Family language policies: how is the language transmitted through generation of immigrants ?

Aleksandra Jankovic, Tryphène Kileki

In this blog entry, we will discuss different possibilities of heritage language transmission, from the first generation to the second. We will especially concentrate on the factors on which language transmission depends and the parents’ motives for the transmission or non-transmission of the language.

Key words: family, bilingualism, generation, immigration

Introduction

As second-generation migrants we both have learned our heritage languages, but this is not the case for every migrant child. It depends on many factors, such as family relationships or parents’ effort, whether the child will learn the heritage language or not. Language has an important role for communication, understanding and relationships between different generations within a family. It is also important for identity. According to Spolsky (2012), the relationship that the second-generation migrants have with the heritage language is strongly linked with emotions and identity.

In this blog entry, we will discuss different possibilities of heritage language transmission, from the first generation to the second. We will especially concentrate on the factors, on which the language transmission depends and the parents’ motives for the transmission or non-transmission of the language. For this purpose, we will explore various types of family language policy in the UK. 

Wilson (2020) reports that, according to the latest report of the office for National Statistics, 34% of the children born in the UK have at least one parent from another country, which means that many children are in contact with another language other than English at home. This does not mean that they do not know English, quite the contrary. According to Bloch and Hirsch (2017), in the UK, 92.3% of the national population speak English as their main language. Only 0.3% of the national population do not speak English at all. However, Bloch and Hirsch (2017) assert that the political discourse of the state about language plays a negative role in the heritage language transmission. They add that politicians promote “integrationism” that forces people to learn English in order to gain citizenship. Foreign languages are negatively portrayed by the government and are linked to the image of the “outsider”. Spolsky also highlights that “state-controlled education commonly sets up a conflict between heritage languages and the national standard language” (2012: 4).

Generalities and basic information

Before getting to the heart of the matter, certain concepts need to be clarified in order to avoid confusion. 

• Heritage languages (HL) are “ethnic minority languages”. They are spoken within a migrant community in a foreign country, where another dominant language is spoken. (Montrul 2011).
• By native language, we mean the language that the parents spoke in the foreign country before coming to the UK.
• First generation migrants are people who were born in a foreign country and then came to the UK. People from this generation master their native language. Some of them can also speak English.
• Second generation migrants are children who were born in the UK, from parents that come from another country. They “present the most variability in bilingual ability.” (Montrul 2011). They are also the most analyzed group.
• Language shift happens when a community starts to replace their own native language with another language. 
• Family language policy (FLP) is when a family explicitly plans which language they will use between the family members. 

Many studies about the transmission of the heritage language in migrant families in the UK were conducted. For our review, we will be focusing on six research papers. All these studies assert that the acquisition of the heritage language  happens mainly at home, within the family. Children learn the language from their parents. Thus, migrant parents play a significant role in the transmission of their native language to their children, who were born in the UK. Miekisz, Haman, Łuniewska, Kuś, O’Toole & Katsos  (2017) argue that the exposure of children to a bilingual environment (e.g bilingual day care setting) can also have a positive impact. But not every migrant child acquires their parents’ native language, and some of them can only speak English. It can also happen that children understand the family heritage language but cannot speak it or cannot speak it fluently. Another possible outcome of FLP are the bilingual second-generation migrants, who understand and can speak their HL fluently as well as English as the dominant language.. Some people learn the heritage language when they are children but once they grow up and do not live with their parents anymore, they tend to forget their language and speak English only. A lot of variations in the acquisition of the heritage language by the second generation are possible; all the studies agree on this point. There are no universal patterns, as it changes from family to family : hence the importance of FLP as a new field of research. 

