INVESTIGATING FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICY STRATEGIES WITHIN MULTILINGUAL FAMILIES IN CYPRUS

Abstract

This mixed-methods research project investigates the language interventions and accompanying language ideologies incorporated by 20 linguistically intermarried families who have or are currently raising bilingual children whilst residing in the Republic of Cyprus, based on the theoretical underpinning of Family Language Policy (FLP). These language interventions are defined as Family Language Strategies (FLS) in this thesis.

The study begins with a quantitative methodology of a Family Language Activities pack, consisting of a family profile, a language timeline and a Family Language Strategies section, aimed at contextualising family background data and their reported language practices to raise their children bilingually, and their opinionated beliefs of these practices’ feasibility and effectiveness to incorporate. The activities pack findings reported an overwhelming favouritism towards use of monolingual nursery rhymes and storybooks, explicit choice between monolingual/international schooling and using monolingual grandparents as childminders, whilst strategies relating to the One Parent, One Language (OPOL) scored significantly lower than expected.

The qualitative part of the methodology saw these results expanded on by the participating parents taking part in semi-structured interviews to discern their justifications for choosing certain strategies, and report on their language ideologies towards child bilingualism. Drawing on a combination on both stages of this mixed methodology through an analysis of General Inductive Theory and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the results demonstrated that there is an overwhelming feeling of parental pride for raising bilingual children in the family environment and a will for their children to experience the wider world for further study and work opportunities with the extra languages they possess, and a strong correlation between the mother tongues one possesses, and their association of identity with both their domestic and heritage nation.

The results of the study discovered language practices centred around the incorporation of the inner family language network taking precedence in these families’ FLP, followed by use of leisure-based practices, whilst methods of explicit instruction using members external to the family language network were the least popular to use. These were linked to ideologies focused on preserving authentic ethnic, heritage and cultural identity of the bilingual child, whilst highlighting the importance of parental involvement and input for bilingual child-rearing. Additional ideologies centred around elite bilingualism, and broadening the prospects the child could successfully achieve with bilingualism were frequently discovered throughout the data analysis process. The notion of impact beliefs was discovered to play a role in determining how invested a bilingual parent was to incorporate certain FLS, including the level of involvement they felt they should take in attempting to manage their children’s language development. Challenges found in bilingual child-rearing were also cited by the families involved, including accessibility of TL material, lack of minority language support, and the difficulty of adhering to an FLP in a busy daily routine.

This study pushes for further research into innovative and previously undiscovered language strategies used by intermarried parents within the field of FLP, and how these strategies are set to evolve and be implemented through constant global mobility with future generations of multilingual families settling in minority language communities such as that of Cyprus, where English is not the official language.