Family Language Policy of the U.S. Transnational Chinese Families in the Pandemic

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Schools, Communities, and Families in Collaboration (Table 3)

Abstract

This paper studies the experience of transnational Chinese families in the pandemic from the perspective of family language policy (FLP). The research aims to analyze the planning and making of FLP in these families against the backdrop of the surging anti-Asian racism, mass online education, and the global health crisis. Adopting the FLP as the theoretical framework and analyzing the ethnographic interview data of four families with children, we found that parents’ language ideologies are influenced by pandemic discourse; remote language applications assist parents with language maintenance and management; child language acquisition entails new chance to identify ethnic identities. These findings contribute to new insights into how U.S. transnational Chinese families designed FLP during the pandemic.

Authors

• Zhongyi Min, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Pengfei Zhao, McGill University
  Presenting Author