Intersections of official and family language policy in Quebec

Susan Balinger; Melanie Brouillard; Alexa Ahooja; Ruth Kircher; Linda Polka; Krista Byers-Heinlein

doi:10.1080/01434632.2020.1752699

Intersections of official and family language policy in Quebec

Susan Balinger, Melanie Brouillard, Alexa Ahooja, Ruth Kircher, Linda Polka, Krista Byers-Heinlein

Fryske Akademy (FA)

Research output: Contribution to journal/periodical › Article › Scientific › peer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The current paper describes a study that sought to determine the beliefs, practices, and needs of parents living in Montreal, Quebec, who were raising their children bi/multilingually. The parents (N = 27) participated in a total of nine focus group and individual interviews in which they discussed their family language policies (language ideologies, practices, and actions taken to maintain a language). Through rounds of deductive and inductive coding and analysis, family language policies regarding English and/or French were compared with policies regarding heritage languages. The participants’ family language policies were further examined in light of Quebec’s official language policy of interculturalism. Findings indicate a complex co-existence of family and official language policy in which parents both support Quebec’s official language policy by converging towards French as a common public language and questioning the policy’s stance on official institutional support for heritage languages.

Original language	English
Journal	Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1752699
Publication status	Published - 15 Apr 2020

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10.1080/01434632.2020.1752699Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Cite this

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