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Transmitting Minority Languages pp 305–329Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Effective Family Language Policies and Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages: Parental Language Governance in Indigenous and Diasporic Contexts

Part of the Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities book series (PSMLC)

Abstract

This chapter examines the rise of grassroots level actors (i.e., parents) who play a significant role in interpreting and implementing top-down language policies on the ground in three Spanish-dominated bi(multi)lingual settings: Galicia and Navarre (Spain) and Buenos Aires (Argentina). This will be studied in relation to newspeaker parents who have made a conscious decision to bring up their children in either Galician or Basque, languages which they did not acquire through family transmission. Although intergenerational transmission has for long been considered a crucial part of language revitalisation discourses, newspeakers brought complexity to this paradigm prompting questions about their role as in-situ language ‘managers’. Through their individual as well as collective linguistic practices, these parents have the potential to generate visible and invisible language policies on the ground, influencing their descendants’ acquisition of minority languages. Drawing from in-depth fieldwork interviews, we investigate how these parents exercise their agency and become policymakers in their homes and in the community.

Keywords

  • Bottom-up planning
  • Top-down planning
  • New speakers
  • Language managers

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Acknowledgements

This chapter benefits from a Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM) that took place in April 2017 under the auspices of the European COST Action 1306 New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges (2013–2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities, Liberal Arts & Social Sciences, Alliance University, Bengaluru, India

    Anik Nandi

  2. Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

    Ibon Manterola

  3. Christian Albrechts Univesität zu Kiel, Leibnizstraße, Germany

    Facundo Reyna-Muniain

  4. Departamento de Ciencias Humanas y de la Educación, Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPNA), Pamplona, Spain

    Paula Kasares

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  1. Anik Nandi
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  2. Ibon Manterola
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  4. Paula Kasares
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Correspondence to Anik Nandi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Prof. Michael Hornsby

  2. Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Prof. Wilson McLeod

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Nandi, A., Manterola, I., Reyna-Muniain, F., Kasares, P. (2022). Effective Family Language Policies and Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages: Parental Language Governance in Indigenous and Diasporic Contexts. In: Hornsby, M., McLeod, W. (eds) Transmitting Minority Languages. Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87910-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87910-5_12

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