Conflicting linguistic identities: language choices of parents and their children in rural migrant workers’ families

ABSTRACT

This study explores the interaction between rural migrant workers’ (RMWs) language ideologies, linguistic identities and their family language planning activities in China. Focusing on language choices of RMW parents and their children, the study involves eight families who migrated from rural to urban areas. Data were collected through home observations, recorded family conversations and semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that RMWs experience conflicting identities instantiated by their language choices and language practices. Tangled in multiple identities, such as temporary urban residents, undereducated low-paid labourers, homesick rural-urban migrants and trustworthy employees, they frequently face the predicament of having to choose between either Putonghua (the official language in China, also known as the common speech) or hometown fangyans (also known as regional dialects) or local fangyans to deal with everyday issues. The association between identities and language ideologies drive RMWs to intentionally use Putonghua as language management strategy at home. Consequently, the language choices of both parents and their children show a shift from fangyan to Putonghua. The findings also suggest that parental language ideologies and planning activities in home domains are shaped by macro social systems, public discourse and language planning at a national level.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural migrant workers
• rural migrant children
• family language policy and planning
• language ideologies
• linguistic identities

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hongyan Yang

Hongyan Yang is currently an associate professor in Applied Linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, China University of Geosciences, China. Her research interest is primarily in the area of Family Language Policy and second language acquisition. She has published in China on the issues related to English teaching in the Chinese context.

Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen

Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen is Professor in Applied Linguistics at the Department of Education, University of Bath, UK. Her research interests encompass ideological, sociocultural-cognitive and policy perspectives on children’s multilingual education and biliteracy development. As an active researcher, she has examined bi/multilingual community-home-school contexts in the UK, Canada, France and Singapore on topics of curriculum policy, language-in-educational policy and family language policy. Her most recent research project is entitled Family Language Policy: A Multi-Level Investigation of Multilingual Practices in Transnational Families, funded by The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).