Activities per year
Abstract
Parents who enrol their children to be educated through a threatened minority language frequently do not speak that language themselves and classes in the language are sometimes offered to parents in the expectation that this will help them to support their children's education and to use the minority language in the home. Providing language-learning opportunities for parents with children in minority-language education is understood as good practice in language revitalization, but there is little research on the efficacy of this practice. I will present data from narrative, life-history interviews with mothers who have learned Scottish Gaelic to some level and who have children who attend Gaelic-medium education and I will discuss the difficulties they encounter in establishing new norms of language use in the family and the strategies they use to effect a new language policy in the home. I will show how these mothers work to establish a new norm of Gaelic use in the family in opposition to a common background ideology that understands language as a natural object, and therefore, that it is wrong and bad parenting to 'force' a language on a child.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 570-585 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 5 |
Early online date | 3 Dec 2013 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- family language policy
- language ideologies
- immersion education
- adult language learners
- Scottish Gaelic
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Timothy Currie Armstrong
- Sabhal Mòr Ostaig UHI - Àrd Òraidiche ann an Gàidhlig agus Conaltradh - Senior Lecturer in Gaelic and Communication
Person: Academic - Teaching only
Activities
- 1 Participation in conference
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International Conference on Language and Social Psychology 13
Timothy Currie Armstrong (Speaker)
21 Jun 2012Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Participation in conference