If a language is not transmitted in the home, it is not likely to survive another generation” (Clyne, 2003:22)
Many factors contribute to a preference of one language being used over another. Baker (2006) argues that language shift (LS) may reflect economic, political, cultural and technological changes that a society may be going through (cited Kigamwa 2016:45). The family, being the primary site for a child’s language socialisation, is often cited as an important domain for understanding language shift (Schwarts 2010). The family domain is where language loss occurs through a lack of inter-generational language transmission. Joshua Fishman (1991, 2001) has argued persuasively for more than a decade, that the bedrock of language maintenance is inter-generational transmission of the language (King et al 2008).
Family Language Policy (FLP) has most recently been defined as the “explicit or overt, as well as covert and implicit language planning by family members in relation to language choice and practices at home among its members” (Curdt-Christiansen 2009; King et al 2008; Spolsky 2012)
Explicit (overt) – deliberate efforts made, usually, by adults on the conscious involvement and investment in providing linguistic conditions and context for a specific type of language learning
Implicit (covert) – default language practices as a consequence of ideologies
The field of FLP brings together concepts and findings from two disparate fields of language policy and child language acquisition, to deepen the understanding of heritage language maintenance and the acquisition of more than one language in the intimate domain of the family. While the fields of language policy and child language acquisition are both broadly concerned with the conditions of language learning and use, their foci are shaped by distinct disciplinary perspectives: language policy is rooted in the sociology of education, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics; child language acquisition, in contrast, is a subfield of psychology. As a result, both language policy and child language acquisition have significant “blind spots” in their approaches and spheres of attention (King et al. 2008).
FLP provides an integrated overview of research on how languages are learned, managed and negotiated within families (King et al 2008:307) with research on FLP drawing on Spolsky’s (2004) theoretical model of Language Policy as language ideology (beliefs about language); practice (what people actually do with language) and management (efforts to influence or modify language).
By using this framework language professionals attempt to understand why (and how) members of some families maintain their language while members of other families lose theirs; what decisions parents (caregivers) make to support or discourage the use of particular languages; and how the decisions and practices interact with broader ideological policies (Curdt-Christiansen 2013; Fishman 1991; Spolsky 2012).