| Zusammenfassung |
My PhD examines 14 transnational case study families in Wales and Finland. I present challenging insights into the families' experiences in managing many languages and explore language transmission solutions. My study includes data from children, which is a novel approach in the Family Language Policy (FLP) field (see e.g., Bui et al. 2022, Lee 2018 Wilson 2020). The doctoral study breaks new ground by investigating two officially bilingual, superdiverse areas: Helsinki and Cardiff. I examine the wellbeing of multilingual families; a topic that has only attracted research interest in the last decade. I also focus on multilingual rather than bilingual families. Most FLP studies are individual case studies, but my research is a multiple case study offering a variety of language communities rather than just one community. In addition, my research presents all three FLP prototypes (Smith-Christmas 2016): minority language speakers, and foreign heritage language speakers in a diasporic context, whereby I look at contexts with one immigrant parent as well as families where both parents are immigrants. Crucially, my research shows that intergenerational language transmission, or passing on languages to the next generation, is often challenging for transnational families. Maintaining or developing a foreign (often heritage) language needs considerable effort from parents and children because of the natural sociolinguistic forces which make the children favour the stronger community languages. The transmission is considered easier for the official languages of a country because parents can choose from a wide selection of schools, hobbies, childminders, and community groups in a target language; these promote language transmission. Therefore, there is a strong link between the demographic strength of a language and how challenging parents perceive language transmission to be. My doctoral research reveals that often the challenges arise from the parental expectations regarding the language development of the children not being met, from strict parental strategies, from communication barriers, or from the children's resistance to speaking a language. At this point in my career, the fellowship will provide the time, space, and support to finish publishing these findings from my PhD. The fellowship will support me to expand my networks and achieve three main aims, essential to my career. First, it will enable me to establish a strong publication track record. I will publish my research as a monograph, two articles, and a workbook for parents. I will continue writing blog posts and online articles in English and Finnish for science communication websites. My publications will interest academic and non-academic readers because of the evidence they present regarding multilingual families' realities. Second, the fellowship allows me to disseminate my research to wider audiences through a variety of impact and engagement activities. These activities include conference presentations; guest lectures in Finland and the UK; workshops for parents; and producing a podcast series popularising my research topic. Finally, I will be able to carry out further limited research among the 14 original case study families. The proposed research will expand the less investigated topics listed above. I have kept in touch with the families with a view to conduct further study. I observed a significant change in terms of ideologies, strategies, and views as the children grew older. There is little longitudinal research particularly taking in the teenage years, which is why continuing my multiple case study post-PhD is a valuable opportunity. |
