“I want to learn Vietnamese to speak to my grandma” – Intergenerational ties as key factor in family language policy

Maintaining children’s multi or bilingualism in multicultural contexts has received much researchers’ attention recently. While many children living in a multicultural context tend to develop passive bilingualism, active bilingualism is the competence many immigrant parents desire their children to have. Previous studies have discussed the different micro factors influencing family language policy. This paper discusses one factor - intergenerational ties and its role in successful family language policy. Main data collection methods include semi-structured interviews with parents and children, observations of family language practices, families’ auto-recorded home-based conversations and collection of families’ everyday written documents. The two Vietnamese families discussed in this paper are two distinctive examples of successful versus unsuccessful family language policy in Melbourne settings. Findings point to the significant role of intergenerational ties among the family members, which in turn can foster language interactions within the immigrant families. Looking more closely, both families have a close network of Vietnamese community and have one family member who primarily speaks Vietnamese with minimal English usage. However, the strong connection between the children and the caregivers in the first family was attributed to shaping and nurturing their children’s active use of the home language. On the contrary, in the second family with less link between parents and children, there were not many favourable conditions for home language to be practised. Notably, in their own voices, the children regarded connecting with their grandmother and other Vietnamese relatives as their motivation to learn and maintain their home language. In the context of the well-claimed acknowledgement of the one-person-one-language policy, these findings suggest that this policy may not be successful without the intergenerational ties developed among the family members. This study hopes to contribute to the literature on the factors that influence family language policy among immigrant communities in multicultural and multilingual settings.