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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1405411
This article is part of the Research Topic Social and Affective Domain in Home Language Development and Maintenance Research View all articles

Family language policy in a transnational family living in Finland: Multilingual repertoire, language practices, and child agency

Provisionally accepted
Olga Nenonen Olga Nenonen *
  • Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Each multilingual transnational family is unique and thus deserves to be carefully studied in terms of its family language policy (FLP). Speaker-centered approaches can provide a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity in a multilingual setting. The studied Russian-Italian family is raising a multilingual boy (8:2) in Finland. The multilingual repertoire includes Russian, Italian, Finnish, English, and Hebrew. In this case-study, an ethnographic approach is used to explore the multilingual family repertoire by presenting their lived experiences and language practices. I discuss the FLP and child's active role in shaping the family's linguistic practices (child agency). The following methods were combined: semi-structured interviews, language background surveys, written diary entries, selfrecordings of interactions in the family, and a language portrait that depicts the child's multilingual repertoire. The interviews and other recordings were transcribed manually. The following research questions guided the study: (1) How do the family members describe their FLP?(2) How does the FLP evolve through everyday interactions (language practices)? (3) How does the child exercise his agency in the family setting? The results reveal that the family's language practices follow predominantly an OPOL (one person-one language) strategy; consequently the child speaks a different language with each parent. However, the analysis of the language ideologies reveals positive attitudes toward both multilingualism and all the languages in the family's repertoire, which explains the multilingual practices having multiplicity and unexpectedness. FLP is shaping the family language practices. Evidence of language hierarchy can be explained by a number of family-external and family-internal social factors.

    Keywords: Family language policy, transnational family, language practices, child agency, multilingual repertoire, Multilingualism

    Received: 25 Mar 2024; Accepted: 16 Apr 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nenonen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Olga Nenonen, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

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