Family multilingualism from a southern perspective: Language ideologies and practices of Brazilian parents in Norway

Abstract This article derives from a three-year ethnographic project carried out in Norway focusing on language practices of Brazilian families raising their children multilingually. Analyses of interview data with two Brazilian parents demonstrate the relevance of examining intersectionally the participants’ orientation to categorisations such as social class, gender, and race/ethnicity. Additionally, I explore how parents make sense of their transnational, multilingual experiences, and the extent to which these experiences inform the language-related decisions they make in the home. Advancing family multilingualism research in a novel direction, I employ a southern perspective as an analytical position that: (i) assumes the situatedness of knowledge production; (ii) aims at increasing social and epistemic justice; (iii) opposes the dominance of Western-centric epistemologies; and (iv) sees the global South as a political location, not necessarily geographic, but with many overlaps. Finally, I draw on the notions of intercultural translation and equivocation to discuss the intercultural encounters parents reported. The overarching argument of this article is that forging a southern perspective from which to analyse parental language practices and beliefs offers a theoretical framework that can better address the issues engendered by parents engaged in South–North transnational, multilingual practices

Talking multilingual families into being: language practices and ideologies of a Brazilian-Norwegian family in Norway

This article sets out to explore the relationships between parental language ideologies, and language use and negotiation in parent–child interaction. The primary dataset is composed of around 10 h of audio recordings of everyday interactions of family members (i.e. a Brazilian mother, a Norwegian father, and a 3-year old Norwegian born daughter) during a three-year ethnographically-oriented project undertaken in Norway. A discourse analytical approach with a focus on instances of language negotiation led to the identification of a set of seven parental discourse strategies in the corpus: addressee-bound, code-bound, code rebuttal, filling gaps, rephrase, say ‘x’, and ‘what is–’ frame. Results indicate that, contrary to what parents might expect, drawing on discourse strategies that make explicit references to language names might hinder the active use of the child’s full linguistic repertoire. Conversely, discourse strategies that only implicitly serve as requests to use a given language can foster continuous multilingual language use. Finally, I suggest that strategies that make explicit references to named languages could be linked to a one-person-one-language-one-nation ideology, and I demonstrate how these strategies help us understand the ways family members navigate their complex national affiliations and talk their multilingual selves into being

Family Language Policy ten years on: A critical approach to family multilingualism

Family language policy (FLP) has been establishing itself as a field in the past decade. Yet, much of the scholarly debate around family multilingualism has remained within the boundaries imposed by Western-centric epistemologies. In order to address this issue, this article reviews FLP studies published between 2008 and 2017, and discusses accomplishments and limitations of recent publications. The main argument presented here is that a critical approach to family multilingualism might contribute to the development of FLP in an unexplored direction. More specifically, this paper shows how drawing on a decolonial approach allows for an express engagement with debates that have only been marginally tapped into in current FLP scholarship, for instance, the intersectional dimension of social categorisations such as social class, race, and gender. Furthermore, a decolonial approach provides a robust frame to examine transnational practices by reconciling perspectives that tend to privilege either the material basis of the economic relations of production, or the cultural domain as a locus where these relations gain meaning. Finally, a decolonial approach to family multilingualism takes a step towards redressing the extant underrepresentation of southern theories in sociolinguistics

Family multilingualism: Language practices and ideologies of Brazilian-Norwegian families in Norway

This thesis examines the interconnections between language practices and ideologies of Brazilian-Norwegian families in Oslo, Norway. Resulting from a three-year ethnographically oriented sociolinguistic project (2017-2019), the thesis is based on data generated through the employment of various methods: online questionnaire, semi-structured interview, self-recording, and participant observation. Contributions to research on multilingual families are as follows: First, I claim that certain parental discourse strategies might, contrary to parental expectations, restrict the child’s use of their emerging linguistic repertoire. I also suggest that a translanguaging lens is helpful to problematise the notion of one-person-one-language, typically conceived of as a strategy employed by parents. Instead, the notion of one-person-one-language-one-nation is put forth as an ideology that might inform parental language practices. Moreover, I suggest that drawing on a revisited notion of linguistic repertoire can be helpful to understand the role of affect in parent-child multilingual interactions. It also elucidates the discursive positioning of children by parents in expected social roles as family members mind mundane tasks and familial bonds are interactionally constructed. Finally, I argue that drawing on a southern perspective provides robust theoretical grounding to examine the material and discursive structures of differentiation parents have to navigate in intercultural encounters. I then discuss the implications of the processes to language practices in the home. Drawing on recent conceptualisations of language and on a southern perspective reframes debates about how transnational practices, identity construction, and family-making can shape the language practices of families. In particular, it attends to issues concerning the hierarchisation of social class, gender and race/ethnicity, and advances knowledge in the direction of understanding language as a socio-historical construct

‘Du er verdens beste pappa’: affect in parent–child multilingual interactions

This article examines the affective dimension of the linguistic repertoire of multilingual families. Specifically, resulting from a three-year ethnographic project in Norway, this study sets out to better understand the role of affect in parent–child interactions as members of two Brazilian-Norwegian families draw on their multilingual linguistic repertoires in the ongoing construction of their familial ties. A discursive analytical approach was employed to examine audio-recordings made by one of the parents of each family (i.e. around 15 h of recordings in total). The analysis demonstrates how certain linguistic features (i.e. terms of endearment and the ‘you are … ’-format), combined with the use of the participants’ multilingual repertoire, accomplish three interrelated social actions; they: (i) convey parental value-laden aspirations of child-rearing, (ii) position children according to expected social roles, and (iii) forge parent–child ties. These findings are supplemented with interview data, which serve to illustrate the role of home-external contexts in encouraging the parents to use Portuguese with their children in the home. Focusing on the affective dimension of parent–child interactions as they draw on their multilingual repertoires to construct familial bonds contributes to an underexplored area in family multilingualism studies

Foreign-local teacher-learners in the digital classroom: Everyday translanguaging and pedagogical translanguaging in Norwegian higher education

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020, the University of Oslo (UiO), Norway, operated largely through in-person teaching, with minimal use of digital platforms. While online teaching did not change the multilingual nature of the academic community at UiO, nor the everyday Scandinavian-English translanguaging practices of our classrooms, it did bring to light the need to explicitly discuss forms of engagement and participation, including language use. We are both sociolinguists, learners of Norwegian and work migrants to Norway who have been members of UiO for over five years; as such, we negotiate positions as both foreign and local, and as teachers as well as learners. In this article, we take an autoethnographic practitioner inquiry perspective to investigate how our pedagogical translanguaging practices in digital modes of teaching have been shaped by (a) localised language hierarchies, (b) institutional demands/structures, (c) students’ needs and (d) our teaching philosophies. Drawing on our experiences in online teaching over three semesters, we analyse the challenges we have encountered and how attempting to address these challenges through pedagogical translanguaging practices has led to new insights into the nuances of Scandinavian repertoires and to pedagogical relationships based on a non-hierarchical understanding of the roles of lecturers and students. We have found it useful to draw attention to the everyday translanguaging of Norwegian society and to explicitly legitimise pedagogical translanguaging and translingual literacies in our classes as a way to foster metalinguistic awareness and better communication in the online classroom. At the same time, we acknowledge that the particular challenges posed by this digital transition and the dominant role of English in Scandinavian higher education still need further attention as we attempt to create teaching and learning spaces in online platforms that encourage the use of students’ and teachers’ linguistic repertoires