Family Language Policy: A Multi-Level Investigation of Multilingual Practices in Transnational Families

This presentation is situated against the backdrop of the xenophobia that underpins the current Brexit crisis and the increased transnational migration over the past decades in the UK. While transnational migration as a field of enquiry has received increasing attention in recent years, fewer studies have examined how families in the UK have evolved, in what ways home languages have developed or changed, and how migrant families and home languages are perceived by the public. Most importantly, we know relatively little about the extent to which migration history and experiences as well as self-identification at individual and collective levels have led to diverse linguistic and cultural practices among family members. This study addresses this gap by exploring the linguistic configurations of transnational families across different sociocultural and ethnolinguistic communities. Drawing on 470 survey data collected from different regions of the UK, the study examines:
1. What types of family language policy exist in home domains in the current UK society?
2. How do mobility and on-going changes in sociocultural contexts impact on FLP and linguistic configurations of transnational families in the current UK society?
Findings revealed that there are wide-range family language policies that can be broadly divided into three categories: flexible bilingual policy; home language only policy; English only policy. Our data provide strong evidence showing that migrant histories, linguistic environments, and educational system affect the decision making processes in families.
The study suggests that the degree of variation of family language input, together with support from schools, can enrich children’s multilingual repertoire and enhance their language development, thus contributing to their academic advancement.