Family language policy of second-generation Turkish parents in France

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the family language policy (FLP) of second-generation Turkish immigrant families living in France. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 families to observe their language ideologies, practices and management strategies. The thematic analysis shows that despite generational differences of parents, Turkish is maintained because of their ethnolinguistic identity whereas French is learned for integration and school success. They all speak Turkish to children until school age and most of them begin to use both languages from the moment that children learn French at school. Some parents are more flexible in their FLP and adapt it more than once according to children’s needs. The practice of code-mixing was observed in all families, often constituting a gap between their ideologies and practices. Finally, their concentration of management strategies on French shows their effort to meet the expectations of the mainstream country and its educational language policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Family language policy
• Turkish immigration in France
• language maintenance
• bilingualism

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Grenoble is a city in south-eastern France.

2 ‘La langue de la République est le français.’ (Const., art.2).

3 Enseignement de la Langue et de la Culture d’Origine (ELCO). France signed bilateral agreements with Portugal (1973), Italy and Tunisia (1974), Spain and Morocco (1975), former Yugoslavia (1977) and then Turkey (1978) allowing the Turkish government to send teachers to teach optional courses of Turkish language and culture to Turkish minority children three hours a week at school, during or outside school hours. In general, school principals place these classes outside school hours, which impacts negatively on children’s motivation. Despite that, Turkish had a higher attendance rate (16.555) after Moroccan (32.713) for the school year 2011/2012. (http://www.laicite-republique.org/etude-relative-a-l-avenir-de-l.html)

4 Enseignements Internationaux des Langues Etrangères.

5 ‘I said, our mother tongue first. Paediatricians say so in general: the child should speak well his/her mother tongue first. So, they can learn more easily other languages.’ (F8M).

‘Even your general practitioner says it. My eldest son knew his mother tongue when he started school. There was not even French. The doctor said you spoke French to them, they forgot Turkish’ (F1F).

6 Except for F7 and F12 in which parents kept on speaking only Turkish because ‘children speak enough French at school’ (F7F) or both parents are more at ease in Turkish and consider that their knowledge in French is not sufficient (F12).

7 This is the way they name it, even if it is a private school applying the French programme and delivering a French diploma.