“It’s like the root of a tree that I grew up from….”: parents’ linguistic identity shaping family language policy in isolated circumstances

Abstract

Abstract A key factor that has been found to be critical in shaping family language policy is parents’ linguistic identities, or “parents’ personal experiences with bilingualism, biculturalism or second language learning” (King, Kendall A. & Lyn Fogle. 2006. Bilingual parenting as good parenting: Parents’ perspectives on family language policy for additive bilingualism. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 9(6). 695–712, p. 703). In other words, parents’ experiences of languages will colour and influence both their aims for their children’s plurilingualism, and the practices that they bring to bear to that end. This proposition was explored in a paper by Sims, Margaret, Elizabeth M. Ellis & Vicki Knox. 2017. Parental plurilingual capital in a monolingual context: Investigating strengths to support young children in early childhood settings. Early Childhood Education Journal 45. 777–787 (p. 779), that “parents construct their own understandings of plurilingualism based on their own experiences with languages” meaning that the parents’ linguistic identity indeed provides the potential and the basis for bringing up their children as plurilinguals. This paper, based on an Australian ARC-funded study, reports on the link between parents’ linguistic identity and their family language policy, on their impact beliefs (De Houwer, Annick. 1999. Environmental factors in early bilingual development: The role of parental beliefs and attitudes. In G. Extra & L. Verhoeven (eds.), Bilingualism and migration, 75–95. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter, p. 83), on the ways in which their aims for their children’s language development are articulated and put into practice, and on how they deal with their children’s emerging linguistic identity as plurilinguals, in a linguistically isolated context in regional New South Wales.