Implications between education and familial policies: an introduction

ABSTRACT

In recent years, heritage language studies have increasingly been focused on either FLP or the role of educational institutions, but rarely combined both perspectives. This leaves out other elements, such as language ideology, which can be decisive in the maintenance or loss of languages. We suggest a turn towards factors such as the complexity of transnational families, the role of different immigrant generations, and larger societal shifts.

KEYWORDS:

• FLP
• language maintenance
• language ideologies
• heritage language
• immigrant languages
• multilingualism

In recent years, the focus of study within the field of heritage languages has shifted towards the micro-level of language policies, that is, family language policy (FLP) (Curdt-Christiansen, 2016, p. 695; cf. also Curdt-Christiansen & Lanza 2018, King 2016, King et al. 2008, Lanza & Curdt-Christiansen 2018). Decisions made within a family on what language(s) to speak to whom and when (Spolsky, 2012) are constitutive for FLP. At the same time, it is common knowledge that educational policies play a crucial role in the maintenance of minority and heritage languages, both when the educational institutions foster the importance of heritage languages by teaching them, or when they omit doing so (hence suggesting that maintaining those languages is rather irrelevant).

Both FLP and educational policies are in turn dependent on language ideologies of a country: While these may or may be not reflected directly in multilingual families’ policies and practices, they surely will be corroborated by the education system, which will in turn affect language maintenance (Wolf-Farré & Cantone, submitted). On the educational level, ideologies can result in conflicts between teachers and parents with respect to the importance of the majority and minority language. These disparate expectations can go along with teachers’ attempts to influence FLP (cf. Curdt-Christiansen, 2020). In general, parents of multilingual families are confronted with majority language-only-policies in education. However, this does not hinder them to commit themselves in language maintenance programmes, as will be highlighted in several contributions in this issue.

The interaction of language practices, policies, and both explicit and implicit ideologies in multilingual families (cf. Lanza & Curdt-Christiansen, 2018), schools and society are yet to be studied in more detail. Here, two further aspects should be considered particularly:

1. Although King & Lanza (2017) have set the focus on superdiversity and transnational families, there are still only few contributions on this topic. This is especially the case considering less studied language combinations and the maintenance of less prestigious languages (which are not established as foreign languages in schools and considered less important by large parts of the society).

2. In the same vein, differences depending on the generation of speakers of a minority language and the dynamics of times (Zeitgeist) are less considered in studies on FLP, not least since things become even more complex when parents themselves are bilinguals and practice both a minority and the majority language of a country (cf. Cantone, 2019).

Contributions

The five original papers of this Special Issue, which emerged out of a panel organised at AMLI (Approaches to Migration, Languages and Identity) 2019 in Essen (Germany), offer perspectives from Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the US and highlight the interdependence of the immediate personal surrounding of the family with the institutions of education, giving valuable insight on speakers’ experiences. Through this, we hope to offer new perspectives into current themes for both researchers and policymakers, as well as anybody who is interested in or practicing FLP.

While the papers offer a range of studied regions, languages, and speaker constellations, the common thematic focus makes findings from these very diverse settings comparable. By reading these papers jointly, one might thus ask further questions: How do language ideologies on a transnational level influence the maintenance of the respective languages? Asides from their time of immigration, what other factors distinguish settings like German in Australia (cf. the paper by Hunt & Davis) or Italian in California (cf. the contribution by Montanari, Fischer & Aceves) from those of Bengali in Italy (cf. Tonioli) or Arabic in Germany (cf. Ballweg) or a comparison between acquiring Spanish in Germany or German in Spain (cf. Arnaus Gil)? Can common policies between countries be detected? How can bilingual policies be compared to ‘supermultilingual families’ (Ballweg)? Are there differences between cases where language transmission goes along with (forced) migration within binational families and cases where educational programmes help language revitalisation after language shift (as discussed in e.g. Hunt & Davies, Montanari et al.)? And is the matter at hand a primarily linguistic one at all, or are the discussions rather based on perceived cultural differences, which happen to become visible through accentuated speech?

Finally, this issue offers new insights in less discussed aspects of FLP, such as the situation in isolated families (Tonioli), the education in a language already lost in third generation (Montanari et al.), the study of families who deal with more than two languages (Ballweg), the dynamics of generations (Hunt & Davies), and the interplay between several external factors that influence language maintenance (Arnaus Gil).

Disclosure statement

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