Elizabeth Lanza

In this article, we extend the boundaries of research on family language policy (FLP) by addressing the situation that occurs when the State takes over the care of unaccompanied minor refugees and asylum-seekers, thereby assuming by proxy the responsibilities normally assigned to families. We analyse media discourses involving unaccompanied minors (UMs) in Norway, a Scandinavian country perceived as having liberal policies, in a corpus of 30 articles published between 2016 and 2017, a significant period of immigration in a European context. Our analysis reveals a polarized debate around these children, often termed anchor children, who allegedly aim for future biological family reunification. Assuming the family role as proxy, Norway is referred to as a Nanny State, making decisions for the UMs regarding their well-being, education and language learning. Engaging with recent calls for decolonizing and southernizing critical discourse studies (CDS), we anchor our analysis onto decoloniality. We argue that this epistemological move allows us to identify opposing understandings of culture undergirding two competing sides in debates about UMs in Norway. The study has both theoretical and methodological implications for future conceptualizations of the family in FLP research.

The first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in school closures and homeschooling for families across the world. This provided a unique scenario to investigate multilingual family language interaction, and specifically, challenges and opportunities for home language (HL) use. This study is rooted in Family Language Policy (FLP) research, building on previous models of language policy as language beliefs, practices and management, as it addresses the effects of the lockdown on the use of, and exposure to, HLs. An online survey was used to assess the language beliefs, practices and management in a sample of families in Norway, a country with a significant and complex linguistic diversity. Our results indicate overall positive attitudes towards multilingualism in Norway, which are associated with an increased use of, and exposure to, Norwegian and HLs during the lockdown. Furthermore, we find a unique presence of English in multilingual families in Norway, especially across online spaces. Lastly, our study shows that the perception of multilingualism as a source of well-being is associated with positive effects of the lockdown in the use of HLs during the pandemic. We contend that this result can be taken as an example that, even in dire times of despair, families can find opportunities to promote multilingualism and language maintenance.

The field of family language policy has flourished in recent years addressing an ever-increasing breadth of transnational populations, family types, and linguistic configurations. Furthermore, diverse established and innovative methodological approaches have unlatched the door to enhanced understandings of family multilingualism. A focus on ethnographic approaches is in line with current trends in sociolinguistic enquiry, providing deep insight into multilingual families, as demonstrated by this thematic issue on ‘Exploring the multilingual family repertoire: Ethnographic approaches’, edited by Luk Van Mensel and Maartje De Meulder. An underlying current in the studies of this special issue is the notion of the family as a space, negotiated through the multilingual family repertoire – multilingual practices that embrace the speakers’ lived experiences. This concluding discussion analyzes the ways in which the four articles address the family as a multilingual space and highlights some of the more salient aspects that deserve further attention, looking beyond at new potential approaches to critically addressing family multilingualism.

Raising a child is a challenging venture, regardless of where one lives in the world. Most children are raised in their families; however, many states have welfare services if the child’s well-being is at stake. Scandinavian countries follow a rather strict policy in placing the child’s individual rights above those of the family, and Norway has child welfare legislation that applies to all children in the country, regardless of their status, nationality or citizenship. This institutional structure has raised issues about how family life is negotiated in society. In this article, we analyze the ways in which language and culture are used to address expectations of (good) normal family life in both private and public discourses with implications for transnational families. We thus problematize the notion of the family as a private domain or space. Furthermore, by examining institutional involvement in child-rearing, we extend research on family language policy to contexts of foster care. We thereby raise the discussion to a societal level about private and public expectations towards family life in a late-modern society.

The study of the linguistic landscape has provided a new dimension to theories and issues related to multilingualism, including language policy. In this growing field of inquiry, however, not enough attention has been given to the linguistic landscape in sites in the Global South. Since one of the aims of literacy studies is to reveal the variety and social patternings of practices, there is a need to compare linguistic landscape data with other various textual materials. In this article, we present linguistic landscape data from two federal regional capitals in Ethiopia that demonstrate multilingual language use. We also compare the linguistic contact patterns with those found in schoolbooks used in the same region. Such a comparison involves language use in unregulated as well as in regulated spaces (see Sebba 2009). Regional ethnically based languages are now being used in new arenas, including the linguistic landscape and education because of a new language policy promoting the use and development of regional languages. The two regional capitals provide privileged sites for examining the products of local literacy practices, involving values, attitudes, ideologies, and social relationships. We discuss the results in light of various ideologies and argue for the speaker-writer’s active mobilisation of multilingual resources in new language arenas.

(2018). Multilingual families: aspirations and challenges. International Journal of Multilingualism: Vol. 15, Multilingual families: Aspirations and Challenges, pp. 231-232.