Family Language Policy

Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home

C. Smith-Christmas

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137521811
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Soziolinguistik

Based on an eight-year study of a family on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, this book explores why the children in the family do not often speak Gaelic, despite the adults' best efforts to use the language with them, as well as the children's attendance at a Gaelic immersion school.

1

What Is Family Language Policy?

Abstract: This chapter traces Family Language Policy (FLP) research from its origins in sociolinguistic approaches to child bilingualism and details how examining language input both in terms of quantity and quality has been central to elucidating the fundamental question of why some children attain greater competency in their minority language than others. It also highlights the importance of discussing this question in relation to different contexts, such as language shift situations either involving an immigrant or autochthonous minority language community. The chapter concludes by briefly introducing the ‘Campbell family,’ who are the locus of this particular FLP study and gives a brief background to their minority language (Scottish Gaelic) as well as the area in which they live (Isle of Skye).

Keywords: child bilingualism; Family Language Policy; language shift; Scottish Gaelic

Smith-Christmas, Cassie. Family Language Policy: Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137521811.0006.

OPOL origins and the importance of input

Within the last decade, the term ‘Family Language Policy’ (‘FLP’) has gained increasing currency within sociolinguistic literature, largely due to the efforts of Kendall King and Lyn Fogle in delimiting FLP as a field in its own right (King and Fogle, 2006; King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry, 2008; Fogle and King, 2013; King and Fogle, 2013). Underlying the development of this field is the fundamental question of why some children being raised in bi/multilingual environments achieve relatively equal competence in their minority language (the lesser-used language in the child’s sociocultural environment) as they do in their dominant language (the majority language of a particular area, which often equates to a national and/or official language). Early academic interest in this question can be traced back to the 1902 publication of Maurice Grammont’s Observations sur le langage des enfants (Observations on Children’s Language), which is credited with introducing the concept of une personne une langue (one-person one-language), which in current FLP research has come to mean the ‘one-parent one-language’ strategy (abbreviated OPOL). A few years later, Grammont’s friend Ronjat, a French linguist living in Paris whose wife was German, used this method in raising his son. In 1913 Ronjat published an account of the child’s French-German development from birth to age 4;10 (four years and ten months). Ronjat and his wife each used only their native language when addressing their son and Ronjat reported that his son attained proficiency similar to that of a native monolingual in both languages. The OPOL method was then later documented in Leopold’s (1939–1949) longitudinal study of his daughter Hildegard, who was growing up with a German-speaking father (the author of the study) and an English-speaking mother in the United States. Like Ronjat, Leopold also reported success in using the OPOL strategy. However, when Hildegard progressed to adolescence, she became reluctant to use German in her American-dominated life; further, Hildegard’s younger sister did not attain the same German fluency that Hildegard had achieved in her early years (see Barron-Hauwaert [2004] for a more thorough overview on OPOL studies).

Following these two landmark studies, there was a nearly 30 year hiatus in studies which take a sociolinguistic approach to child bilingualism. However, the 1980s saw the beginning of renewed interest in this vein of inquiry; monographs such as Fantini (1985), Döpke (1992), de Houwer (1990) and Lanza (1997) were instrumental in forging the path to a renewed interest in child bilingualism, a path which has continued to expand in the last three decades. This continuing research into child bilingualism has not only been instrumental in expanding knowledge about child language development in general, but has also been important in debunking popular myths about bilingualism, such as, for example, the misconception that bilingualism impedes the child’s intellectual development (for example, Anastasi and Cordova, 1953). Further, as Grosjean (1992) points out, bilingualism research has often been constrained within a monolingual framework – for example, by focusing on bilinguals solely in terms of their monolingual competencies – and research into child bilingualism has widened this monolingual-centred perspective.

