‘Mothers have the power!’: Czech mothers’ language ideologies and management practices in the context of a Czech complementary school in Greece

ABSTRACT

Complementary schools are an important research area of Second Language Acquisition study, involving issues of identity, linguistic socialization, second language acquisition, linguistic hegemony, etc. This article looks at the Czech Complementary School in Thessaloniki, whose main purpose is the transmission of the Czech language and culture to generations to come. At the same time, the article attempts to highlight the attitudes, identities and language management practices of mothers involved in Czech schooling and the process of language learning by their children. More specifically, the focus of the article is on mothers’ language ideologies and management practices, i.e. on the intersection of research on complementary schooling and Family Language Policy. The role of mothers as custodians of the heritage language is highlighted. The research is based on ethnographic data: interviews, class observations and student reflection (via diary) on children's language use. The results show that these mothers are making efforts to transmit Czech to their children for reasons of culture, identity and ‘good motherhood’.

KEYWORDS:

• Family language policy
• complementary schools
• Czech
• mothers
• language maintenance

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the managers, teachers, mothers and students of the Czech Complementary School of Thessaloniki for agreeing to participate in the study and for granting access to their classrooms. Special thanks also go to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nikos Gogonas

Dr. Nikos Gogonas is Associate Lecturer at the Faculty of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and a Tutor at the Hellenic Open University, Greece.

Christina Maligkoudi

Dr. Christina Maligkoudi is a Tutor at the School of Modern Greek, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and at the Hellenic Open University, Greece.