This study builds on ethnographic family interviews with Greek-speaking families in Sweden. In our talk, we discuss how family language ideologies intersect with the sociopolitical context, migration trajectories, parents' professional and educational background and whether the parents have had a bilingual and bicultural upbringing themselves.
In this talk, we present data from an ongoing study on language ideologies in Greek-speaking families living in Sweden. The history of Greek migration to Sweden is dynamic, with a first wave of migration to Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by a period of re-migration in the 1980s and 1990s. In recent years, the socio-economic crisis in Greece have caused a new wave of migration to Sweden. Our data consists of families who have an intergenerational migration history of moving between the two countries, as well as families who have recently moved to Sweden without earlier bonds to the country. Thus, some of the parents have a multilingual and bicultural upbringing whereas some of the parents have a monolingual background. The data presented here is collected using ethnographic interviews with seven multilingual families, including children as active participants in the interview process. Earlier studies on transnational families have shown how language ideologies underpin family language policy (King, Fogle & Logan-Terry, 2008). Preliminary results indicate that the families’ language policy and reported practices are influenced by the kind of investment and imagined future outcomes associated with each one of the languages (e.g. emotional, cultural and career-related). These are connected to the advantages and disadvantages that parents and children ascribe to different languages and linguistic practices (cf. Curdt-Christiansen, 2016). Additionally, the analysis illustrates how family language ideologies intersect with and is shaped by parents’ earlier migration experiences, social class (e.g. educational and professional background), state education policy and if the parents have had a multilingual and bicultural upbringing. References: Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan. 2016. Conflicting language ideologies and contradictory language practices in Singaporean multilingual families. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37(7):694-709. King, Kendall A., Fogle, Lyn & Logan-Terry, Aubrey. 2008. Family Language Policy. Language and Linguistic Compass 2(5): 907-922.
