33.2602, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Wright, Higgins (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2602. Fri Aug 26 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2602, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Wright, Higgins (2022)

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Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2022 01:40:15
From: Teresa Ong [ongtesa at gmail.com]
Subject: Diversifying Family Language Policy

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36823477

Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-669.html

EDITOR: Lyn  Wright
EDITOR: Christina Higgins
TITLE: Diversifying Family Language Policy
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Teresa Wai See Ong, National Institute of Education

SUMMARY

Diversifying Family Language Policy, edited by Lyn Wright and Christina
Higgins, comprises an introduction and 13 chapters that are divided into three
themes: (i) Diverse Families, (ii) Diverse Modalities, and (iii) Diverse
Speakers and Contexts. The volume ends with a concluding chapter. It is
leveled at a large audience of students, researchers, and practitioners
interested in and working in fields of family language policy,
multilingualism, and language maintenance and language shift. 

The edited volume begins with Chapter 1 as Introduction. Christina Higgins and
Lyn Wright take the readers through the literature of family language policy,
which is defined as an examination of family members’ attitudes towards and
use and planning of different languages in the home domain (King et al.,
2008). In the past, scholars in this field have focused on promoting
children’s bilingualism, particularly with families in the Western context. In
recent years, there is a shift towards the more fluid aspects of language and
relationships with multilingual families in the Asian context. This volume
expands the literature by focusing on wider range of family types, such as
minoritized, divorced, and transnational separation, where family members do
not fit into the heteronormative nuclear family. 

Part I:

In Chapter 2, Lyn Wright focuses her discussion on the use of the most
fundamental linguistic aspect of kinship, that is the kinship term and its
usage in bilingual families. She collected her data via the ethnographic,
discourse approach with bilingual, nonnormative families living in the United
States. Wright found that children calling ‘mom’ or ‘daddy’ do not only play
the role of getting attention but these kinship terms act as important markers
for contextualizing the negotiation of roles and relationships in family
conversations. In Chapter 3, Mohammed Nofal and Corrinne A. Seals study the
language practices of an adoptive family, living in New Zealand, whose
daughter was of Indian descent and attended the Hindi community language
school in addition to a New Zealand public school. The data showed that the
adoptive parents were keen on connecting their daughter with her Indian
heritage although they could not speak Hindi. They did so by introducing
aspects of Indian culture via music and food. However, their daughter resisted
this effort because she felt that her Indian cultural identity would interfere
with  her membership in the New Zealand community. In Chapter 4, Kinga
Kozminska and Zhu Hua examine the language ideologies and practices of an
LGBTQ+ family living in Brighton which has adopted two boys of Polish descent.
Data consisted of audiovisual recordings of daily family interactions,
qualitative interviews, photography, and multimodal informal exchanges with
the family members. The analysis showed that the dominance of English was
attributed to factors such as creating a safe and welcoming space for the
adopted children. Translanguaging was also seen within the family to achieve
bonding. Nevertheless, tension was demonstrated between expressed ideologies
and practices, which call for further investigation into the issue. In Chapter
5, Hakyoon Lee explores the language policies and practices of four Korean
diasporic family. These families consist of mother and children living in the
United States for educational purposes while the father lives in South Korea
to support the family financially. The findings demonstrated that the parents
were satisfied with their children’s progress in English acquisition but
worried about their loss of Korean language skills, which might affect future
relocation. In Chapter 6, Christina Higgins looks at how three mothers, from
various ethnicities and with young children, relate their Hawaiian language
commitments to ohana, a Hawaiian term that relates to family. Divided into
three levels of discourse, Higgins’ analysis found that the mothers positioned
themselves as practitioners of Hawaiian culture and values in everyday life.
Such findings extend the conceptualisation of family in relation to daily
cultural activities. 

Part II:

In Chapter 7, Åsa Palviainen employs Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) nexus
analytical framework to explain the multilingual mediated language practices
of a family who co-parented their daughter after a divorce. Daily interactions
between the child and her father were conducted via FaceTime. Palviainen found
that technologies assisted in redefining the notions of distance and family
models, allowing families to stay close despite distance. In Chapter 8, Sahra
Abdullahi and Li Wei examine instances of family interaction of three Somali
families living in the UK through a multimodal lens. Data were collected via
video and audio recordings, interviews, and observational notes. The findings
showed that when a language barrier occurred, these families encountered
language and culture shift, which potentially brings conflicts and changing
values from one generation to another. In Chapter 9, Maartje De Meulder,
Annelies Kusters, and Jemina Napier explore the family language policy of
mixed deaf-hearing families. These families belonged to the authors; thus, the
autoethnographic approach was employed. The data, which were collected through
various sources, provided insights into past, present, and future language
practices and ideologies within the families. What was interesting is that the
children’s drawings demonstrated the importance of the role played by children
as an agent in family language policy.

