs in children’s natural growth, there were
markedly fewer joint literacy-related activities in Helen’s family. Since the par-
ents were busy with their work at home, they often left Helen alone watching
TV. They did not find it necessary to check Helen’s completion of homework
assigned by her kindergarten teachers. Although they had bought Helen exercise
books on math, English, and Chinese from China, neither of them guided her
to work on them. The main opportunity for the parents to engage in literacy-
related interactions with Helen was bedtime story-reading. It was also Helen’s
main access to literacy in Chinese and English. As a family routine, the parents
would take turns to read to Helen whatever books she chose for about half an
hour every day. Like the other immigrant family participating in this study, Hel-
en’s family had little within-family social capital extended outside of the nuclear
family. They also had only a small social network of mainly immigrant families
from China. Despite frequent outings with some of these families, Helen’s par-
ents did not treat them as sources of educational information or parenting strate-
gies. Their educational beliefs were the main reason why they made little use of
their social network for educational purposes. As reported above, they did not
want to impose pressure on their young daughter.
Helen’s mother used fewer types of interaction strategies (i.e., 15/18 types)
than the other mothers did. Like the other mothers, her most frequently used
high-distancing strategy was “eliciting causal inference” (10.6%). Unlike the other
mothers, her second-most-often used high-distancing strategy was “extending”
(9.3%)—that is, providing further explanation or repeating with added elements.
In contrast to the two teacher mothers, she used cognitive state verbs mark-
edly less frequently (5.6%). In this respect, she resembled the other non-teacher
mother (i.e., Leo’s mother). As was the case with Leo’s mother, her most and
second-most frequently used low-distancing strategies were “asking ‘what’ ques-
tions” (22.4%) and “using directives” (13.7%). Furthermore, she used the strat-
egy of “asking yes/no questions” (10.6%) at a similar frequency as Leo’s mother
did (9.9%) but relatively more frequently than the two teacher mothers (5%
for Fiona’s mother, and 4.9% for Steve’s mother). A close examination of the
interactions between Helen and her mother revealed that there was often much
negotiation going on and, when compared with the two teacher mothers, less
control over the interactions by Helen’s mother. Helen’s mother also engaged in
less explicit teaching and was more willing to accept the child’s responses than
the other mothers, as is illustrated in Excerpt 5. This pattern of maternal interac-
tion strategy use was consistent with the “readiness” view of child development
held by Helen’s parents.
EXCERPT 5
Helen was drawing with her mother.
Mother: 为什么你的太阳是黄色的？
[Why is your Sun yellow?]
Helen: 因为它就是黄色的呀。
[Because it is yellow.]
Mother: 太阳是红色的，所有的画里面太阳都是红色的。
[The Sun is red. We draw red Suns in all pictures.]
Helen: 但是我看见的是黄色的。
[But the one I saw is yellow.]
Mother: 好吧。这个云呢，应该是白色的。你这里画着太阳呢。
[All right. And the cloud, it should be white. You have the Sun here.]
Helen: 昨天云就是黑色的，而且也有太阳。要下雨了嘛。
[Yesterday the cloud was black despite the Sun. It was going to rain.]
Mother: 嗯，你说的对。
[Umm, you are right.]
Conclusion
This study has examined language ideologies, availability and actualization of fam-
ily social capital, and maternal interaction strategies as they played out in the FLP
of four ethnic Chinese families in Singapore. The study has found that as a fun-
damental component of FLP, language ideologies can be formed and shaped by
a variety of historical, social, and institutional factors (cf. Canagarajah, 2008)—
official policy propaganda (e.g., the pro-bilingual education attitude held by Fiona’s
parents), the rise of China as an economic power (e.g., the Singaporean fami-
lies’ perceived importance of Chinese), instrumental considerations (e.g., Fiona’s
parents’ anticipation of the bilingual advantage in the future job market), beliefs
about language learning (e.g., the worries Fiona’s parents had about the potential
negative effects of her grandparents’ nonstandard English on her language learn-
ing and Steve’s mother’s belief in the role of language in children’s intellectual
development), parenting gurus’ advice, and educational views (e.g., the wholesale
embracing of early childhood education by Steve’s parents and the rejection of
early language teaching by Helen’s father because of his “readiness” view of child
development). In turn, the language ideologies prevalent in the families motivated
certain language practices and management efforts (Smith-Christmas, 2016). Thus,
the valuing of bilingualism and biliteracy led to story-reading in both English and
Chinese in Fiona’s, Leo’s, and Steve’s families; concerted efforts to create a bilingual
home environment in all three children’s families; parental decisions to send them
to English and Chinese tuition classes to compensate for the lack of language input
at school; and explicit purposive teaching of language knowledge in three of the
four participating families.
The success or failure of the ideologies-motivated language practices and man-

agement efforts depends on the availability and actualization of various resources,
including family social capital (Coleman, 1988; Hao & Bonstead-Bruns, 1998).
For example, the purposive and extensive language coaching at Fiona’s home was
predicated on her parents’ flexible work schedules and their carefully coordinated
time with their children. On the other hand, Leo’s parents were unable to stick
to their “Chinese only on Sundays” policy because they lacked proficiency in

the language. By contrast, Steve’s parents were able to implement a version of
one-parent–one-language practice due to their respective proficiency in the two
languages. It is important to note that the mere availability of resources (e.g.,
Helen’s father’s good proficiency in English) did not impact on language practices
or children’s language learning unless it was actualized (Ream & Palardy, 2008).
It is also important to point out that in the focal families, language ideologies not
only motivated language practices and management endeavors but also created or
actualized family social capital on some occasions. For example, the strong belief
in concerted cultivation held by Leo’s mother led her to the resources shared by
the “Home School” group. Similarly, although Fiona’s parents did not have the
necessary proficiency in Chinese to create a bilingual home environment, they
were able to capitalize on her grandparents’ Chinese proficiency to provide her
with desirable exposure to the language.
This study has produced some evidence of the crucial importance of parent-
child interactions as both language practice and management mechanisms.
Fiona and Steve were able to read bedtime stories in both English and Chi-
nese because their parents and/or other family members interacted with them
in both languages; Helen preferred to read stories only in Chinese because
her parents spoke little English to her at home, though she was exposed to
the two languages at school. Notably, the parents’ interaction strategies were
highly consistent with their language ideologies, educational beliefs, and aspira-
tions for their children (Canagarajah, 2008). Thus, for example, Fiona’s parents
focused on her cognitive states, exerted a high level of interactional control,
and explicitly stretched her language skills to turn parent-child interactions
into opportunities for purposive language and literacy learning. By contrast,
Helen’s mother displayed a greater willingness to negotiate with her and accept
her initiatives in literacy-related interactions, which complied with the “readi-
ness” view of child development, including language learning, that was deeply
held by her and her husband. These findings attest to the complex and dynamic
interplay among the three core components of FLP and between them and
external social, cultural, and economic determinants of success. As Canagarajah
(2008, p.173) points out, the family is “a dynamic social unit, situated in space
and time, open to socio-political processes.” To develop a deeper understanding
of FLP, we need to take into account both family-internal factors and macro-
structural forces.
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PART III
Language Policy
Consequences for Family
12
HOME
A Confluence of Discourses in Multilingual

