A Kind of Success Story: Family Language Policy in Three Different Sociopolitical Contexts

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article scrutinizes the concept of “success” in family language policy (henceforth FLP). Situated in three large-scale ethnographic projects, we center on the lived experiences of a parent in three families negotiating a pro-minority language FLP. These parents’ experiences are embedded in different sociopolitical contexts: an immigrant context (Turkish in the Netherlands); an autochthonous minority language context (Gaelic in Scotland); and an officially bilingual state (Swedish in Finland). As two of the parents are “new” speakers of the minority language, our analysis centers in part on how “legitimacy” poses both challenges and opportunities to their successful pro-minority language FLP. We conclude by advocating for a more holistic and family-based approach to gauging the “success” of individual FLPs, rather than relying on the child’s linguistic output as the main means of determining whether or not an FLP is “successful.”