Session 5D

Congruent with Hua and Wei's (2016) call for "more attention to be paid to the diverse experiences of the individuals and to the strategies they use to deal with the challenges of multilingualism, rather than the overall patterns of language maintenance and language shift" (p.655), and concerning the bilingual turn in the United States context, as evidenced by the adoption of the Seal of Biliteracy in 44 states, this study seeks to investigate how the dynamic relationship between the home and the shifting school environment affect language choice and language policy for individual members in two Hmong-American families in California. The study also aims to contribute to the few family language policy (FLP) studies that consider how dual language immersion (DLI) programs in less commonly taught languages like Hmong shape FLP.
This case study takes an ecological approach to FLP and combines the Douglas Fir Group's (2016) multi-level transdisciplinary framework for second language acquisition that looks at the micro, meso and macro levels with Epstein's (2011) partnership framework, which places the bilingual child within the home, school and community spheres to examine how parents and teachers perceive the relationship between the home and school settings. The combination of frameworks allows the study to trace individual family members' ideologies about bilingualism and their perception of the linguistic partnership between the school and home. Data collection spans ten months and includes interviews with each family member, language portraits, six Zoom recorded activity sessions, student photographs, audio of natural language use, and widely available online data about the DLI program. Data were thematically formulated on an ad hoc basis and analyzed in a recursive process in MAXQDA.
Findings reveal that while both families enrolled their children into the DLI program for heritage language maintenance, they differed in their ideologies about bilingualism concerning literacy, cultural identity and most importantly, in how they viewed whether the school and home were a partnership for linguistic development. Family A viewed the school as the main source of Hmong teaching and stated that without the DLI program, the children would probably not learn Hmong at home. This view was directly reflected in their loose Hmong use at home. Family B viewed the school and home as a partnership where the home supplemented materials being taught at school and their view directly reflected their much more structured Hmong use at home. Altogether both families' accounts highlight how perceptions between DLI programs and the home setting shape FLP.
The study concludes with implications for families considering dual language programs, limitations and a call for more research on how growing bilingual programs are positively or negatively shaping FLP.


Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 19–47.
Epstein, J. L. (2011). School, Family and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Hua, Z., & Wei, L. (2016). Transnational experience, aspiration and family language policy. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(7), 655–666. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2015.1127928

In this study, we examine language use patterns and lexical proficiency in speakers of North Sámi in Norway and Sweden, and discuss the extent to which between-country differences can (partially) be explained by language policies. In language policy research, it is often difficult to assess the concrete effects of language planning on minority language behaviours, even if positive benefits are generally assumed (Siiner et al., 2018). We propose that a cross-country comparison of the North Sámi language in Sweden and Norway provides an interesting case, since the policies implemented in the two countries since the 1970s have varied, with Norway often considered a more favourable political-legal environment for the Sámi language (Outakoski, 2015). At the same time, little is known about existing proficiency levels in North Sámi, since most studies rely on self-reported measures (Vangnes, 2019). In an attempt to shed light on these issues, we present a subset of language data from a large-scale survey implemented in several northern municipalities in Sweden and Norway in 2021 (Bergmann et al., in prep.). In the language subset (a total of 125 participants in Norway and 172 in Sweden), participants completed a Yes/No vocabulary test in North Sámi (Gyllstad et al., in prep.) and answered questions about patterns of language use across the lifespan. In our analyses, we compare self-reported proficiencies, lexical proficiencies, and language use in the Sámi and non-Sámi populations, and across the two geographical contexts, Sweden and Norway. Preliminary analyses suggest a strong correlation between the amount of 'Sámi language use' and performance on the North Sámi vocabulary task (r = .73, p > .001). Between country differences were found for self-reported proficiency, which was higher in Norway, as were certain attitudinal measures, while scores on the North Sámi vocabulary task were similar across both countries. We discuss the extent to which the results might be reflective of the policies that were implemented in each context.
Keywords
Language use, language policy, North Sámi
References
Bergman, F., K. Holzinger, T. Kupisch, Lloyd-Smith, A., Schmid, S. P., & Yaşar, R. (in prep.). Ethnic identity, language use and proficiency in the Sámi in Norway and Sweden. (Data set paper)
Gyllstad, H., Kupisch, T., & Lloyd-Smith. A. (in prep). Using Item Response Theory for developing a practical measure of language proficiency: The case of North Sámi. 
Outakoski, H. (2015). Multilingual literacy among young learners of North Sámi: Contexts, complexity and writing in Sápmi. (Doctoral thesis). Umeå Studies in Language and Literature 27. Umeå University.
Siiner, M., Kupisch, T., & Hult, F. (2018). Language Policy and Language Acquisition Planning. Springer.
Vangsnes, Ø. (2018). A propognosis for Sámi in education. Schools as a key to revitalization. SESAM Brown Bag seminar, Universitet i Tromsø.