Linguistic Ecologies
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi & John Macalister
Introduction
The main aim of this book has been to understand the dynamics of family
language policies within a range of multilingual polities in order to reflect on
how family language policies are constantly negotiated, contested, endorsed, and
finally shaped by various factors, factors that are both external and internal to the
domain of home. This concluding chapter draws out some of the implications for
family language policy of the scenarios described and analyzed by contributors
to this book. In particular, we explore how language ecologies in which families
are positioned influence family members’ language ideologies and practices.
Decisions as to what language(s) to use in the home and with whom, which
often leads to the maintenance of some languages and losing of others in the long
run, is a complex issue when the interplay between human agency and macro
structures are considered, realizing that human agency, freedom, and choice are
constrained by “normatives, determined by the general patterns of inequality”
(Blommaert, 2005, p. 99). An investigation of the connection between agency
and structure in relation to the dynamics of family language policies in the home
can shed light on important questions raised by Ricento: “Why do individu-
als opt to use (or cease to use) particular languages and varieties for specified
functions in different domains, and how do these choices influence—and how
are they influenced by—institutional language policy decision-making (local,
national or supranational)?” (Ricento, 2000, p. 208).
In relation to family language policy, our starting point is that families and
their decisions regarding any issues, including linguistic ones, do not take place
in a vacuum, but are under constant influence, if not pressure, from the exter-
nal world. Although language maintenance, and in most cases maintenance of
220 Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi & John Macalister
multilingualism, is generally viewed as the responsibility and task of the family

(Fishman, 1991; Grenoble, 2011; Yu, 2010), it is argued that the decisions, choices,
and agency within the family unit are constrained by ecological factors to the
extent that family members do not always have a “free” choice (Lane, 2010; Sicoli,
2011; Spolsky, 2009). The family unit in which decisions are made in relation to
languages is under pressure from the ecology outside the home which is shaped
by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, socio-political, historical,

and economic factors. In addition, language use in the home is influenced by
implementation of language policies in other domains and institutions such as
education systems, media, and language use in the public sphere. Together these
create language maintenance/shift processes in the home (Spolsky, 2011, p. 149).
In light of this argument, we intend to take an ecological approach to family lan-
guage policy analysis and throw light on the interplay between macro language
policies and micro language attitudes and use. In other words, we explore how
individuals’ agency is constrained/shaped by sociopolitical and economic systems
and how this in turn creates challenges and opportunities, and has consequences,
for families and their language(s) in multilingual societies.
Ecology of Language and Family Language Policy

“Ecology of language,” or ecolinguistics (cf. Fill, 1997), can be used as a com-
prehensive explanatory model to study language-related issues (Calvet, 2006).
Taken originally from research in the natural sciences to protect endangered
species and preserve diversity, the ecology of language paradigm was first intro-
duced into linguistic studies to examine the interaction of a language with its
environment, defined as the interaction of a language with “other languages
in the minds of bi- and multilingual speakers . . .” as well as “with the society
in which it functions as a medium of communication” (Haugen, 1972, p. 325).
The key concept behind the term ecology of language, as Creese and Martin
(2003) argue, is that language is not viewed as a separate entity from a society
which uses it (cf. Steffensen & Nash, 2007). An ecological approach to linguis-
tic phenomenon, consequently, involves an exploration of “the relationship of
languages to each other and to the society in which these languages exist” that
includes “the geographical, socio-economic and cultural conditions in which the
speakers of a given language exist, as well as the wider linguistic environment”
(Creese & Martin, 2003, p. 1). In other words, the ecology of language paradigm
investigates the interrelations between linguistic ecologies and social, historical,
sociolinguistic, and political forces at different levels of individual, community,
and society (Mühlhäusler, 1996). Within this perspective, language is seen as
part of “larger meaning-making resources,” including “all the affordances that
the physical, social, and symbolic worlds have to offer” (van Lier, 2008, p. 599),
enabling the researcher to “map all aspects of the language environment, from
the sociological to the psychological” (Hornberger & Hult, 2008, p. 281).
Home: A Confluence of Discourses 221
Because language is not separated from social, cultural, political, economic,

and linguistic factors but, rather, seen to be in constant interaction with those
ecological factors (Adamou, 2010; Grenoble, 2011), the ecology of language par-
adigm allows the examination of a wide range of relevant possible explanations
for linguistic phenomena in a given area. “Interrelated sequences of causes and
effects” are examined to explain “changes in the traditional language behavior
of one group under the influence of another” that might result in a switch in the
language of one of the groups (Mackey, 2001, p. 68). Within this paradigm, a
shift toward more dominant languages, and a consequent reduction in linguistic
diversity, is thus seen as a result of a language losing its oikos, the Greek root
meaning “home.” An oikos, defined as “a complex ecological support system,” is
considered vital for languages’ sustained well-being, and loss of such a supportive
system rather than speakers’ and planners’ intentions to shift from one language
to another is regarded as the major reason for language loss (Mühlhäusler, 1992,
1996). In this view, “human communities need to be sustainable in order to
maintain their languages, and in order to support a language it is necessary to
support the group that speaks it” (Sallabank, 2012, p. 122).
The ecology of language paradigm allows the extension of the notion of home,
and thus family language policy, to include not only the family unit and the
family members’ linguistic ideologies and practices but also wider socio-political
and economic milieux in which languages exist. Unfavorable language policies
toward one or more languages used in the home then become likely when one
or some of the ecological factors—such as “the number of speakers, relationship
with other languages, patterns of transmission, speakers’ attitudes, domains of
use, institutional support” (Mühlhäusler, 1992, pp. 173–177)—undermine a lan-
guage in its ecology. As a consequence, the language loses its “ecological niche”
assigned in a linguistic ecosystem that is defined on the basis of its relation with
other languages and with its milieu, the place it occupies in the ecosystem, and
its functions (Calvet, 2006, p. 24).
Although the ecology of language paradigm has opened a window into a
more contextualized examination of linguistic issues, it has not been without its
critiques and criticisms. The main criticism leveled against the paradigm is a ter-
minological one with strong political implications. It is argued that “biologiza-
tion of languages” (Pennycook, 2004) and associating biodiversity with linguistic
diversity can be misleading, leading us into the fallacy of dealing with languages
as an organism (Edwards, 2009; Mackey, 2001). The wholesale adoption of eco-
logical and biomorphic metaphors such as ecology, survival, death, and adapta-
tion to the environment implies the view that “language loss is an inevitable part
of the cycle of social and linguistic evolution.” One thus can view language loss
as “simply a failure on its part, or its speakers, to compete adequately in the mod-
ern world, where of course, only the fittest languages can (and should) survive”
(May, 2008, p. 3). It is believed that the reinforcement of such social Darwinism
leads to “depoliticization of language diversity,” neglecting and obscuring the
wider historical, social, and political factors at work in language loss (May, 2008,
p. 3; Pennycook, 2004, p. 216). As such, language ecology “downplays human
agency and linguistic creativity,” and, by considering diversity only in terms of
the number of languages, attention is drawn away from other forms of linguistic
diversity and “political action” (Pennycook, 2004, p. 223).
Liddicoat (2013) argues that language ecologies incorporating speech com-
munities are subject to “hierarchies of prestige.” These hierarchical differences

are inseparably connected with “ideological and cultural constructions.” Greater
value is thus attributed to large dominant languages, whereas lesser value is given
to smaller minority languages. These differences of value ultimately influence
“what gets planned in the language ecology, what needs to be planned, and reac-
tions accorded to particular interventions in language” (Liddicoat, 2013, p. 5).
This necessitates that ecology of language should be viewed and investigated
as ideologically and discursively constructed, rather than a peaceful, kind, and
gentle environment/space for and among languages and their speakers (Black-
ledge, 2008).
Discourse and Family Language Policy

