Family language policy leading to multilingual home literacy environment : Evidence from interviews with Russian-speaking mothers in Cyprus, Estonia and Sweden

This paper investigates family language policies which lead to multilingual HLEs, based on the example of Russian and majority language speaking families in Cyprus, Estonia and Sweden. The main aim of the investigation is to determine differences and similarities, and whether, most importantly, translanguaging and various extralinguistic and sociolinguistic factors, such as heritage language use, maintenance and transmission, linguistic and cultural identities, heritage language attitudes, heritage language status, and quality and quantity of input, affect the development of home language literacies among children in immigrant and minority settings. These families provide a very interesting setting for investigating the relevance of language attitudes and ideologies. In Sweden and Cyprus, Russian is used in immigrant communities (in Cyprus, Russian is the largest In Estonia, Russian is used as an L1 among one-third of the population, is now a minority language and was formerly the sociolinguistically dominant language. The understandings of Russian use in the HLE are linked to various ideological discourses and social practices, as well as differential motivations. In these micro-level settings, we can observe the contrast between top-down policies and bottom-up practices. Thus, this article provides an analysis of family language ideologies in three different contexts where multilingualism occurs and investigates how families modify their family language policy, creating multilingual HLEs in response to their linguistic environments. We show that despite dissimilar external environments, there were more similarities than differences in Russian language use between the countries, especially in families who realised the importance of the multilingual HLE for early literacy development and Russian as heritage language transmission. The knowledge, experiences and attitudes of twenty families in each country were investigated. The method applied in our study is based on the qualitative research tradition. We highlight key features that emerge from our data in different domains of family language policy and that were detected in all three countries. Thus, we focus on what phenomena characterise a multilingual HLE and what kind of literacy habits and activities, writing and reading beliefs concerning heritage language and majority languages (Burgess et al. 2002; Weigel et al. 2005) constitute it. Russian-speaking mothers were interviewed concerning literacy opportunities, heritage language instruction and its quality, cooperation and social-emotional quality (Leseman & de Jong 1998), the literacy activities of family members and joint literacy activities involving the child (van Steensel 2006; Manolitsis et al. 2013; Manolitsis & Sarri 2019), and the role of translanguaging in the development of multilingual HLEs. Authors 1, 2 and 3 all contributed equally and should be considered co-first authors. https://doi.org/10.15626/hn.20204502 12 HumaNetten Nr 45 Hösten 2020 immigrant language).

Translanguaging space and translanguaging practices in multilingual Russian‐speaking families

Translanguaging is seen both as a threat and as an opportunity for minority language development and transmission. While the theme of translanguaging has been explored especially in a context of migration, the novelty of this study lies in its investigation of the multiple contexts in which translanguaging is examined. In order to understand the nature of translanguaging, we adopt a novel interdisciplinary approach and view it in all its complexity, including liminal spaces of linguistic landscape. Family language policy affects the home linguistic environment. Our purpose is to investigate language choices by multilingual Russian-speakers in Cyprus, Sweden and Estonia, immigrant and minority settings, and try to understand how they are reflected in the multilingual interaction of the families. Using ethnographic participant observations and oral spontaneous multilingual production, our study attempts to describe how communication is managed through translanguaging practices among multilingual Russian-speaking families’ members in the cultural and linguistic environments of the three countries. By looking closely at the complexities of translanguaging space, it is our ambition to gain new insights about how it is organised and how translanguaging becomes a valuable linguistic resource in multilingual families. Our results indicate that translanguaging practices can be used in family conversational contexts and contribute to the creation of a rich and positive family repertoire. A new norm of Russian has been developed in all the three settings. A language shift can happen more quickly than expected, and, thus, it is important for parents to provide many opportunities for practising Russian as the L1. © Sviatlana Karpava, Natalia Ringblom and Anastassia Zabrodskaja, 2021