Multilingual Family Language Policy and Wellbeing - Bilingual Education & Bilingualism by Kaisa Pankakoski Hardcover

About the Book

This book investigates transnational families' experiences in managing national minority and majority languages alongside a foreign language at home. It identifies parents' ideological language motivations and family language policy strategies, and considers the impact of these strategies on children's self-esteem, identity and sense of capability.

Book Synopsis

Makes an important contribution to how we understand wellbeing in multilingual family settings.

This book investigates transnational families' ideological language motivations, strategies and experiences. The rich interview and observation data from fourteen multilingual families living in Wales and Finland provide insight into the challenges of managing national minority and majority languages alongside a foreign language at home.

It considers the perspectives of parents and children, identifying the strategies used to manage these languages and the effects of these strategies on family wellbeing, particularly children's self-esteem, identity and sense of capability. Including a variety of Family Language Policy prototypes and language communities, it suggests adjustments to parental strategies and promotes awareness of positive psychology and peer support for language communities.

This book will be of interest to researchers and policymakers in language education and multilingualism as well as parents engaged with Family Language Policy.

About the Author

Kaisa Pankakoski is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy and an Associate Researcher with the Language, Policy and Planning Research Unit at Cardiff University, UK. She is the Founder of the Finnish Saturday School in Cardiff and her research explores multilingualism, wellbeing and Family Language Policy.