Discourse, as “a tool of mediation, persuasion and communication,” is part and
parcel of our everyday life and shapes “expectations, opinions and perceptions at
all levels, connecting individuals, groups, institutions, establishments and profes-
sions” (Bhatia, 2015, p. 1). As such, discourse is defined not only as “instances
of language in-use, being communicative acts composed of words, phrases, sen-
tences and utterances” (Liddicoat, 2013, p. 11) but also as “ways of thinking,
believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a par-
ticular sort of socially recognizable identity” (Gee, 1999, 2011, p. 34)—which
“define the limits and forms of what can be spoken of? What utterances should
be circulated and which ones are to be repressed? Which utterances are recog-
nized as valid, or debatable, or invalid? and how is the relationship institution-
alized between discourse, speakers, and its destined audience for a particular
society at a given time?” (Foucault, 1991, pp. 266–267). These discourses are
said to produce “a subjective conceptualization of reality” that emerges from “a
historical repository of experiences” including a variety of “linguistic and semi-
otic actions” (Bhatia, 2015, p. 1). Such discursive processes are “embedded in a
medley of social institutions” and often involve various “props like books and
magazines of various sorts, laboratories, classrooms, buildings of various sorts,
various technologies” (Gee, 1999, 2011, p. 35), through which certain problems
are framed in a particular way and meaning is given to phenomena often leading
to intended sociopolitical consequences (Hajer, 1993).
In the realm of (language) policies, this suggests that implementation of poli-
cies in institutions and domains outside the home, what has been called language
policy mechanisms (Shohamy, 2006), and institutional support (Giles, Bourhis, &
Taylor, 1977), enact and disseminate particular discourses that, intentionally or

otherwise, “block out alternative understandings or meanings so that the think-
ing process of an individual reflects what a powerful outsider desires” (Lo Bianco,
2010, p. 53) naturalizing particular power relations and ideologies and eliminat-
ing as much resistance as possible (Lo Bianco, 2012, p. 225; Woodside-Jiron,
2011, pp. 167, 169). Language policies, especially in these domains and institu-
tions, can therefore be studied as “ideological construction of the world” (Lid-

dicoat, 2013, p. 12) defining a set of possibilities for languages and their speakers
through what is known as “intermediate organizational entities” (Fairclough,
2011, p. 120). In this sense, as Hajer (1993) argues, discourse besides discursively
constructing problems can also simultaneously form the context in which phe-
nomena are understood and thus predetermines the definition of the problem. If
a discourse, or discourses, becomes successful in conceptualizing the world for
a society in a certain way, and if many people use it to conceptualize the world
in that way, it will be solidified into “an institution, sometimes organizational
practices, and sometimes traditional ways of reasoning.” This “discourse institu-
tionalization” will facilitate the reproduction of discourse (Hajer, 1993, p. 46).
For family language policy research, this means that families, under the influ-
ence of discourses produced outside the home, may consider acquiring/learning
a particular language as a necessity, while viewing learning other languages as
unnecessary. And if more and more families conceptualize their linguistic world
this way, maintaining particular languages and losing others can be expected in
a given society.
Home: A Confluence of Discourses

The findings based on the analyses of family language policies in a range of
multilingual states in this book demonstrate how the family unit functions as a
confluence of discourses in which a variety of societal and individual discourses
coincide and compete with each other creating particular opportunities, chal-
lenges, and consequences for languages and their speakers. An investigation of
the dynamics of family language policies shows how consideration of a wide
variety of factors plays a significant role in shaping family language policies in
the home. Such considerations have been noted both among immigrants and
autochthonous minorities in this volume. What is paramount to understand in
family language policy research is that families reach for support outside the
home for enacting their language decisions in the home. Whatever those deci-
sions are, and in favor of whichever language(s), they seem to fail without being
supported by and within a sustainable oikos—i.e. “a complex ecological support
system” (Mühlhäusler, 1992, 1996). What seems to be contributing to the sus-
tainability of such ecological systems most is an effective provision of institu-
tional support (Giles et al., 1977) to communities and their languages through
intermediate organizational entities, in particular the education system.
These intermediate organizational entities vary in their character and influ-

ence on speech communities across different contexts, as has been illustrated by
the contributors to this collection. In her analysis of Japanese-Canadian families
in Montreal, Quebec, Crump for instance demonstrates how children’s inter-
actions with their parents as well as among themselves are influenced by the
parents’ language management that is in turn shaped by language rules at day
care/preschool as well as the implementation of Bill 101, which states French

as the sole official language of the province of Quebec. The perceived mar-
ket value of the languages in the children’s present and future lives defined by
the socio-political and economic conditions in which families find themselves
influence the parents’ language management strategies in the home. What is
particularly interesting in Crump’s investigation is the children’s preference of
English over Japanese or French to communicate among themselves, suggesting
how discourses about upward socioeconomic mobility around the importance
of English as an international language and as one of the official languages of
Canada mediate language use in the home.
Similar findings were noted by Hu and Ren’s ethnographic investigation of
the language beliefs, practices, and regulating efforts of four immigrant and local
Chinese families in the multilingual society of Singapore. Their analysis sug-
gests how discourses around the rise of China as an economic power as well as
bilingual educational policies, cultural norms, social beliefs, societal values, and
socioeconomic conditions shape the families’ language practices as manifested
in mother-child interaction strategies resulting in explicit and deliberate efforts
made by the parents to regulate their children’s and their own language practices
and language beliefs. Language ideologies formed and shaped by a variety of
historical, social, and institutional factors motivated certain language practices
and management efforts such as story-reading in both English and Chinese in
two of the families, concerted efforts to create a bilingual home environment in
three of the children’s families, parental decisions to send them to English and
Chinese tuition classes to compensate for the lack of language input at school,
and explicit purposive teaching of language knowledge in three of the four par-
ticipating families.
In McKee and Smiler’s comprehensive account of factors influencing family
language policies with respect to New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) among
families with both deaf and hearing parents, a variety of discourses were iden-
tified as influential factors shaping family language policies. For example, the
authors argue that the possibility of pediatric cochlear implant (CI) surgery and
hearing aids resulting in the promise of improvement in the quality of audition
and an increase in the capacity of spoken language has encouraged positive atti-
tudes on the part of parents toward trying them and using a spoken language
in the home, and thus positioning sign language as a fallback or supplementary
mode if an oral approach falters. The deaf communities, on the other hand, raise
concerns about the maintenance of language and identity of deaf communities.
McKee and Smiler’s study reveals how macro- and meso-level influences, acqui-
sition planning particularly, as well as discourses around the benefits of techno-
logical advances on the one hand, and forming and maintaining deaf identity on
the other, compete with each other and finally shape family language policies.
What is of paramount importance in McKee and Smiler’s findings is the
strong connection between what is going on outside the home and parents’
language management strategies in the home. Families who are motivated to

