A Case Study of Family Language Policy (FLP) in Diasporic Chinese Families in the Paris Region

Abstract

Minority language maintenance and childhood bilingualism have attracted attention and generated a significant number of publications over several decades. As an emerging and increasingly critical domain which provides a microscopic view of daily interactions, family language policy (FLP) is still a relatively new field of study in Sociolinguistics in France. Very little research, in which field studies are included, has been carried out since 2000. This short article attempts to analyse first-hand data collected in 2019 from ten Chinese families living in the Île-de-France region. A mixed approach, including quantitative, qualitative and sociolinguistic ethnography, was adopted. Four of the ten families were selected for study in greater detail. Surveys, interviews, recordings and onsite observations are the main methods used to collect data for this paper. This FLP case study tries to gain an insight on how Sinitic languages are maintained and handed down in the Parisian Chinese diaspora; the results of this study are also compared to FLP studies carried out in other Chinese diasporas.