Abstract
The aim of this article is to illustrate the fluid nature of family language policy (FLP) and how the realities of any one FLP are re-negotiated by caregivers and children in tandem. In particular, the paper will focus on the affective dimensions of FLP and will demonstrate how the same reality – in this case, a grandmother’s use of a child-centred discourse style as a means to encouraging her grandchildren to use their minority language, Scottish Gaelic – can play out differently among siblings. Using a longitudinal perspective, the paper begins by examining a recorded interaction between a grandmother, Nana, [1] and her granddaughter Maggie (3;4) and will discuss how Nana’s high use of questions and laissez-faire attitude to Maggie’s use of English contribute to the child-centred nature of the interaction, and in turn, to Maggie’s playful use of Gaelic. The paper then examines an interaction recorded five years later in which Nana interacts with Maggie’s brother Jacob (4;0) in the same affective style; however, unlike Maggie, Jacob evidences overtly negative affective stances towards his minority language. The paper concludes by discussing these observations in light of the reflexive nature of FLP in terms of emotional affect, linguistic input, and language shift.
Funding source: Irish Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: GOIPD/2016/644
Funding statement: I am currently at the University of Limerick on a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the Irish Research Council for the project ‘The Challenges of Minority Language Maintenance: Family Language Policy in Scotland and Ireland’ (GOIPD/2016/644). I would also like to acknowledge the support of Soillse, and the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, who funded the recording of the 2014 corpus.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank you the special issue editors Elizabeth Lanza and Xiao-Lan Curdt-Christiansen for organising the panel that was the naissance of this article, as well as their helpful comments on a previous draft of this article. I would also like to thank Stuart Dunmore for his assistance in transcribing parts of the 2014 corpus, and in particular, the ‘Cockerel’ excerpt. Thank you also to the two anonymous reviewers, and as always, deepest thanks to the Campbell family. Any mistakes are of course my own.
Transcription Conventions
- :
Elongated Sound
- -
Cut-off
- word
Emphasis
- WORD
Increased Amplitude
- °
Decreased Amplitude
- HI<
Higher Pitch
- ><
Accelerated Speech
- =
Latching speech
- [[ ]
Overlapping Speech
- ( .5)
Pause (Seconds)
- (.)
Micropause (less than two-tenths of a second)
- @
Laughter (pulse)
- {}
Word/sound said ingressively
- /
Rising Pitch
- \
Falling Pitch
- /\
Rise/Fall Pitch
- ( )
Uncertainty in Transcript
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