learn NZSL generally find institutional support (advice, resources, and learn-
ing opportunities) to be weak, or even averse, reinforcing their incentive to
focus only on spoken language and/or to devise spontaneous visual strategies to
enhance communication. Conditions for peer transmission of NZSL in school
and social contexts have been significantly weakened by increased investment of
resources for children to acquire spoken language associated with CI technology.
As the authors argue, although use of technology does not necessarily preclude
the opportunity for bimodal bilingualism in NZSL, the monolingual ideology
of CI habilitation is strongly informing the earliest stages of FLP and apparently
reducing the likelihood of children being exposed to NZSL. In sum, it appears
that New Zealand is witnessing a decline of incentive, opportunity, and context
for young deaf children to acquire NZSL.
Similarly, Mirvahedi’s research on the largest ethnic minority community in
Iran (i.e., Azerbaijanis) and Bernal Lorenzo’s study on the vitality of the Zapo-
tec language of immigrants in Los Angeles both show how lack of institutional
support for a minority language, no matter how large the population is, informs
family language policies in favor of the dominant language(s). Mirvahedi shows
how historical processes along with lack of institutional support for the language
in the education system and the media shape Azerbaijani parents’ and children’s
attitudes toward the languages available to them—i.e. Farsi (the official language
of the country), Azerbaijani (Azerbaijanis’ first language), and Turkish (the offi-
cial language of Turkey, which reaches families through satellite channels). The
analysis reveals that Azerbaijanis express rather mild attachment to their ethnic
language, neutral attitudes toward the presence of and using Farsi in the home,
and a preference for Turkish satellite channels. What seem to be shaping Azerbai-
janis’ attitudes are discourses of socioeconomic upward mobility and academic
success nationally through Farsi, and internationally through Turkish. Such dis-
courses have made it possible for Azerbaijani, Farsi, and Turkish to be present
and used by family members to different extents. Given the stronger and more
important position Farsi and Turkish hold in the wider society, the concern is
that Azerbaijani may lose its vitality in the long run.
Bernal Lorenzo’s study of the vitality of the Zapotec language among immi-
grants in Los Angeles similarly shows that Zapotec in Los Angeles in comparison
to English and Spanish is a lesser-used language among Zapotec-speaking immi-
grants. As a result of not receiving any institutional support, the Zapotec lan-
guage is overwhelmed by English, Spanish, and at times other languages such as
Chinese or Korean. Thus, the language is only used in some special festivities and
for some particular activities such as singing and dancing in birthdays. Such an
unsustainable environment for the Zapotec language accelerates language shift/
loss and is further complicated by an apparent shift away from Zapotec in the
home community, Lozoga’.
Seals’ research on the immigrant Ukrainian families’ language policies in the
United States also yields interesting results. Using language socialization and lin-
guistic accommodation theories, she demonstrates how the low perceived social
status of the home language, Ukrainian, a status that is to a great extent defined
by socio-political factors outside the home, challenges its maintenance in the
home. She continues to argue that “it is not only children who are socialized by
their parents, and parents by their children; the entire family is also socialized by
the dominant society.” Seals concludes that family language policies are realized
dynamically within the home, responding to the primary interlocutors in a con-
versation and their interactional goals, and cannot be fully understood without
reference to the larger society in which the families live.
Revis refers to the influence from yet another outside-of-the-home institution—
i.e., church—on the domain of home among Ethiopian immigrants in Welling-
ton, New Zealand. Her analysis shows how Ethiopians’ religious identification
and practices contribute to a better maintenance of Amharic. Such ideologies, as
she puts it, “trickle down to the family domain and affect parents and children’s
language choice.” In other words, religious (and ethnic) identification facilitated
by the church extends the physical domain of the church and affects the language
ideologies and practices that members of the Ethiopian community hold and do
in private. What remains to be seen, however, is what will happen within a few
generations after Ethiopian children are socialized in a predominantly English
education system. It would be interesting to investigate to what extent discourses
around religious identification can compete with discourses of academic success
promulgated in and through the education system.
Unlike Revis’ successful account of language maintenance among Ethiopian
immigrants in New Zealand, Navarro and Macalister’s investigation of non-
English-speaking single-mother refugees settling in largely monolingual,
English-speaking New Zealand, depicts a different picture of language mainte-
nance. The chapter sheds light on the experiences of monolingual Spanish speak-
ers who have limited opportunities for social engagement beyond the home but
whose children are attending school and participating in the wider society where
English is everywhere. The analysis of the interview data gathered over a one-
year period reveals the challenges and opportunities for Spanish-language main-
tenance and English-language learning in the home. Unlike Revis’ research,
which demonstrates a positive contribution of church going and religious gath-
ering to language maintenance, Navarro and Macalister’s findings propose a
different scenario showing that young immigrant children adopt the language
of wider society and the education system in New Zealand (i.e., English) to
communicate among themselves at the church—if they actually attend. Chil-

dren, being skillful bilinguals in Spanish and English, often function as a transla-
tor for their mother in the home and, by doing so, create opportunities for their
mother to learn English, which at the same time presents challenges for main-
taining their Spanish. What is important to note here is the role the education
system plays in assimilating immigrants into the mainstream society and how
children relay educational policies to the domain of family (see Spolsky, 2004).
The challenges facing other families arguably pale in comparison to those faced
by child-headed families in rural Uganda. Applying a sociocultural approach to
their analysis, Kendrick and Namazzi investigate the dynamics of family language
policies among such households, with the main question being what children do
with the languages available to them in the absence of explicit language manage-
ment on the part of parents. They argue that learning is a social process in which
culturally and historically situated participants engage in culturally valued activi-
ties and develop the behavior and thought processes required for participation.
They find that the first language of the children (i.e., Luganda) is associated with
activities such as songs, laughter, and riddles that are emotionally driven and serve
as a coping mechanism to minimize the emotional distress brought about by the
vulnerable socioeconomic situation in which these families have been situated.
For the young children in this study, having already dealt with so much loss,
what would seem to be most important in developing family language policies is
strengthening the family unit to ensure the future. One may then argue that such
discourses shape the children’s decisions as what to do with the languages available
to them. It is not surprising then if these children, perhaps unlike other parts of the
world as shown in some of the chapters in this volume, do not favor English much.
Education Systems and Acquisition Planning

