Raising children multilingually: Family language policies and online blogging

With increasing transnational migration, a growing number of families are faced with decisions concerning family language policies (King & Fogle 2013). This gives rise to questions on how to successfully raise children... [ view full abstract ]

With increasing transnational migration, a growing number of families are faced with decisions concerning family language policies (King & Fogle 2013). This gives rise to questions on how to successfully raise children multilingually. A number of advice books on raising multilingual children have been published the past decades; however, a growing sum of online resources target this interest and need, in particular online parental blogging. Rettberg (2014: 17) lists three main styles of blogging: “personal or diary-style blogging; filter blogging; and topic-driven blogging”. Personal parent-blogging is popular and many blog sites are platforms for multilingual parents to share their experiences. Some of these widen their scope and become more topic-driven, developing into platforms for not only sharing personal experiences about raising children multilingually and multiculturally but also giving advice and inviting guest posts and interviews. These blogs may have a Facebook interface, refer to the blogger’s published book, and include consultancy possibilities. These blogs are, moreover, infused with various language ideologies, which may influence parents and caregivers in their family language policy decisions. This paper presents an overview of this type of blog catering to an expanding online market, with a focus on two such blogs. Digital ethnography provides the means for understanding the multimodality of texts on these online sites. The analysis highlights two aspects: the topics addressed in the blogs and the extent to which the content in the blogs is in line with current research in multilingual language acquisition. This forms the backdrop for investigating how the blogger parent negotiates an expert identity online. Topic-driven parental blogs on raising children multilingually are an under-used source of data for the study of family language policies. They provide vital knowledge for decision-making concerning language use in the home and may contribute to ideology formation.

King, K. & L. Fogle. 2013. Family language policy and bilingual parenting. Language Teaching 46(2): 172 – 194.

Rettberg, J. W. 2014. Blogging. 2^nd edition. Polity Press.