A Kind of Success Story: Family Language Policy in Three Different Sociopolitical Contexts
Smith-Christmas,Cassie Bergroth,Mari Bezcioğlu-Göktolga,Irem
Smith-Christmas,Cassie
Bergroth,Mari
Bezcioğlu-Göktolga,Irem
Abstract
This article scrutinizes the concept of “success” in family language policy (henceforth FLP). Situated in three large-scale ethnographic projects, we center on the lived experiences of a parent in three families negotiating a pro-minority language FLP. These parents’ experiences are embedded in different sociopolitical contexts: an immigrant context (Turkish in the Netherlands); an autochthonous minority language context (Gaelic in Scotland); and an officially bilingual state (Swedish in Finland). As two of the parents are “new” speakers of the minority language, our analysis centers in part on how “legitimacy” poses both challenges and opportunities to their successful pro-minority language FLP. We conclude by advocating for a more holistic and family-based approach to gauging the “success” of individual FLPs, rather than relying on the child’s linguistic output as the main means of determining whether or not an FLP is “successful.”.
Description
Funding Information: The research described in this paper was supported by a grant from the Academy of Finland, Research Council for Culture and Society [grant number 266850] and a grant from the Irish Research Council [grant number GOIPD/2016/ 644]. Publisher Copyright: © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Date
2019-04-03
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Research Projects
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Keywords
Family language policy, identity, language maintenance
Citation
Smith-Christmas, C, Bergroth, M & Bezcioğlu-Göktolga, I 2019, 'A Kind of Success Story : Family Language Policy in Three Different Sociopolitical Contexts', International Multilingual Research Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 88-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/19313152.2019.1565634