(Re)Shaping Family Language Policy Among Transnational Families After the Pandemic

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:40 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Macro/Micro Language Policy in Bi-/Multilingual Education (Table 3)

Abstract

Many transnational families are responsible for maintaining their heritage language without much support from the public. The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted these families in various ways. This study investigates how transnational families adjusted their family language policies (FLP) to maintain their heritage language during the pandemic, which provided a new paradigm of their FLP for today’s transnational family. I conducted an ethnographic study of two transnational families to understand how they approached FLP. The research aimed to compare their approaches during/post-pandemic. The findings revealed that different transnational families adopted different FLPs than conventional FLPs during the pandemic. This is a new opportunity among transnational families and a new way of maintaining heritage language for the digital-friendly generation, so-called digital natives.

Author

• Hyesun Kim, University of Utah