Family language planning strategies among Australian families of Arabic-speaking background

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the language planning strategies employed by Australian transnational families of Arabic-speaking backgrounds to develop their children’s bilingualism in English and Arabic. The paper concludes that the families’ transnationalism and strong links with their countries of origin played a significant role in their language planning decisions. The study revealed that the mothers consciously developed their children’s bilingualism by means of both planned and spontaneous language management strategies. Semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion revealed that the mothers used five main strategies, which comprised using the minority language at home, language mixing, reading stories, taking advantage of television shows and travelling to their hometowns. This paper discusses the validity and success of each strategy by comparing them with research findings on other transnational and migrant families around the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Family language policy
• transnational families
• Arabic
• Australia
• family language planning strategies
• language maintenance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by a Griffith University’s Higher Degree Research internship.

Notes on contributors

Areej Yousef

Areej Yousef is an early career researcher and HDR candidate at Griffith University. She is interested in bilingual development among children and adolescents with a focus on heritage language maintenance and identity construction among Arabic-speaking communities in Australia.