Framing bilingual parenting as market advantage: the neoliberal discourses of ‘grassroots’ media

ABSTRACT

Little research has examined media dimensions of family language policy. This project addresses this gap by analysing marketing efforts targeted at media consumers seeking ‘grassroots’ advice on bilingual parenting. Here, we refer to ‘grassroots media marketing’ as purposeful attempts to target, inform or persuade a niche demographic with ‘grassroots’-style media methods and tools. We did Google Searches to identify 40 high-profile corporate media, non-profit, and independent bilingual parenting blogs written for Spanish- and for English-language readers. We found English- and Spanish-language keyword searches generated distinct blog-style texts (i.e. advice sites). While English-language searches were more likely to generate returns from small-owned blogs, Spanish-language searches tended to yield corporate news and non-profit sites. Frame analysis of multimodal media blog content revealed gaps and contradictions regarding how bilingual parenting in the U.S is portrayed in Spanish and in English, as well as a neoliberal framing across texts. We describe three neoliberal ideologies: (1) ‘bilingual parenting as individual choice’, (2) ‘bilingual parenting as competitive edge’, and (3) ‘bilingual parents as consumers’. Analysis reveals that documented racist, anti-immigrant discourses widely circulating in U.S. society are absent from these neoliberal framings, resulting in public contradictions of what it means to be a ‘good’ bilingual parent.

KEYWORDS:

• Family language policy
• social media
• language ideologies
• Spanish
• frame analysis

Disclosure statement

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