Schwartz, Moin, and Leikin (2011) distinguish between parents’ internal and
external strategies to develop their children’s linguistic repertoire. While the
internal strategies refer to what language(s) is used for parent-child interactions,
how parents react to a child’s language use (penalties and rewards for using a par-
ticular language at home), and the extent to which family cultural traditions and
rituals are maintained, parents’ external strategies include their “searching for
external control” to maintain the “L1 through the socio-linguistic environment”
(Schwartz et al., 2011, p. 313). What is of paramount significance to investigate
in family language policy is how parents’ internal and external strategies inform
one another in a variety of contexts, how external institutions and domains
mediate such an interplay and for what purposes, and what challenges, oppor-
tunities, and consequences are brought about through such institutionalization
for communities. This will throw light on how parents’ everyday discourses in
the home derive their meaning from macro-level discourses (re)produced in and
through various institutions in linguistic ecologies (Liddicoat, 2013, p. 11).
The education system, or language-in-education planning (acquisition plan-

ning) (Cooper, 1989), is one of the strongest policy devices for reproducing
discourses through institutions (Shohamy, 2006, 2008), if not the key one (see
May, 2008), for education has historically played a significant role in nation-
building (Wright, 2012). It is a site where particular attitudes and views about
languages and groups are (re)produced, and it is so effective that some have
argued that “schools often leave no room for resistance” (Caldas, 2012; Shohamy,
2009, p. 186). The education system can be argued to be playing a major role in
creating “external push factors” that “direct internal pull factors” toward use of
a particular language in the home (see May, 2008). The choice of a particular
type of education thus serves as “an important link in the practical realization of
family language ideology” (Schwartz, 2012).
The education sector also makes what Lo Bianco (2008, p. 122) calls “sys-
tematic and repeatable socialization” possible. That is, schools, when used as a
nation-building tool, are capable of unifying people via formal education over
generations so that “the will of the young” is bent to “the will of the nation”
(see May, 2008, p. 171). Given that such policies have historically resulted in
the repression and endangerment of regional languages (Oakes, 2011), viewing
educational policies, from script choice (Sebba, 2006) to testing (McNamara,
2008; Menken, 2008; Shohamy, 2006, 2008), solely as educational/linguistic
issues may, therefore, be considered “simplistic.” Educational policies have usu-
ally been surrounded by “political debates about national identity, dominance,
and control by elites in power, power relationships among politicians and civil
servants, questions about social order, and the perceived potential subversiveness
of language minorities” (Baker, 2002, p. 237).
Educational and Pedagogical Implications

In this section we explore some of the educational and pedagogical implications
of the research reported by the contributors in this volume. Many of the con-
tributors have reported how dominant ideologies reproduced in the education
system affect family members’ attitudes and ideologies about the languages avail-
able to them. We are interested here in examining how families can be supported
to achieve their individual language policies in multilingual polities; we cannot
claim, regrettably, to have “the answer.”
Indeed, we doubt “the answer” exists. After all, and as noted in the intro-
duction to this volume, it is not possible to generalize about FLP because of the
diverse contexts around the world. For minority languages whether in national
or migrant settings—Zapotec, Māori, New Zealand Sign Language—efforts at
maintenance are fraught, for the oikos has been weakened. In Lozoga’, Spanish
appears to be displacing Zapotec, whereas cochlear implant technology and
the already dispersed nature of the deaf community pose a threat to the future
of NZSL.
In New Zealand, Māori and NZSL both enjoy official language status. This
is an important first step for a minority language, as the logical consequences
should be that corpus and acquisition planning support become available. For
Māori language development and support this is much greater than it is for
NZSL (McKee, 2006); for instance, Māori language education is available from
pre-school to tertiary level, and as a school subject, whereas the development
of NZSL as a school subject (although currently available at tertiary) is in its

infancy. Even though McKee and Smiler suggest that compulsory English-
medium schooling (and the implicit broader discourses) influences children and
their parents’ priorities and values with respect to languages, the fact that the
language is recognized and has a place in the education system can help support
family language policy aimed at maintaining an existing language.
Not all languages are so recognized, however, whether they be minority
or dominant languages in their indigenous setting—Ukrainian in the United
States, Amharic in New Zealand, and Zapotec are examples from this volume
that are not. Parents for whom these languages are L1s and wish their children
to learn and/or maintain them may fall back on community support, although
not always with the success that Revis found for Ethiopians through the church.
Apart from religious and cultural gatherings, communities may organize and
offer language classes; whether these are sufficient to maintain a language is an
open question, however, and it may be that ethnic identity, over time, assumes
non-linguistic rather than linguistic expression (cf. Ngaha, 2001).
Community schools do not, however, only serve speakers of languages that
do not have official status or that do not have a place in the education system.
Hu and Ren found some of the families in their study taking advantage of addi-
tional community/private Chinese-language tuition for their children, despite
the bilingual education system in Singapore. It was not the case that they were
dissatisfied with the official education system (unlike, for example Li, 2006); it
was that they appreciated the “external push factors” that made fluency in Chi-
nese desirable.
In a number of chapters, families have been seen sharing language learning-
related knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions and in turn influencing each other’s
thinking and behavior. It is, then, the informal as well as the formal group-
ings within a language community that are important. However, at some point,
surely, some body or some agency should attempt to ensure that the ideas and
views being shared within a community are well-grounded. It is doubtful,
for example, that many educationalists or applied linguists would endorse the
belief expressed by participants in Navarro and Macalister’s chapter that chil-
dren should not speak Spanish, their L1, because they are learning English. An
example of a researched and tested practice that could be promoted, at least to
two-parent bilingual families seeking to raise bilingual children, is one parent /
one language, used effectively by the participants in Crump’s study. Another
example would be to promote the advantages of bilingualism.
Research also tells us that mother-tongue-based multilingual education con-

tributes to language maintenance and to better educational outcomes (Walter &
Benson, 2012). It is conceivable, for instance, that if children in Lozoga’ began
their schooling in Zapotec, the oikos for that language would be more secure;
migrants to California would have a place where they knew the language was
still alive, providing a stronger reason to promote its use in the home among the
American-born children. While MTBMLE is unlikely to ever be an option for

all language communities in a migrant situation, it should be pursued for minor-
ity indigenous languages in their own country. It is, after all, a long time since
UNESCO (1953) declared that “it is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching
a child is his [sic] mother tongue.”
We do, however, need to bear in mind that success does not mean the same
thing for every family, a point made earlier in the introductory chapter. This is a
point also nicely made in a recent interview with a Malaysian-born playwright:
Jacob Rajan’s parents had hoped he would be a doctor. Being the son of
an Indian immigrant with a medical bent, of course I was supposed to be
a doctor, both my brothers were supposed to be doctors. You don’t move
your family 10,000 miles from their homeland not to justify it with success.
(Easther, 2016, p. 56)
Whether a family’s definition of success includes bi- or multi-lingualism is, in

the end, beside the point perhaps. What seems certain, however, is that success
for every family will include taking advantage of the opportunities the society
offers for achieving a better life, and access to those opportunities is almost
inevitably linked to gaining proficiency in a language of power, represented in
the contributions to this book by English and Chinese, Farsi and Turkish. These
are cases where powerful messages about “prestigious social norms regarding
language usage” (Escandell, 2011, p. 326) are delivered to students from local
and national authorities (Brown, 2012, p. 282), molding particular attitudes and
mentalities (Gao & Park, 2012; Lopez, 2008, p. 50). Such discursive practices
of the education system (van Dijk, 2008) may in turn play a significant part in
language maintenance/shift (Jones, 2012).
As a result of the multiplicity of situations in which families find themselves,
the single greatest pedagogical implication that we can suggest is that language
learners deserve good teaching. As an example of its probable absence, and
although not included in Navarro and Macalister’s chapter, which formed part
of a wider study including a larger number of participants, common experiences
were dissatisfaction with language learning classes, and equal dissatisfaction with
at least some of the one-on-one language tuition offered in homes. The feeling
was that the English-language teaching on offer was not helping them reach
their goals, which were related to developing proficiency in English. So, no mat-
ter whether it is adult migrants learning the language of the host community, or
children being instructed in their home language in the early years of schooling,
or students with the opportunity to learn a heritage or other language as a school
subject, good teaching should always be the goal.
Given the sheer quantum of research articles and conference papers dedi-
cated to effective language teaching pedagogy, it may seem surprising that good
teaching is not always the norm. The challenge that remains, and as was alluded
to earlier, is that of disseminating appropriate knowledge to the appropriate