In terms of the central question of why some children attain higher levels of fluency in the minority language than others, several key factors have been identified. One factor is the overall amount of minority language input the child receives. Perhaps not surprisingly, children who receive more minority language input tend to be more productive bilinguals than children who receive less minority language input (Döpke, 1988; de Houwer, 2007; Quiroz, Snow, and Zhao, 2010). The amount of input may vary for a number of reasons; for example, the amount of time the child spends with the minority language-speaking caregiver might be a significant factor. Lyon (1996) and Varro (1998) for instance conclude that having a mother who speaks the minority language may be a predictor of minority language maintenance, as typically mothers tend to be children’s primary caregivers. The total quantity of input may also be affected by exposure to other minority language-speaking caregivers such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, as well as child minders (Bayley, Schecter, and Torres-Ayala, 1996; Kenner, Ruby, Jessel, Gregory, and Arju, 2007; Ruby, 2012; Kopeliovich, 2013; Melo-Pfeifer, 2014; Pillai, Soh, and Kajita, 2014). Typically, as noted in Leopold’s study and discussed more recently in Döpke (1992) and Dumanig, David, and Shanmuganathan (2013), older children tend to receive more overall minority language input than their younger siblings and therefore achieve higher levels of competency in the minority language. However, as Schwartz (2010, p. 173) points out, this is not necessarily a reality in all multilingual families. In Yates and Terraschke’s (2013) study of immigrant families in Australia, for example, older siblings born in the home country had a positive impact on their younger siblings’ minority language input. The contextual nature of the relationship between input and older siblings is also clearly illustrated in Kopeliovich’s (2013) longitudinal study of her own four children’s Russian-Hebrew development. Kopeliovich’s eldest child’s early years were largely experienced as monolingual Russian, as both Kopeliovich and her husband spoke exclusively Russian in their home in Israel and the child’s Russian-speaking grandparents also frequently looked after him. However, the next two children’s experiences were different, as by then the eldest child began using Hebrew in the home. Subsequently, the second child then began to use Hebrew with the third child. This situation reversed, however, at the birth of the fourth child, as all the older children spoke Russian to the fourth child, thus significantly increasing the minority language input the fourth child received.

The different outcomes in terms of older siblings’ impact on younger siblings’ language use demonstrates the highly dynamic and contextual nature of different factors in terms of overall language input. However, as Mishina-Mori (2011) points out, high levels of home input do not necessarily result in minority language maintenance and the question of the quality of the input (usually in conjunction with examinations of overall quantity of input) has become equally important in exploring why some children attain higher fluency in the minority language than others. The question of quality has centred mainly on the more sociolinguistic and especially interactional aspects of input, not necessarily the linguistic aspects (though see Evans, 1987). On a very general level and also related to the premise that greater input equals higher competence, Kasuya (1998) finds that parental input consistency – for example, refraining from code-switching – is an important factor in the children’s use of the minority language (though see Patterson’s [1999] questioning of this general premise). Equally, input quality in terms of different registers may also be an integral factor, as Stavans (2012) shows with the importance of narratives in the successful FLPs of Ethiopians in Israel. Related to register is also the matter of style; Takeuchi’s (2006) study of Japanese mothers in Australia for example finds that use of a style which encourages the child’s active participation in the conversation is integral to language maintenance. Similarly, Döpke (1992) finds that language maintenance may hinge on the degree to which a particular interaction is ‘child-centred,’ in other words, interactions which engage the child in activities such as play and storytime. In Döpke’s landmark study of OPOL German-English families in Australia, the children with German-speaking fathers evidence more productive use of German than children with German-speaking mothers. Döpke attributes this finding to the impact of gender roles on interaction type and consequently the child’s experience of the minority language; in general, the families followed traditional parental roles – in other words, the mother stayed home with children – and therefore the children with German-speaking mothers’ exposure to the minority language covered a broad range of mundane household activities, including disciplining, while the children with German-speaking fathers’ experience of the minority language was more explicitly child-centred.

