Call for proposals: Language Policy and Practice in Multilingual Families, Special Issue of Languages. Deadline: 31 March 2023.
Special Issue Editors: Anastassia Zabrodskaja (Estonia) and Natalia Ringblom (Sweden)
This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts of various types, such as articles, reviews, and conceptual papers of a disciplinary or interdisciplinary nature, that seek to contribute to the analysis of language policy and practice in multilingual families from a multidisciplinary perspective. The multilingual (resp. bilingual) family is a worldwide fact, as more and more families now use more than one language. This provokes situations in which the family is faced with the problem of maintaining a heritage language (mother tongue, home, immigrant or minority language), its transmission to the next generation, or a language attrition and shift towards a dominant (societal or majority) language. Language transmits culture and history; thus, the loss of one’s heritage language can lead to the loss of inherited knowledge. As such, a conscious decision must be made by parents to pass on language, especially as children enter adolescence and become more independent, including in their language choices. Various factors influence the transmission of heritage language and culture, including: motivation (integrative and intrinsic motivation); its symbolic role; linguistic ideologies and language identity; socioeconomic status; social networks; religion; tendency towards social segregation or inclusion; language solidarity; the speaker’s environment and the value of multilingualism in specific domains (family, school, community and individual); and the use of heritage language in public space and its usefulness and cultural value.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 