This paper looks at digital language practices in four Norwegian-Senegalese families. Collected interactions and interview data as well as focus group data is analysed to discuss the children’s agency regarding language choice in communication with extended family members in relation to the parents’ ideas of FLP and heritage languages.
Digital tools enable people who migrate to stay in touch, locally and transnationally, on a frequent and impulsive basis. Whereas Senegalese migrants in Europe some ten years ago had to buy phone cards and plan their transnational calls, they now use different apps for multimodal communication with relatives and friends in their country of origin. This creates a space where heritage languages may be practiced (Szecsi & Szilagyi 2012). As the children no longer depend on the parents' mediation of interaction with the extended family, it is also a space where children's agency in FLP (Said & Zhu Hua 2018) can be played out. Digital family interaction therefore should be taken into account in the study of FLP.
In this paper, we will look at digital language practices of children in four Norwegian-Senegalese families, and their parents' ideologies of heritage language. Collected interactions and interview data as well as focus group data is analysed to discuss the children's agency regarding language choice in communication with extended family members in relation to the parents' ideas of FLP. We analyse these language practices in line with Canagarajah's (2019) practice-based approach, and in light of polymedia theory (Madianou and Miller 2012).
Canagarajah, S. 2019. Changing orientations to heritage language: The practice-based ideology of Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora families. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 255, 9-14.
Madianou, M. & D. Miller. 2012. Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia.
London, Routledge.
Said, F. & Hua, Zhu. 2018. No, no Maama! say "shaatir ya ouledee shaatir"!" : Children's agency and creativity in language use and socialisation. International Journal of Bilingualism 23 (3), 771-785.
Szecsi, T. & J. Szilagyi. 2012. Immigrant Hungarian families' perceptions of new media technologies in the transmission of heritage language and culture. Language, Culture and Curriculum 25(3), 265–281.
