Family Language Policy And Children's Cultural Identity Construction

Family language policy refers to how a family manages and negotiates language activities among the family members(King & Fogle 2013;).At present,there are a few studies to explore family language policy and children's cultural identity construction.This research,based on Spolsky's Language Policy Model(2004)and Darvin and Norton's New Model of Investment(2015),applied ethnography to explore how the children,who are at the key period of language acquisition and cultural identity construction,construct their cultural identity under family language policy.In this research,both families have the “economic capital” to invest on their children's language learning,and two family parents are well-educated.The research findings are as the followings: firstly,family A puts bilingual education into practice.A behaves a mixed cultural idenity.She can distinguish two different cultures well.On the one hand,she can speak English fluently and accept western culture.On the other hand,she keeps interests in learning Chinese traditional culture and enjoys reading Chinese ancient stories.The language learning in family B mainly focuses on Chinese.B's English learning is discontinious,therefore,with long time of Chinese education,she constructs a stable Chinese cultural identity.Secondly,family language policy has direct effects on children's cultural identity construction,and parents' ideology influences the children's cultural identity.The behaviors of language management and investment reflect parents' cultural identity that make impact on children's cultural identity development.Family language policy protects children's Chinese cultural identity positively and actively with two family parents all value Chinese education.Thirdly,national language policy influences family language impicitly and indirectly,and parents' understandings and common sense,as well aschidlren's attitudes toward language learning...