Cassie Smith-Christmas

Being socialised into language shift: the impact of extended family members on family language policy

This paper examines a family language policy (FLP) in the context of an extended bilingual Gaelic-English family on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. It demonstrates how certain family members (namely, the childrens mother and paternal grandmother) negotiate and reify a strongly Gaelic-centred FLP. It then discusses how other extended family members (the childrens father, his sister and brother) occasionally participate in this Gaelic-centred FLP; however, at the same time, these speakers also participate in language shift by maintaining English as their peer group language and replying in English when addressed in Gaelic. The paper argues that these linguistic practices socialise the children into the norms of language shift, resulting in the childrens low use of Gaelic. The paper also discusses the possible negative impact of the fathers use of Gaelic in disciplining his children.

Family language policy : maintaining an endangered language in the home

1. What is Family Language Policy? 2. Methodology 3. A Diachronic View of FLP 4. Building and Dismantling an FLP at the Micro-Level 5. Authority, Solidarity, and Language 6. Conclusion

Complementary reversing language shift strategies in education: the importance of adult heritage learners of threatened minority languages

Heritage learners of minority languages can play a lynchpin role in reversing language shift (RLS) in their families; however, in order to enact this role, they must first overcome certain barriers to re-integrate the minority language into the home domain. Using a combination of conversation and narrative analysis methods, we demonstrate how both enacting this lynchpin role, as well as the specific barriers to its enactment, unfolds at the micro-level for heritage learners of Scottish Gaelic. We then turn to Gaelic language planning at the macro- and meso-levels, and argue that Gaelic language education policy does not explicitly recognise this potential lynchpin role, nor does policy or pedagogy specifically address the particular interactional challenges that heritage learners face. We argue that in order to best maximise Gaelic education as means to RLS, the education of adult heritage learners needs to be seen as a complementary strategy to childhood education, not as a secondary (and often lower priority) tactic to ensuring the vitality of the language.

‘Is it really for talking?’: the implications of associating a minority language with the school

ABSTRACT This paper examines how caregivers in a bilingual family discursively link Gaelic to a school context when interacting with Maggie, an eight year-old who is currently enrolled in Gaelic Medium Education on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The paper argues that the caregivers achieve this discursive framing primarily through treating Gaelic as a performance language and through orienting to discourses that de-normatise Maggie’s use of her minority language. The paper argues that although the caregivers believe they are encouraging Maggie’s use of Gaelic, by framing the language in a school context, they link Gaelic to authority. It is further argued that this association of Gaelic with authority may be one of the many contributing factors to Maggie’s low use of the language overall. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this argument in terms of language policy and planning.

What Is Family Language Policy

This chapter traces Family Language Policy (FLP) research from its origins in sociolinguistic approaches to child bilingualism and details how examining language input both in terms of quantity and quality has been central to elucidating the fundamental question of why some children attain greater competency in their minority language than others. It also highlights the importance of discussing this question in relation to different contexts, such as language shift situations either involving an immigrant or autochthonous minority language community. The chapter concludes by briefly introducing the ‘Campbell family,’ who are the locus of this particular FLP study and gives a brief background to their minority language (Scottish Gaelic) as well as the area in which they live (Isle of Skye).

Language Variation – European Perspectives V

Since the late 1970s, and particularly the early 1990s, work carried out on language ideologies within the fields of linguistic anthropology and the sociology of language has contributed considerably to an understanding of the interplay between speakers’ language use on the one hand, and their views and beliefs about language and its use on the other. At the same time, ongoing research into the phenomenon of code-switching within interactional sociolinguistics has demonstrated the multiple motivations that multilingual speakers may have in alternating between the various codes available to them. This paper provides a preliminary synthesis of the two approaches in the context of Scottish Gaelic-English bilinguals’ interactions, drawing on two corpora of recorded bilingual speech to look at how language choice can relate to expressions of language ideologies and the interactional contexts in which these expressions take place. We focus specifically on how speakers orient to language ideologies related to language policy and argue that code-switching offers the interactant a way to “voice the other” when expressing negative views of language policy and practice. We then consider the interactional motivations for drawing on this “other” voice in the discourse.