communities—including language teaching professionals—for without success-
ful dissemination it is the learners who are penalized. Language teaching profes-
sionals, after all, generally live to teach another year. Last year’s students are left
to sink or swim.
Concluding Remarks
Fishman (1991, 2001) argues that most emphasis should be placed on face-to-
face micro-scale interactions in the domain of home and neighborhood. He
points out that language policies in macro and meso domains and institutions
such as education systems and the media should not be taken as a contributing
factor to language vitality per se. Such a situation—i.e., attempting to control
the language of education, the mass media, or the workplace, and neglecting the
very intimate intergenerational transmission of language—has been likened to
“constantly blowing air into a tire that has a puncture” (Fishman, 1991, p. xii).
That is, all language maintenance endeavors that do not lead to favorable family
language policy in the home are seen to be in vain.
Although Fishman rightly emphasizes the critical role of the domain of home,
the contributions to this volume propose an additional metaphor. The findings
throughout the chapters in the book suggest that if the mere reliance on the macro
domains to maintain a language is like blowing air into a flat tire, we could liken
the mere reliance on the domain of home to save or maintain a language to plac-
ing nails on the road, nails that may cause a puncture in the tire. That is, it is
wishful thinking to picture language maintenance taking place only in the home
without being recognized and used in macro domains. Languages need more
than the home as an important domain of language use; they also need an oikos
for survival. For natural intergenerational transmission to occur there needs to be
“a complex ecological support system” (Mühlhäusler, 1992, 1996). Otherwise, as
Wang and Chong (2011) argue, the outlook for the maintenance of languages that
are used only in restricted settings, including home, is not optimistic. The lack
of any of the ecological requirements—e.g., institutional support (Giles, et al.,
1977)—of a language can consequently have a detrimental effect on its survival.
We cannot ignore the fact that decisions as to what extent and to which
group(s) and their language(s) institutional support should be provided are a
political and ideological act (Shohamy, 2006; Spolsky, 2009). Such political and
ideological acts, as argued above, ultimately lead to discursive construction of
linguistic ecologies that direct family members’ linguistic ideologies and prac-
tices in the home (Liddicoat, 2013), and bring about changes, for better or worse,
in language ecologies. The traditional language maintenance and preservation
measures that were concerned with preserving the structure of languages by
providing dictionaries, grammar, and “high literature” are, therefore, considered
unlikely to succeed unless the “question of language ecology” is asked (Mühl-
häusler, 1992, p. 164).

What we have attempted to do based on the variety of research in this book
is to develop an “integrationist” (Pennycook, 2004) conceptual view of language
use to understand the dynamics of family language policy in multilingual poli-
ties by responding to the call for multidimensional and interdisciplinary research
(Smith-Christmas, this volume). This integrationist conceptual view of language
use should be responsive to—and potentially apply to—developments in other
fields such as education, discourse analysis, ethnography, and critical social the-
ory (Ricento, 2000). We look forward to further developments in this direction
in the richly rewarding field of family language policy.
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Daisy Bernal Lorenzo is from a Zapotec community in the South of Veracruz,

Mexico. She has a BA in English and a BBA degree, as well as an MA in Intercul-
tural Education. She has recently obtained her PhD in Language Sciences at the
Faculty of Language at the University of Veracruz. She works in the Intercultural
University of Veracruz as the Head of the Area of Language Normalization.
Alison Crump did her PhD in Educational Studies in the Department of Inte-
grated Studies in Education at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Her
research interests include critical sociolinguistics, language policy, multilingualism,
identity theory, critical race theory, language socialization, and qualitative inquiry.
Her work has been published in Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, LEARNing
Landscapes, the Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, and the Journal of Cur-
riculum Theorizing.
Guangwei Hu is Associate Professor and Deputy Head (Research) in the English

Language and Literature Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nan-
yang Technological University, Singapore, where he teaches graduate courses in
language assessment, psycholinguistics, research methodology in applied linguistics,
and second-language acquisition. His current research interests include academic
discourse/literacy, bilingual education, language policy, and second-language writ-
ing. He has published extensively on these areas in such international journals as
English for Specific Purposes, Higher Education, Instructional Science, Journal of English
for Academic Purposes, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Second Language Writing, Lan-
guage Learning, Research in the Teaching of English, Review of Educational Research,
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, TESOL Quarterly, and Teachers College Record.
His article ‘Disciplinary and Ethnolinguistic Influences on Citation in Research
Articles’ published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes won the 2016
JEAP best-article award.
Maureen Kendrick is Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy

Education at the University of British Columbia. Her research examines literacy
and multimodality as integrated communicative practices, and it addresses a range
of social and cultural issues in diverse contexts. She has a particular interest in
visual communication. Dr. Kendrick has authored and co-authored numerous
journal articles and book chapters on communicative practices in various geo-
graphic locations, including a focus on marginalized populations in East Africa
and Canada. She has also authored books on literacy, multimodality and play, and
has co-edited volumes on youth literacies, and family and community literacies.
John Macalister is Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Applied

Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His teach-
ing and research interests include language teaching methodology and language
curriculum design, as well as language policy and linguistic landscapes.
Rachel McKee is Programme Director of NZSL Studies, teaching in a programme

that trains deaf people as teachers of NZSL, and in undergraduate NZSL and
Linguistics courses. Rachel also supervises post-graduate research in Deaf Studies.
She has published across a range of areas in Deaf Studies including sign language
interpreting, linguistic analysis of NZSL, sociolinguistic issues in NZSL, and deaf
children in schools. She is a member of the Deaf Studies Research Unit, and is
currently serving on several government advisory groups addressing policy relat-
ing to NZSL.
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi is a lecturer at the Department of English Language and

Literature at Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University in Tabriz, Iran. Prior to his
lectureship at Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, he completed his PhD at
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, on macro and institutional lan-
guage policies and how they influence Iranian Azerbaijanis’ language attitudes and
practices at the grassroots level. Mirvahedi’s research examines a variety of socio-
linguistic issues including language policies and the social structure, discourses on
language, diversity, and social (in)equality, linguistic landscapes, minority media,
and ethnic identity.
Elizabeth Namazzi is a lecturer at Uganda Martyrs University in the Faculty of

Education. She is concerned about the manner in which children create mean-
ings and understandings out of social encounters. She is particularly interested
in HIV/AIDS and culture-related issues with a particular focus on children in
child-headed households, girls, and women. Her recent study investigated Ugandan
high school students’ understandings of the spread and prevention of HIV/AIDS
238 About the Contributors
and the influence of cultural practices on these perspectives. She believes that chil-
dren’s agency to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS cannot be underestimated.
Diego Navarro is the Language Technology Specialist at Victoria University of