The studies that we selected are trying to find out and understand the factors that play a role in the transmission of the heritage language and also to grasp the parent’s motives for the transmission or non-transmission of the language. Several factors can impact the transmission of the language and they vary from one family to another. We will attempt to provide some examples from the six articles in order to explain the impact of different factors on the acquisition of the heritage language. These factors can be linked to personal factors like the family situation (divorced parents, contact with other members of the family), national identity (how the speaker perceives him- or herself), to integration or even to discrimination (fear of being different). But politics can also play a role in the acquisition of the heritage language (e.g. speaking Kurdish in Turkey is forbidden, so when people emigrate, they tend not to speak this language to their children).

Literature review

According to Canagarajah’s study (2008), the Sri Lankan Tamil migrants experienced a language shift toward English and they tend to lose their native language more than other migrant communities. He interviewed different Tamil families from Sri Lanka in order to understand their behavior concerning language transmission and the reasons for the lack of transmission of the Tamil language. He found out that the reasons are not the same in every family. But he argues that English colonialism has played a significant role in the loss of the Tamil language within migrant families. English was introduced in Sri Lanka around 1780 by British colonizers and it has been perceived as a superior language since then. He explains that, in Sri Lanka, people see English as a prestigious language. They think that it is very important to learn English. People who do not know English think that they will be considered as ignorants and simple-minded. Canagarajah explains that, as a consequence, when Tamil people come to the UK (or another English speaking country), they are so preoccupied with learning English that they tend to neglect their native language. The parents’ fluency in English can also impact the transmission of the language in different ways. Canagarajah explains that some Tamil parents who do not speak English rely on their children’s help for interactions outside the home (e.g for administration). They also count on their children to teach them English and most of them learn English via their children. For these reasons, parents tend to encourage their children to learn and use the English language more than their heritage language. This can lead to a loss or a non-acquisition of the heritage language by the children. However, it is also possible that parents that lack fluency in English talk with their children in their native language only, consequently the child will acquire the heritage language and will be fluent in it. Among migrants in the UK, there are also refugees, who had to flee their home country. Bloch and Hirsch (2017) have interviewed second generation migrants, whose parents have fled their home country.  They attempted to analyse how and whether the transmission from the first to the second generation happens and they also analyse the context in which it happens. They have found out that most of the second generation refugees children have indeed acquired proficiency in their heritage language. However, Bloch and Hirsch have noticed that the use of the heritage language was limited to the home and the family context.

They argue that “politics of language use and the policies that exclude languages other than English create an environment where heritage languages are not valued” (Blosch and Hirsch 2016). A Sri Lankan Tamil person interviewed in this study explained that when she was with her classmates and her mother called her on the phone, she used to reply in English, even if her mother talked in Tamil. She justifies this by saying that she did not want to be different from her classmates.

Blosch and Hirsch explain that other participants also felt that way and that they sometimes experienced racism from their classmates. But they also assert that this is because children assimilated school policies about language. They give the example of a girl who spoke only Tamil when she started school. Her teacher was worried about this and she advised the girl’s parents to speak English only at home, in order to improve her English. Consequently, the parents decided to also speak in English with their younger children. Furthermore, two Kurdish girls explain that, when they spoke Kurdish in their classroom, their teacher forced them to only speak English.

The case of French second-generation migrants in the UK differs from the others because of several reasons. The principal reason is the high prestige of the language in the UK. As a matter of fact, French is part of the British curriculum, which means that the second-generation migrants have an advantage in speaking French at home. In Wilson’s study (2020), a group of children from three families were interviewed to understand the FLP through their eyes. It is true that the parent’s choice about what language they will talk to their children has a great impact, but there is not a lot of research taking into account what the children feel about it and how they perceive that language policy in action Wilson’s case studies are children that have one french parent and one British one and the three families have different FLP in regards to the HL (French). 

In the first family (A), the children (9 and 16 years old) “use English exclusively with their father, whereas French is the only language of interaction with their mother, in all circumstances” (Wilson, 2020). This is due to the french mother’s strict language policy, ignoring her children when they are addressing her in English. The reason behind such a strong insistence on her children speaking French is said to help them be more proficient. The effect of this FLP on the children is that they both define themselves as half English and half French. However, the girl expressed resentment towards her mother who ignores her when she speaks in English, when the big brother is more resigned. Overall they say they are grateful to be able to connect with their French relatives.