Part III:

In Chapter 10, Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi, Mojtaba Rajabi, and Khadijeh Aghaei
investigate the ethnolinguistic vitality of Turkmen and its language
maintenance aspects with two families living in Gonbad-e Kavous, a UNESCO
World Heritage Site in northeastern Iran. Data were collected via separate
interviews with mothers and fathers. The findings demonstrated that parental
language ideologies and practices play a pivotal role in maintaining Turkmen
as the heritage language within a family unit of different generations. In
Chapter 11, Fatma F. S. Said discusses the different constellations of
Arabic-speaking multilingual families and redefines the notion of ‘family’ as
an entity. Four families living in the UK were investigated. Said’s findings
highlighted the influence of core values and how family structures formed
family language policy. Additionally, religion played a role in influencing
the transmission of Arabic in the family. In Chapter 12, Bong-Gi Sohn presents
some strategic family language policies practiced by two damumhwa
(multicultural) mothers, from China and Japan, living in South Korea. Sohn’s
analysis showed that the Japanese mother employed one-parent one-language
policy while the Chinese mother barely used Mandarin in her family. Both
practices illustrate the mothers’ efforts in ensuring their children could
move beyond their families’ social standing. In Chapter 13, Carolyn Mckinney
and Babalwayashe Molate investigate the complexity of how language ideologies,
language socialisation practice, and language maintenance strategies intersect
for a middle-class African family living in the Western Cape province of South
Africa. Using an ethnographic approach, the authors collected data at the
family home and the younger daughter’s school for one month. Their findings
showed the fluidity of heteroglossic repertoires with frequent translanguaging
across three languages, which is influenced by dominant monoglossic language
ideologies as a result of coloniality. In Chapter 14, Marco Espinoza and
Gillian Wigglesworth study the language transmission practices of three
Indigenous Chedungun-Spanish bilingual families from south Chile. Recordings
with the families were made and semistructured interviews were conducted with
the mothers of the three families. The authors demonstrated that the future of
Chedungun is unpredictable due to the existence of the complexity of
socioeconomic and educational mobility. 

In Chapter 15, Aurolyn Luykx wraps up the volume by reflecting on three
notions of family, language, and policy. Luykx states that the reworking of
the notion of ‘family’ sheds light onto new types of families that were born
of globalisation, coloniality, and transmobility. These factors influence how
we perceive the notion of ‘family’ and the ambiguous and fluid relationships
in the novel settings. Next, the author reveals that terms like ‘mother
tongue’ and ‘heritage language’ have now been engaged into wider, richer, and
multilayered interactions and therefore, they impact researchers’
interpretation. Finally, the attributes of ‘policy’ have changed when compared
to twenty years ago. Some policies may be successful while others may be
considered as failures. Luykx concludes that these reflections suggest new
directions to go beyond the usual boundaries. 

EVALUATION

In the age of digitalization and globalisation, more types of family that are
non-traditional (a family that consists of a father, mother and children) have
co-existed. We should not deny the existence of these families because they
play a vital role in present day society. Due to migration, war, and refugees
seeking asylum, many children have found themselves relocated in a ‘new’
country without the parents who gave birth to them. ‘New’ local parents
adopted them, and they became part of the society in the ‘new’ country. Some
families want these children to blend into the society without remembering
their past and their original culture, while some want them to learn and
understand their origins. Hence, these children often find themselves in a
dilemma, particularly those who are in their teenage years or have grown up to
become young adults. Despite the dilemma, it is still recommended that these
children should be taught about their origins and cultures; and the decision
whether they want to learn their ethnic languages or prefer to use the
language of the dominant community should lie within their hands. They have
the right to choose their pathways. 

In this volume, we learnt of the diverse family types, ranging from those with
adopted children to those with divorced parents. Technologies have played a
vital role in communication, particularly for those families whose fathers,
mothers, and children are living in different parts of the world. With the
COVID-19 pandemic, we have learnt the importance of technologies and how they
play a crucial role in our daily lives. Technology is similarly important for
those children, ensuring that they are able to communicate with their parents
in spite of distance, as noted in some chapters in this volume. Researchers
working with such families also have the opportunity to utilize technologies
in their data collection, as exemplified in the methodology section. 

Another important aspect of family language policy that remains largely to be
researched is the inclusion of cultural practice in the family domain. The
literature of family language policy should not only encompass language use,
practices, and management but incorporate cultural activities because language
and culture are items that are tied together. In some ethnic communities, the
learning of ethnic languages via the practice of cultural traditions is an
important ingredient in maintaining those languages. In this volume, we have
observed that cultural practices are part of family language policy, but what
is still lacking in the literature is understanding how families manage such
practices with their adopted children in everyday life and how these children
play a role in learning and absorbing the practices in their growing up
period. Will the children succeed? Such a query will require longitudinal
studies to find out the answers. Furthermore, scholars can delve into studying
very young children, particularly those aged 1 to 3 years old, who are adopted
by families in the ‘new’ countries, on how the family language policy changes
their cognitive development because learning languages at a young age is
beneficial to them. 

To sum up, the authors in this volume should be congratulated for highlighting
the research on family language policy in the modern era. There is still much
more that we can learn in understanding how families contextualize their
language practices and management strategies. 

REFERENCES

King, K. A., Fogle, L., & Logan-Terry, A. (2008). Family language policy.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(5): 907-922.
Scollon, R, & Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus analysis: Discourse and the
emerging internet. Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Teresa Wai See Ong is a research associate at the Centre of Research for Child
Development, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore. She has published widely in the fields related to
language maintenance and language shift, language planning and policy, family
language policy, and linguistic landscape. Currently, she is working on a
project which brings together various types of documentation of the Bidayuh
language and culture in Sarawak, Malaysia.



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