Wellington. He has been involved with language learning for over 15 years. His
PhD explored the out-of-class learning endeavours of adult migrants in New
Zealand.
Li Ren has obtained her PhD degree from Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. Her PhD project was an ethnographic study conducted in Singapore
that investigated home biliteracy practices and children’s biliteracy acquisition in
Singaporean Chinese families and recent immigrant families from China. Her
research interests include bilingual education, family literacy practices, early child-
hood education, and immigration. She has published several articles on bilingual
education and early childhood education in international journals.
Melanie Revis studied English, Spanish, and Business in Giessen, Louvain-la-Neuve

and Boston, and completed her PhD in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wel-
lington. Her research has focused on learner language, language contact, and fam-
ily language policy, with a particular interest in refugee communities. Between
2009 and 2011, she worked in partnership with the editors of the Atlas of Pidgin
and Creole Language Structures, as a result of which she co-authored (with Sabine
Ehrhart) a reference article about the French-based Creole Tayo. In 2015, she
occupied a guest lecturer position at Hawassa University, Ethiopia. She is currently
a researcher in teacher education at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen exploring
ways of linking content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical con-
tent knowledge in language teacher training.
Corinne A. Seals is Lecturer of Applied Linguistics at Victoria University of

Wellington in New Zealand, Academic Advisor to the Community Languages
Association of New Zealand, and an editor of the Journal of Home Language
Research. Her research interests include heritage language acquisition and main-
tenance, language policy, language and identity, and linguistic landscapes. Her
recent publications include articles in Current Issues in Language Planning, Language
and Society, and Issues in Applied Linguistics, as well as chapters on heritage lan-
guage education and linguistic landscapes. Her book ‘Choosing a Mother Tongue’:
Identity Renegotiation in Ukrainian Narratives of Conflict (Multilingual Matters), and
co-edited collection Heritage Language Policies around the World (Routledge), will
be published in 2017.
Kirsten Smiler (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Whakatōhea) is a recipi-

ent of the Health Research Council’s Erihapeti Rehu-Murchie Postdoctoral Fel-
lowship in Māori health and is a Research Fellow for the Health Services Research
Centre based at Victoria University of Wellington. Kirsten’s doctoral thesis exam-

ined the nature and impacts of early intervention experiences for Māori deaf chil-
dren and their whānau. Through the experience of learning a heritage language
(te reo Māori) as a third language and acquiring New Zealand Sign Language
natively in a home context from deaf adults (despite being hearing), she is inter-
ested in the complex language experiences of those who use both te reo Māori
and New Zealand Sign Language. Kirsten is a current member of the New Zea-
land Sign Language Board.
Cassie Smith-Christmas is a research fellow for Soillse, the interuniversity Gaelic

language research network. Prior to taking up her fellowship at the University of
the Highlands and Islands, Cassie completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow
on the linguistic practices of an extended bilingual Gaelic-English family. She also
has held a fellowship with the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humani-
ties at the University of Edinburgh, where she completed her monograph Family
Language Policy: Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home (Palgrave, 2016).
INDEX
acquisition planning 1, 2, 4, 6, 42, 50–1, cochlear implants 42, 52

225, 227–9 codeswitching 182
ad hoc FLP 46–7 community of practice 142, 143, 150
affect 15, 22–5, 71, 108 community organisations 36
agency 22, 23, 47, 156, 172, 219, 220, 222, concerted cultivation 206, 214
229 corpus planning 1, 4
Amharic 8, 138–41, 143–51, 226, 229 critical mass 35, 37
aural-oral 34, 37, 43
autochthonous languages see indigenous daycare 154–5, 159, 161, 167, 170–2
languages Deaf Education Centre 37
Azerbaijani 74, 76–92, 225 deaf of deaf (DoD) 31
deaf of hearing (DoH) 32
Bahasa Indonesia 2 de facto language policy 3
between-family social capital 210 depoliticization of language diversity 221
bilingual education 201, 203, 206, 208–10, discourse 5, 35, 77, 140, 150, 190, 203,
213, 224, 229 222–3, 232
bilingualism 5, 6, 14, 15, 19, 38, 41, discursive construction 231
48–51, 135, 160, 208, 213, 225, 229 discursive processes 22
biliteracy 201, 205, 213 disruption to transmission of language 30
Bill 101 8, 155, 167, 172, 224 domains of language use see language
bimodal-bilingual 41, 46, 51 domains
biologization of languages 221
early diagnosis 34
case study 46, 51, 120, 157, 177, 191, 195, early intervention 31–4, 37, 42
199, 201 educational beliefs 204–5, 210, 212, 214
census data 50, 175 educational policies 7, 74, 80–1, 84, 90,
child-headed families 56–9, 70–1, 227 224, 227–8
child-headed households 7, 56–8, 70 education systems 75, 78, 220, 227, 231
children’s agency 22, 23, 172 endangerment of signed languages 35
children’s perspectives 86, 154, 157, 159, English language learning 117, 122, 125,
164, 172 129, 130, 226
242 Index
English language teaching 230 language beliefs 5, 8–9, 31, 58, 195, 224
Ethiopian 135–51, 226, 229 language domains 2, 3, 80, 219–23, 231
ethnography 9, 21, 141, 192, 232 language ecologies 76, 156, 195, 219, 222,
232
family centered early intervention 33 language ideologies 9, 18, 20–1, 31, 48,
family internal factors 9, 195, 214 75, 136, 142, 150–1, 156, 172, 195–7,
family social capital 197–9, 202, 204, 206, 199, 202, 213–14, 219, 224, 225, 228
210, 212–14 language-in-education policy 2