In the second family (B), the French mother translanguages often but addresses her children (11 and 13 years old) mostly in French. She “qualifies her approach to the transmission of the minority language as ‘relaxed’” (Wilson, 2020). She is conscious that her children’s French could be better but also that they have an advantage in school because of their level in French. The attitude of the children towards the language is not the same even if they had the same education.
Her brother sees himself as English, on the contrary. Both siblings recognize their lack of skills in French but the sister has taken the initiative of improving her French whereas her brother does not do the same

The third family (C) have a strict French-only policy. It means that in their home and outside, the family only communicate in French. The father is French and the mother has a really high level in French. The application of the only-French rule makes the parents (especially the father) have a “immediate and systematic” (Wilson, 2020) negative response whenever the children (6 and 4 years old) speak in English or mix it with French. Wilson argues that this leads to a problem of communication since the children are stopped in their attempt to say something. In other words, the strong reaction of the parents makes the form of what the child is saying more important than the content. The children in this family are still young but the older brother already said that he will not speak to his children in French because “it takes too much time” in his words. He also expresses negative feelings related to the ignorance of his father when he tries to speak in English.

In conclusion, this study has revealed the feelings that the children have during the moment the FLP that their parents choose is in action. The feelings are mixed and often differ between the children of the same family. The future of the French into the children’s lives is not known yet, but there is already a tendency that can predict whether or not they will keep speaking in French.

Conclusion

In order to conclude, we can say that this is not possible to make certain predictions about language transmission. According to Wilson “different FLPs may produce similar results, while similar language management methods may lead to different reactions among children” (2020). What can be seen are tendencies about how the different language policies that the parents decide to have in their home will affect their children. There are a multitude of factors that determine if at the end of the day the second-generation migrants will have the relationship with the Heritage Language that the parents wanted them to have. One of the major factors is that all humans are different and even in the same home the reactions can be different. 

As second-generation migrants, we did not feel any particular pressure to speak French only, in our environment (French-speaking Switzerland). There is no shame about speaking another language. Thus, we can say that our environment is maybe more “multilingual friendly” than the UK. In addition to all the factors linked to the family, politics also can impact the transmission of the language. It would be interesting to compare the swiss and the british political environment and to compare the impact that they have on the transmission of the heritage language in migrant families in future studies.

Bibliography

Bloch, A. and S. Hirsch. 2017. “Second generation” refugees and multilingualism: identity, race and language transmission. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40 (14). pp. 2444-2462. Available at: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/623131/3/Bloch_and_Hirsch_ERS_2016_author_accepted_.pdf Accessed on: 15/12/2020

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 2008. Language Shift and the Family: Questions from the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora. Journal of Sociolinguistics, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 143–176. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00361.x Accessed on: 15/12/2020

Montrul, S. (2011) INTRODUCTION: The Linguistic Competence of Heritage Speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33, no. 2: 155-61. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/44485999. Accessed on: 23/12/2020

Miękisz A., E. Haman, M. Łuniewska, K. Kuś, C. O’Toole & N. Katsos. 2017. The impact of a first-generation immigrant environment on the heritage language: productive vocabularies of Polish toddlers living in the UK and Ireland, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 20:2, 183-200, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1179259. Accessed on: 15/12/2020 

Spolsky, B. 2012. Family Language Policy – the Critical Domain. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 3–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2011.638072 Accessed on: 15/12/2020

Wilson S. 2020. Family language policy through the eyes of bilingual children: the case of French heritage speakers in the UK, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41:2, 121-139, DOI: https://doi.10.1080/01434632.2019.1595633. Accessed on: 15/12/2020

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