This study seeks to understand the role of family language policy (FLP) in the process of language shift from Bantu languages into Portuguese, the powerful and prestigious language in Mozambique. The study is based on thematic analysis of semi-structured focus group interviews with urban middle class parents of young citizens born after the…

In this study, we examine how mobility and on-going changes in sociocultural contexts impact family language policy (FLP) in the UK. Using a questionnaire and involving 470 transnational families across the UK, our study provides a descriptive analysis of different family language practices in England and establishes how attitudes influence the…

This article examines "de jure" language officialization policies in Andorra and Luxembourg, and addresses how these are discursively reproduced, sustained or challenged by members of resident migrant communities in the two countries. Although the two countries bear similarities in their small size, extensive multilingualism and the…

In this study, we investigate family language policy in a transnational family through a collaborative autoethnography. Following the theoretical underpinnings of family language policy (Spolsky in J Multiling Multicult Dev 31:3-11, 2012), we present parental language beliefs, management, and practices in retrospect to shine a light on the…

This paper compares the sociolinguistic trajectory of a 'latent' speaker mother to that of a 'new' speaker mother. Drawing on Shandler (TDR 48(1):19-43, 2004), it introduces the term 'post-vernacular FLP' as a means to conceptualise the latent speaker mother's emblematic use of Gaelic with her child as a 'seed' from which language revitalisation…

The purpose of this study is to describe family language practices, beliefs, and management approaches in relation to maintenance of Persian in a group of second-generation Iranian immigrant children in different parts of the Northeast United States. The study focuses on this group of Persian-speaking Iranian families to better understand family…

Language planning and policy (LPP), as a field of research, emerged to solve the "problem" of multilingualism in newly independent nation-states. LPP's principal emphasis was the reproduction of one-state, one-language policies. Indigenous languages were systematically erased through top-down, colonial medium-of-instruction policies,…

Where censuses are concerned, politics and ideology are pervasive. The 2011 census in Scotland (a semi-autonomous part of the United Kingdom) was the first to ask a question about Scots, a close relative of English, which is historically the vernacular in many parts of Scotland. While at one time Scots had high status as the national language of…

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two towns in the Republic of Ireland, this article explores the local negotiation, endorsement, and contestation of two community-level Irish language advocacy organizations' attempts to regulate the use of Irish in business by mobilizing discourses of language commodification to position Irish as a commercial…

This study dissects a cross-border linguistic dilemma and critiques the missed opportunities for linguistic diversity in Taiwan. Past studies have shown that immigrant mothers from Southeast Asia are discouraged from transmitting the cultures and languages of their home countries to their children, yet few voices have been heard from the mothers…

Khoisan languages are spoken by various culturally diverse communities of Southern Africa. These languages also present an important linguistic diversity. Some of Khoisan languages communities are generally under-researched, marginalized and experiencing sustained sociolinguistic forces that threaten them. For those that have been documented,…

Dual language (DL) programs propose to be vehicles of social justice and transformation by valuing an additional language other than the dominant one in a society and thereby contesting language hierarchies and the subordination of those who speak/use a non-dominant language (Flores, Flores, Educational Policy 30:13-38, 2016; Menken and García,…

Ideology can be understood as a guide to action, and therefore, language ideology can be viewed as a link between language ability on the one hand, and language use on the other. In this respect, language ideology plays a central role in the success of language revitalization movements. In an effort to understand how new language ideologies are…

This study investigates the intersection of family language policy with Indigenous multiliteracies and urban Indigeneity. It documents a grassroots Inuit literacy initiative in Ottawa, Canada and considers literacy practices among Inuit at a local Inuit educational centre, where maintaining connections between urban Inuit and their homeland…

Examines the impact of language policy in Ukraine on language utilization patterns of school children in Kyiv. Using quantitative data from student responses to a questionnaire focusing on subject background, native and home language, including reported usage of interactive and interpretive language, examines the extent to which language shift or…