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Negotiating Family Language Policy: Doing Homework

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Successful Family Language Policy

Part of the book series: Multilingual Education ((MULT,volume 7))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the process of negotiating family language policy (FLP) in face-to-face social interactions of bilingual English-Chinese families in Singapore. By observing and studying literacy events around daily homework routines, this chapter attempts to understand how FLP is established and realized in everyday interactional practices among family members. It further explores how parents, especially mothers, use different strategies deliberately or unintentionally to negotiate the ‘rules of speaking’ or ‘code of speaking’ in order to raise bilingual children in a multilingual society where English increasingly is gaining both political and social functions in public and private spheres. With focus on the micro-conversational sequences of homework talk, this study outlines the home linguistic environments that are either conducive or ineffective in language maintenance and bi/multilingual development in relation to the powerful macro sociopolitical forces. Through comparative analysis of three English-Chinese bilingual families, this study reveals the similarities and differences in the parental ideological positions as these are manifested in the parents’ various guiding strategies and different degrees of language control and involvement in their children homework sessions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. English Language and Literacy Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, 637616, Singapore, Singapore

    Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen

Authors
  1. Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen
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Correspondence to Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Research & Evaluation Authority, Oranim Academic College of Education, Kiryat Tivon, Israel

    Mila Schwartz

  2. Institute of Estonian Language & Culture Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

    Anna Verschik

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Curdt-Christiansen, X.L. (2013). Negotiating Family Language Policy: Doing Homework. In: Schwartz, M., Verschik, A. (eds) Successful Family Language Policy. Multilingual Education, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7753-8_12

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