{"pk":7185,"title":"“Our Kids are Going to Live their Future, Not our Past”: The Family Language Policies of Three Transnational Families","subtitle":null,"abstract":"

In recent decades, the field of family language policy (FLP) has expanded in breadth to reconceptualize the notion of family structure and the rich variety of motivations of transnational families. In an age spotlighted by the blurring of linguistic and cultural borders, this study was guided by one overarching question: As a parent, would you be willing to compromise the development of your child’s heritage language in exchange for your child increasing their social capital, improving their English language skills, and becoming a global citizen? Interviews were conducted with three sets of highly-educated, multilingual parents who lived abroad for work and to afford their children future linguistic, cultural, and economic opportunities. Results found that as the parents realized these opportunities, the children’s relationship to the parents’ first language and culture deteriorated; however, the parents took these challenges in stride, not losing sight of the skills their children were currently developing. Further, owing to their positive outlook, the parents considered their children’s heritage language attrition as a temporary outcome that the children could ameliorate down the road, should they so choose.

","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"family language policy"},{"word":"transnational families"},{"word":"Heritage Language"},{"word":"cultural capital"},{"word":"world citizenship"}],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2qt3t916","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Warren","middle_name":"","last_name":"Merkel","name_suffix":"","institution":"Other","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2022-11-30T05:48:30-05:00","date_accepted":"2024-04-01T18:58:32.487000-04:00","date_published":"2024-05-02T18:28:54.981000-04:00","render_galley":{"label":"galley","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/ial/article/7185/galley/10792/download/"},"galleys":[{"label":"galley","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/ial/article/7185/galley/10792/download/"}]}