Building expectations: Imagining family language policy and heteroglossic social spaces:
Summary (2 min read)
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions:
- The article examines the language expectations of three couples with different language backgrounds – each expecting their first child.
- The study addresses three related questions: Recordings and pictures of the constructions were analyzed jointly to understand how parents assign relevancy to their language resources, social spaces and family language policies.
- This article centers on the development of FLP and the motivations and aspirations of parents before their first child is born.
2 Multilingual speakers in social spaces
- In talking about families as constructing and inhabiting dynamic systems of meaningmaking, attention needs to be drawn to the positions and imaginations that family members hold as subjects.
- Individual speakers may feel confident or vulnerable in their heteroglossic environments, depending on their resources and strategies, but they are also dependent on the language ideologies and language regimes they encounter.
- The family in FLP is generally seen as a dynamic system, including both adults and children as actors with their own agency (Gafaranga, 2010; Schwartz & Verschik, 2013).
- As parents and children move through social and geographical spaces, they encounter different language ideologies and different language regimes.
- Space of representation is what Lefebvre names ‘perceived space’, the space of inhabitants and users.
3 Methodology and Multimodal Data
- Using an innovative methodological framework, this research links bodily and emotional experience to social constructions and representations, and focuses on the motivations and interpretations of the parents.
- Conducting research on lived language experience can be done through different modes, but it always deals with individual and societal experience: asking speakers to reflect on and talk about their language biographies, specific parts of their linguistic repertoire or learning experiences that may have accompanied them for an extended period of time.
- To discuss FLP directly, their understandings and explanations are interpreted through engaging them in discussion and creative manual activities.
- For the analysis, two sets of data were used, and the methodological background and procedure for each is described below.
3.1 Collecting biographical data
- Participants were asked to use an empty silhouette of a human shape to draw with colored pens all the languages that were/are/will be relevant to them.
- This task has been developed as part of language biographical research (Busch, 2006; 2012), both with children and adults.
- The multimodal methods employed in this study fulfill this purpose.
- The couples in this study were asked to draw individual language portraits and then to talk about their own language biographies, their imaginings and aspirations for themselves and their child.
- In the course of the conversation, they were also asked about intended language use and policy.
3.2 Eliciting representations of social spaces
- Language biographical methods tend to focus on individuals' accounts and while most participants will start talking together about their expectations, it is productive to use a complementary research method that demands a higher degree of negotiation and intersubjective construction.
- While his participants were asked to build their own identities, the focus in this study is on the joint character of this visual and verbal method.
- Each couple was recorded, with audio and video recording, and pictures of the buildings and arrangements were taken.
- These data were transcribed and analyzed for spatial representations and spaces of representations.
3.3 Participants
- The participants were three heterosexual couples: two expecting their first child within two months, and the child of the third couple was born four weeks prior to the interview.
- While two of the couples have different first languages (English/German, German/Italian), the couple in Hungary is German-speaking and living in a de facto bilingual border region (see Table 1).
- All but one of the participants had prior experience of living abroad.
- German and English were used during the interviews: the excerpts are given in the original language and German transcripts are translated into English.
4 Language portraits and parents' language experiences
- Individual language experiences and language ideologies inform the parents' decisions and their planning, but the possibility of the child’s making his or her own decisions is mentioned in all of the interviews.
- The green part (top right) is termed family space, linked to the couple and the child.
- Given the references between the construction and the social spaces that are represented, a back-and-forth movement is noted: Adriano uses the building blocks to speak about his perceived reality (spaces of representation) but he also refers to qualities of the construction (i.e. the possibility to move parts) and uses them to draw conclusions about his reality.
Conclusion
- The combined qualitative data reveal, on the one hand, the meaning of language experiences and their relevance for individuals and families.
- On the other hand, this combination of data illuminates the construction of FLP and the couples’ negotiation over time.
- This perception of spaces of possibilities is linked to the social status, the educational background and the prior life experiences of the parents.
- Parents link spatial representations to their own biographies, but with regard to the upbringing of their child, they are very aware of the lived and planned.
- When parents expect languages to become part of their family life (or their child's life), through migration or new social contacts, they might not yet have developed any competence in the language(s), yet they start to position themselves (even hypothetically) vis-à-vis the language(s) and may incorporate 26Draft version, November 2016Published version: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1367006916684921.
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References
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...The shift in meaning and the extension of meaning to different qualities of objects can be read as local and, in a way, ad hoc forms of resemiotization (Iedema, 2003)....