financial capital 197 language input 211, 213
French 8, 13, 21, 23, 107, 154–5, 159–61, language loss 3–4, 32, 48, 221–2
163–7, 171–2, 224 language maintenance 3, 5–8, 15, 35, 71,
funds of knowledge 57, 71 74, 88, 121–2, 129, 136–8, 142, 144,
148, 155, 190, 219–20, 226, 230–2
generating data 173 language management 75, 136, 145, 147–8,
151, 171–2, 195–8, 224–5, 227
Hebrew 3, 18, 137 language modes for deaf children 33, 35
heritage language 35, 41, 51, 74, 117, 119, language policy mechanisms 222
137–8, 155, 175–8, 190–1, 197 language practices 42–3, 56–61, 64–5,
home language use 9, 154, 176, 189, 210 67, 70–1, 85, 124, 130, 136, 154, 156,
home visits 157–9 161–2, 171–2, 176–7, 195–9, 202,
human capital 197 213–14, 224
language revitalisation 3, 4
identity 1–2, 7–8, 30, 33–7, 39, 40, 41, 43, language rules 143, 172, 224
45–6, 48–51, 69, 91, 108, 129, 137, 140, language shift 3, 4, 7, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22–3,
142–3, 146, 155, 177–8, 181, 190, 222, 31, 35–6, 81, 97, 129, 149, 176, 191, 226
224–5 language socialization 167, 172, 176, 178,
ideologies see language ideologies 180–1, 191, 226
immigrants 16, 17, 20, 115, 119, 135, 137, linguistic capital 195
155, 177, 195, 200, 210, 212, 223–7 linguistic ecology 4, 7, 140
inclusive education 51 linguistic refunctionalization 100
indigenous languages 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 16–20, literacy-related interaction 205, 210, 214
25, 36, 96–7, 105, 223 longitudinal studies 21
indigenous peoples 96
institutional language policy 219 macro level 3, 6, 23, 30–1, 35, 50, 156,
institutional support 38, 41, 50, 78, 85, 227
138, 221–3, 225, 231 macro-micro dichotomy 156
interaction strategies 195, 198–200, 202, macro-structural forces 214, 219
210, 212–14, 224 Māori language 3, 7, 32, 36, 40, 48–50,
intercultural experiences 101, 105 118, 228–9
intergenerational closure 202, 205 Māori whānau 31, 37, 39, 45–6, 48–50
intergenerational poverty 47 meso level 37, 225
intergenerational transmission 4, 35–7, 74, metalinguistic awareness 21–2, 167, 172
85, 97, 231 methodologies 15, 20, 21
intersection of Māori/NZSL 36 micro level 3, 22–3, 31, 156
Iran 74, 76–8, 80, 84, 90–1, 225 minority language as a medium of
Irish 3 instruction 81–4
minority language as a subject of
Japanese 22, 105, 154, 157–64, 166–8, instruction 81–3
170–2, 224 monolingual ideology 51, 171, 225
Montreal 8, 20, 22, 154–5, 157, 159, 163,
kōhanga reo 36, 49 167, 171, 224
multigenerational deaf families 31
language accommodation 176–9, 181–3, multilingualism 3–4, 6, 15, 17, 22–4, 75,
185, 188, 191, 226 139, 154, 157, 171, 220
language attitudes 220 multilingual languaging 158
Index 243
network analysis 202 Singapore 18, 20, 195, 199–201, 203, 206,
New Zealand 1, 3, 6–8, 15, 30–2, 34–8, 208–10, 213, 224, 229
50–2, 116–19, 121–2, 124, 126, 130, social ecosystem approach 172
135, 137, 139–41 social media 207
NZSL community perceptions 45 social networks 31, 201, 204, 210, 212
NZSL in education system 36 status planning 1–2, 4, 6, 31, 50
strategic language use 87, 171, 175, 177,
open coding 158 185

OPOL 13, 16, 18–19, 154, 171
Orthodox Church 8, 137, 138, 140, 142–5, Tabriz 74, 76, 78–9, 81–2, 84, 86, 92
149–51 techno-literacies 207
Tetun 2–3
parenting style 206 theory of locality 156
parent strategies 195, 198–200, 202–3, Timor-Leste 2–4
205, 207, 210, 212–14 transcription 120, 158, 194
parent survey 31, 38 Turkish 77, 80, 84–92, 225, 230
policy on NZSL 35–8, 50–1
Portuguese 2–5, 22–3 Uganda 56, 58–60, 227
professional advice (language) 34, 38, 48 Ukrainian 175–8, 181–5, 188, 190–2, 226
psychological distancing 198–9 UNCRPD 36
United States 17, 22, 99, 105, 136, 175–6,
Quebec 8, 154–6, 167, 224 181, 189, 191–2, 198, 226, 229
universal newborn screening 34–5, 37
reflexivity 15, 19, 21
religion 3, 8, 71, 115, 135–8, 140, 143–51 vitality of sign languages 31, 37, 50–1
research with children 157, 172
reversing language shift 4, 15, 31 Western industrialised societies 17
Russian 9, 18–19, 22, 175–8, 180–92 within-family social capital 202, 204, 206,
210, 212
siblings 4, 7, 18–19, 56–9, 61–4, 66–7,
69–70, 87, 176–81, 188–92, 202, 204 Zapotec language 96–7, 100–1, 103–4,
sibling-to-sibling 181, 187, 190–1 106–8, 110–12, 225–6

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FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICIES

John Macalister is Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Applied

Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi is Lecturer at Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Iran.

Macalister/ Family Language Policies in a Multilingual World:

Visit www.routledge.com/education for additional information on titles in

Edited by John Macalister

© 2017 Taylor & Francis

2 Family Language Policy: New Directions 13

3 Family Language Policy for Deaf Children and the Vitality

4 Family Language Practices as Emergent Policies in

5 Exploring Family Language Policies Among Azerbaijani-

6 The Role of the Zapotec Language from Lozoga’ in the

7 Adrift in an Anglophone World: Refugee Families’

Diego Navarro & John Macalister

8 How Religious Ideologies and Practices Impact on Family

9 “I Speak All of the Language!” Engaging in Family

10 Dynamic Family Language Policy: Heritage Language

11 Language Ideologies, Social Capital, and Interaction

12 Home: A Confluence of Discourses in Multilingual

About the Contributors 236

The law of unintended consequences tells us that there may be unexpected

initiatives do operate to support these languages, at times inspired by Māori lan-

maintenance for Amharic-speaking Ethiopian migrant families. In Canada, the

John Macalister & Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a sense of the broad

It would be a mistake, of course, to think that such concerns are relegated to

guages is explained by Timor-Leste’s history. Portuguese had had a long history

p. 52) as individuals make decisions about language use—because, if language

beliefs, and management, which he introduced in terms of a speech community

collection. Without questioning the benefits of bilingualism (as summarised in,

expectations of bi- or multilingualism fall. At the very least, therefore, we should

The following chapter, by Maureen Kendrick and Elizabeth Namazzi, reports

The next section of the book looks at ‘opportunities’. Perhaps it is indicative of

understandings of the relationships between language policy at home, at school,

While these efforts [minority language schools] are laudable [. . .], it is

The sentiment encapsulated in Canagarajah’s quote is echoed in King’s (2016)

how different generations of Chinese speakers in the UK—and even individuals

emergent from the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA)

gualism, such as Malaysia (e.g., Dumanig, David, and Shanmuganathan, 2013;

in Singapore—a highly industrialised but in many respects non-Western nation

own work (2014, 2016) on three generations of a Gaelic-speaking family on the

Gaelic-centred nature of the FLP, other family members’ language practices in

studies of course, as accounts of language use in general are often restricted to

be difficult to parse. The multi-modal methods employed in Crump’s qualitative

Similarly, Melo-Pfeifer’s (2015) study of children being raised with Portuguese

Finally, a greater understanding of the nexus between the wider community

of the community; and, finally, by comparing and contrasting FLPs in differ-

Cruz-Ferreira, M. (2006). Three Is a Crowd? Acquiring Portuguese in a Trilingual Environ-

Multicultural Development, 37(7), 694–709. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2015.1127926

King, K. A. (2000). Language ideologies and heritage language education. International

Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9 (6), 695–712.

Mishina-Mori, S. (2011). A longitudinal analysis of language choice in bilingual chil-

Heinrich (Eds.), Globalising Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 16–36.

OF NEW ZEALAND SIGN LANGUAGE

Family Contexts for Deaf Children

Deaf of Deaf Parents

Deaf of Hearing Parents

Common Factors in FLP for Deaf Children

approaches remains ambiguous (Martin, Rodda & Martin, 2001; Meadow-

implicitly, somewhere on an ideological spectrum about the relative value and

Technology as a Factor in FLP

Local Context for FLP vis-à-vis NZSL