The Fight For Harmonious Multilingualism: Literacy Practices of Two Trilingual Families in the United States
Disciplines
Education | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Immigrant parents have long been concerned about the loss of their children’s heritage languages (HL) due to lack of effort from monolingual society to provide resources and incorporate multilingual practices. Language and literacy competency in HLs along with community language is challenging especially for trilingual families compared to bilingual families. We need to know more about how growing trilingual families in U.S. context promote language and literacy in all three languages in their children and how they work towards reaching harmonious multilingualism where all family members feel content regarding their language use.
In this presentation, I first examine the language and literacy practices of three trilingual children from two immigrant families in the Southeastern U.S. One child, 6, uses Romanian, Turkish, and English. The siblings, 7 and 10, in another family use Farsi, Korean, and English. I also explore the immigrant parents’ successes and struggles with supporting their children’s language/literacy development in the three languages. Data collected over the last two years include interviews of the children and parents, the children’s audio/visual recordings and writing samples in all three languages. The qualitative analysis of the data has led to preliminary findings. First, the children voluntarily engaged in literacy practices, such as writing names of and texting to family members in all three scripts and reading graphic novels in HLs for pleasure. Second, the parents supported their children’s trilingualism through word and sound decoding activities in HL to replicate the school’s English practices and reading to their children. Both families also grappled with the amount of HL linguistic surveillance and English language censorship, as well as their own emotional reactions to their children's language practices.
The study raises questions about how to promote harmonious multilingualism. This presentation will benefit multilingual families who are fighting linguistic colonialism in the U.S. and beyond.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
BCOE - Inclusive Education
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Jayoung Choi
The Fight For Harmonious Multilingualism: Literacy Practices of Two Trilingual Families in the United States
Immigrant parents have long been concerned about the loss of their children’s heritage languages (HL) due to lack of effort from monolingual society to provide resources and incorporate multilingual practices. Language and literacy competency in HLs along with community language is challenging especially for trilingual families compared to bilingual families. We need to know more about how growing trilingual families in U.S. context promote language and literacy in all three languages in their children and how they work towards reaching harmonious multilingualism where all family members feel content regarding their language use.
In this presentation, I first examine the language and literacy practices of three trilingual children from two immigrant families in the Southeastern U.S. One child, 6, uses Romanian, Turkish, and English. The siblings, 7 and 10, in another family use Farsi, Korean, and English. I also explore the immigrant parents’ successes and struggles with supporting their children’s language/literacy development in the three languages. Data collected over the last two years include interviews of the children and parents, the children’s audio/visual recordings and writing samples in all three languages. The qualitative analysis of the data has led to preliminary findings. First, the children voluntarily engaged in literacy practices, such as writing names of and texting to family members in all three scripts and reading graphic novels in HLs for pleasure. Second, the parents supported their children’s trilingualism through word and sound decoding activities in HL to replicate the school’s English practices and reading to their children. Both families also grappled with the amount of HL linguistic surveillance and English language censorship, as well as their own emotional reactions to their children's language practices.
The study raises questions about how to promote harmonious multilingualism. This presentation will benefit multilingual families who are fighting linguistic colonialism in the U.S. and beyond.