Code-Switching in ‘Flannan Isles’: A Micro-Interactional Approach to a Bilingual Narrative

The topic of code-switching, which, for the purposes of this chapter, will also be referred to as ‘language alternation’,1 has been studied from three major vantage points: the linguistic approach, which is primarily concerned with the grammatical constraints which govern code-switching (for example, Clyne 1967; Muysken 1995); the macrosocial approach, which largely investigates the relationship between codes and higher-order social categories (e.g. Blom and Gumperz 1972; Myers-Scotton 1988 [2006]); and the micro-interactional approach (also sometimes known as the conversation analytic, or CA, approach), which views code-switching as a product of local discourse organisational goals (e.g. Auer 1984, 1988; Li Wei 1998; Cromdal 2004; Gafaranga 2012). The micro-interactional vein of inquiry is largely situated within Gumperz’ (1977, 1982) conception of ‘contextualisation cues’, which are the various resources, both linguistic and extralinguistic, which speakers use to signal, essentially, ‘what is going on’ in the conversation. Contextualisation cues can range from the global to the local; for example, using a rising pitch to denote a question (for most varieties of English, that is), or using a ‘whiney’ voice to denote the speech of a particular friend, an example which Gumperz (1992: 42) uses in illustrating how a contextualisation cue may only be contextually meaningful and interpretable to a few interactants. The micro-interactional approach to code-switching argues that for bilinguals, code-switching operates as an additional contextualisation cue they have at their disposal.

‘One Cas, Two Cas:’ Exploring the affective dimensions of family language policy

Abstract The aim of this article is to illustrate the fluid nature of family language policy (FLP) and how the realities of any one FLP are re-negotiated by caregivers and children in tandem. In particular, the paper will focus on the affective dimensions of FLP and will demonstrate how the same reality – in this case, a grandmother’s use of a child-centred discourse style as a means to encouraging her grandchildren to use their minority language, Scottish Gaelic – can play out differently among siblings. Using a longitudinal perspective, the paper begins by examining a recorded interaction between a grandmother, Nana, All names are pseudonyms. and her granddaughter Maggie (3;4) and will discuss how Nana’s high use of questions and laissez-faire attitude to Maggie’s use of English contribute to the child-centred nature of the interaction, and in turn, to Maggie’s playful use of Gaelic. The paper then examines an interaction recorded five years later in which Nana interacts with Maggie’s brother Jacob (4;0) in the same affective style; however, unlike Maggie, Jacob evidences overtly negative affective stances towards his minority language. The paper concludes by discussing these observations in light of the reflexive nature of FLP in terms of emotional affect, linguistic input, and language shift.

A Diachronic View of FLP

This chapter provides an overall picture of how language use and FLP have changed in the Campbell family over time. The chapter details each speaker’s social and linguistic backgrounds and demonstrates how the creation and subsequent unravelling of the current Gaelic-centred FLP (the FLP involving David, Maggie, and Jacob) is the result of different FLPs (the FLPs that the children’s caregivers experienced when they were younger) and how these FLPs have converged and changed over time. The chapter underscores several observations about diachronic language use over three generations: first, that language shift is occurring along the generational dimension; secondly, language shift appears also to occur within generations in terms of age; and finally that the overall use of Gaelic has decreased over the two corpora.

Authority, Solidarity, and Language

This chapter examines the reflexive relationship between the family and the community in formulating the argument that the third generation are socialised into language practices that lead to an association of Gaelic with authority and English with solidarity. In particular, it emphasises the role that the gaps where Gaelic is not spoken further strengthens this dichotomy of languages along the authority versus solidarity axis. The chapter argues that these associations create a negative emotional valence for Gaelic and a positive emotional valence for English, which, in addition to the language shift-inducing realities discussed in the last chapter, is a further contributing factor to the children’s early and continuing preference for English.