Lanza’s (1997) work on two OPOL English-Norwegian families is another landmark study in terms of elucidating the important relationship between the qualitative components of input and the child’s success in the minority language. Lanza’s analysis takes a child language socialisation perspective, which views the acquisition of language as a process embedded in, not separate from, the child’s developing understanding of culturally appropriate norms (see Schiefflin and Ochs, 1984, 1986; Ochs, 1993; Duranti, Ochs, and Schiefflin, 2011). In terms of a child being raised in a bilingual and/or multilingual environment, this understanding is comprised of an understanding of who uses a particular language, to whom it should be used, where it should be used, and also whether or not it is appropriate to mix the two languages. Lanza surmises that parents who enforce strict boundaries in terms of each language’s appropriateness at a given time negotiate more monolingual-centred contexts for interaction and in doing so, more adequately ensure the child’s development in the minority language. Lanza (p. 262) identifies five main ways a caregiver can respond to the child’s inappropriate code use and lists them on a continuum from negotiating a monolingual context to negotiating a bilingual context. In using the first (and most monolingual) strategy, Request for Clarification: Minimal Grasp Strategy, the parent explicitly asks the child to repeat the utterance, implying that the utterance is in some way ‘faultable’ (cf. Goffman, 1981) and therefore requires what in Conversational Analytic (CA) terms is referred to as a ‘repair.’ This strategy allows the parent to feign monolingualism in one language, a tactic which Lanza notes has been found to be successful in other studies (for example, Taeschner, 1983). The second-most monolingually oriented strategy is the Request for Clarification: Expressed Guess Strategy, in which the parent poses a question in Language A to reformulate what the child has said in Language B. This strategy does not allow the parent to feign monolingualism, as it is clear that the parent at least has passive knowledge of Language B, but using a question allows for the child’s utterance to be marked as faultable and also allows for the child to repair his or her utterance using the appropriate code. The third strategy is Repetition, in which the parent repeats in Language A what the child says in Language B. This is less overt in marking the child’s utterance as faultable, as it does not implicitly request a response from the child in Language A. In the fourth strategy, the Move on Strategy, the child’s use of Language B is simply glossed over and the parent continues in Language A with no implicit requests that the child use Language A (cf. Saville-Troike’s [1987] ‘dual-lingual’ paradigm; also Gafaranga’s [2010] concept of ‘parallel mode’). Finally, the last strategy is Code-Switching, where the caregiver either uses intrasentential code-switching by incorporating the child’s utterance in Language B into the parent’s use of Language A, or by using intersentential code-switching and switching to Language B in his or her next utterance.

FLP from a language shift perspective

The sub-strategy (intersentential code-switching) in Lanza’s (1997) paradigm is analogous to what Gafaranga (2010, 2011) refers to as ‘talking language shift into being’ in discussing the language practices of the Rwandan community in Belgium. ‘Talking language shift into being’ occurs when the adult’s first pair-part (in other words, the initial statement or question that requires a response; cf. Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974 ) in the minority code is met with the child’s second pair-part in the majority code and the adult then switches to the majority code for his or her subsequent conversational turn. Gafaranga argues that the accumulation of this practice at the micro-level can result in a shift to the majority language over time. Gafaranga’s articles are emblematic of the fact that studies of child language use and development in an immigrant community are often also by nature studies of language shift, the process by which a group of speakers cease speaking their own language in favour of the majority language. As renowned pioneer in the field Joshua Fishman (1991) emphasises, the successful maintenance of a community’s language hinges on the successful transmission of the language in the home, which is Stage 6 in his well-known Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) and which he also refers to the ‘fulcrum’ (2001, p. 467) in terms of Reversing Language Shift (RLS). In earlier work, Fishman (1971) postulates that within no more than three generations of leaving their home country, immigrants to the United States will have undergone language shift and will only speak the majority language. This three-generational paradigm has been instrumental in other studies examining language shift and the family, highlighted for example by Li Wei’s (1994) well-known monograph on Chinese-speaking families in Tyneside, England, titled Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family. This and earlier work (Li Wei, Milroy, and Pong Sin Ching 1992) highlights how language shift in the family and within the wider community is a reflexive process; that is, shift in one domain exacerbates shift in the other domain. In his study of language use among families in the Tamil diaspora, Canagarajah (2008, p. 173) also emphasises the reflexive nature of community and family, writing:

We find that the family is not self-contained, closed off to other social institutions and economic conditions. Furthermore, the family is shaped by history and power, at times reproducing ideological values and power inequalities established from colonial times. Such a broadened perspective is critical to theorizing the prospects of the family in maintaining a marginalized language.