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...Over time, these experiences form linguistic repertoires (Busch, 2012; Gumperz, 1964), including not only competencies, but also all kinds of relations and knowledge, drawing on different languages, speech styles, modes of expression and the contexts of their use....
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...The multilingual subject, whose experiences Kramsch (2009) highlights, is thus constantly planning policy and living (in) spaces of representation, a trajectory that can be followed through longitudinal studies....
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...Languages and language use are linked to emotions, memories and fantasies (cf. Kramsch, 2009), and dependence on prior experiences leads the parents to conclusions concerning their future life and, by extension, the life of their child....
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Frequently Asked Questions (18)
Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Building expectations: imagining family languages policy and heteroglossic social spaces" ?
Future language practices and expectations are of interest to us as researchers but as well to the interviewed parents in their multilingual contexts. All of the parents stress the importance of staying open for new possibilities, allowing the child freedom to express him/herself, even to choose a language that is not the language 24Draft version, November 2016Published version: http: //journals. In the initial interviews, the first part of the data, the authors see the notion of possibility and the same notion is also reframed in the second activity, the building of future language spaces. This perception of spaces of possibilities is linked to the social status, the educational background and the prior life experiences of the parents.
Q3. What is the use of Lefebvre's triadic conception of spatial practices?
the use of Lefebvre's triadic conception of spatial practices, representations of space and spaces of representation provide an analytical tool to talk about the construction of representations of language regimes, closely linked to FLP, with the opportunity to take several layers of meaning-making into account.
Q4. What can be seen in all of the constructions?
What can be seen in all of the constructions is how the participants negotiate borders and limitations of social spaces, some in terms of language borders but others in terms of accessibility of languages, distance and closeness, and resources to overcome (social) distances.
Q5. What languages were used during the interviews?
German and English were used during the interviews: the excerpts are given in the original language and German transcripts are translated into English.
Q6. What is the role of language in the development of a family?
Within families, language ideologies can motivate parents to push their children towards the use of perceived languages of social success, but they can also drive parental support for the maintenance of family languages in minority or migration contexts.
Q7. What is the main framework of analysis?
Lefebvre's (1991) triadic framework of the production of space, which is the main framework of analysis, focuses on the construction of social spaces, as they are negotiated between actors with their discursive power, material constraints, and spatial7Draft version, November 2016Published version: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1367006916684921practices.
Q8. What languages were connected with biographic events for some of the participants?
Spanish and Turkish were connected with biographic events for some of the participants but carried less importance at the moment of the interviews.
Q9. What happens when the parents are talking?
Negotiation occurs while the parents are talking and trying to find the best place to put the future selves of parents and child.
Q10. What is the meaning of the multilingual self?
These multilingual selves are seen as changing over time, building up experiences to construct one's own positioning as an individual in society.
Q11. What are the two languages mentioned in the interview?
While both interviewees are generally positive about all languages in the interview, only German and Italian are mentioned when speaking about the future of the child.
Q12. What is the relationship between language and the life of the child?
Languages and language use are linked to emotions, memories and fantasies (cf. Kramsch, 2009) and dependence on prior experiences leads the parents to conclusions concerning their future life and, by extension, the life of their child.
Q13. What is the purpose of the second strategy?
A third strategy deals with engaging symbols of mobility that are used in the constructions: Various means of transportation (cars, boats, planes) are used to demonstrate moving between different spaces.
Q14. What did Gauntlett (2007) do to the participants?
After a short period of uninterrupted building, participants were asked to explain their construction, which led to interesting negotiations, possible resignifications, and subsequent shifts in meaning throughout the conversation.
Q15. What is the feeling of both languages?
My feeling is that both are rather central, of course, German, The authorused for the hands, because it is simply more of a language of every day and with other people, but yes, English is very very central.
Q16. What are the main focus areas for the analysis?
The rich multimodal data allow us to look at several interesting aspects of the data for the analysis; however, expressions of future family spaces and the place of the unborn child are focus areas.
Q17. What is the purpose of the study?
While the study deals with the very specific situation of approaching parenthood, the findings, together with its original methodology and analytical framework, shed light on the construction of family language policy as an on-going process, starting before birth.
Q18. What is the relationship between the construction of openness by the parents and their own experience of mobility?
The construction of openness by the parents is highly likely to be linked to their own experience of mobility, of successfully changing their surroundings (in terms of both language use and countries of residence), and their experience of perceiving themselves as taking charge of their own biography.