Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

Committee Chair

Lyn Fogle

Committee Member

Rebecca Adams

Committee Member

Teresa Dalle

Committee Member

Emily Thrush

Abstract

A growing trend in the field of family language policy (FLP) is to examine the interplay between language ideologies and practices and to explore the complex links between linguistic and non-linguistic forces in shaping language ideologies and meaning-making processes in multilingual families (Curdt-Christiansen, 2016; King & Lanza, 2017). The current study extends this discussion on the interplay between family external and internal factors, the processes parents experience, and their connection to dynamicity in the FLP to show how family members draw on their linguistic resources and experiences with multilingualism to define themselves within the family and wider community (King & Lanza, 2017). It also shows how they perceive social relationship structures and construct their own identities (Hua & Wei, 2016).This study explored the language planning and practices of a transnational family to understand parental language ideology, factors impacting language ideology, and how ideological changes shaped identity construction and negotiation. I followed an autoethnographic approach to reflect on my FLP while my family experienced mobility and raising a bilingual child and to obtain greater access to an Arabic-speaking Muslim family living in the U.S., a demographic that has been little explored in the literature (Yazan & Ali, 2018). The data included fieldnotes of author observations, reflexive journals, and more than 80 hours of recorded conversations between family members that I qualitatively analyzed to gain a broader, multifaceted perspective.The findings of this study highlight avenues of investigating linguistic practices and identity construction in the family through valuing the researchers voice and reintroducing the notion of parent-researcher in FLP. By implementing an autoethnographic language socialization approach, the study revealed the dynamic nature of the FLP, how internal and external factors intersected to influence the FLP, and parents internal conflict as the FLP evolved. Furthermore, the study examined how the dynamics of the FLP and our family experience with multilingualism and mobility contributed to the development of the familys religious identity in real-life conversations.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

Notes

embargoed

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