Canagarajah’s point highlights one of the key differences between studies of language use in the family from an OPOL perspective and studies of language use in the family from the perspective of an immigrant community undergoing shift. Fundamentally, both these types of studies are asking the same question – why do some children acquire the minority language while others fail to do so – but the contexts are very different. As Kirsch (2012) points out, OPOL studies tend to centre on contexts where the ‘minority’ language is actually a majority (and prestigious) language in its own right – for example, English in Norway. Although of course in OPOL studies usually at least one of the parents is an immigrant, the distinction is drawn here between prototypical OPOL studies, which, as Döpke (1998, p. 3) emphasises, tend to focus on middle-class parents, and studies in which there is a community of immigrants (Rwandans in Belgium; Chinese in England) who are a collective minority vis-à-vis the dominant culture and who normally have less social capital than members of the dominant culture. Thus although certainly the languages of immigrant community studies may also be majority languages in their own right – for example, Mandarin in Li Wei’s study – the context of belonging to an immigrant group means that the speakers and therefore their language most likely does not afford the same prestige as do the ‘minority’ languages in OPOL studies. Further, because of this asymmetrical social status of the immigrant group, immigrant parents are more likely to be told by members of the majority language society, such as teachers and school officials, not to speak their own language to their children because it will impede the child’s integration and/or academic development. In OPOL studies, the child’s lack of minority use is usually not attributed to the stigmatisation of their language and culture, but is normally put down to factors within the family, such as the contexts in which the child interacts with the minority language-speaking parents, or the overall amount of input in the home. In studies of immigrant communities, however, wider societal factors external to the family, such as the pressure to integrate or the stigmatisation of the minority culture, may be important factors in explaining why the child evidences low use of the minority language.

Like immigrant community studies of language use in the family, studies of autochthonous minority language communities – that is communities whose minority language owes its status to the encroachment of another community upon the minority community, often in the form of colonisation – also focus on the reflexive relationship between family and a wider sociocultural and historical context. Just as external pressures from the dominant culture may force the minority immigrant culture to abandon its language in order to integrate or alleviate stigmatisation, so too may autochthonous minority communities abandon their language for similar reasons (for example, see Dorian, 1981; Hill, 1983; Schmidt, 1985; Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer, 1998; McCarty, Romero-Little, and Zepeda, 2008; see also Fishman, 1991). In autochthonous communities, however, the factors underlying the overall shift to the majority language may have been in place for centuries rather than generations; in turn, studies that examine the intersection of language shift and FLP often show how normalisation of language shift at the community level translates into practices that further perpetuate this shift at the micro-level of family interactions. For example, in his well-known ethnography of the remote village of Gapun, Papua New Guinea, and Kulick (1992, p. 215) postulates that one of the many factors contributing to the rapid language shift from the local Taiap to the dominant Tok Pisin is that ‘the association between children and Tok Pisin is, in fact, so strong that adults will address children in that language even if a child should actually happen to answer in Taiap.’ The reality of shift and its role in reflexively perpetuating further shift is also discussed in Meek’s (2007) study of the Kaska community in the Yukon Territory, Canada, which shows how the association of Kaska with elders and those in authority is a significant contributing factor to the children’s reluctance to use the minority language.

Makihara (2005) however demonstrates that the realities of language shift may not necessarily reflexively work to perpetuate further shift. In her study of family language practices on Easter Island, she shows how children’s insertion of Rapa Nui into Spanish as a way to mark cultural identity means that although the children are still dominant in Spanish, on some level they maintain their minority lan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  What Is Family Language Policy?
• 2  Methodology
• 3  A Diachronic View of FLP
• 4  Building and Dismantling an FLP at the Micro-Level
• 5  Authority, Solidarity, and Language
• 6  Conclusion
• References
• Index