A Case Study On Family Language Planning Of Intellectual Migrants Families In Wuhan

With the deepening of China’s urbanization,cities are playing an increasingly prominent role in social and economic development,and the proportion of families made up of migrants continues to grow.Family language planning refers to explicit or implicit language planning activities within the family.Family language planning reflects parents’ language beliefs and in turn reveals the attitudes and awareness of the wider society towards language and family education.Family education is the most basic unit of children’s language education.Parents’ language belief,language attitude and attention to the development of children’s language ability are decisive to the foundation of children’s language ability.At present,the family language planning of urban migrant families has become one of the hot topics in academic circles.To understand the situation of family language planning in urban migrant families and its influencing factors is helpful to plan these children’s language development more scientifically and improve their language ability.Otherwise,language is not only a tool for communication,but also for identity.learning the language of resettlement destination is an important aspect of adapting to the local culture and building a new urban identity for migrants,which is beneficial for them to better integrate into the city.In recent years,domestic academic circles have paid increasing attention to the study of family language planning.At present,most of the research areas focus on the northwest minority inhabited areas and the economically developed coastal cities,while there are few studies on the family language planning of migrants in the second and third-tier cities in the central region.In view of this deficiency,this study selected three intellectual migrant families living in the urban area of Wuhan as the research participants.Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province,the only sub-provincial city of the six central provinces,the mega-city,the central city of central China,an important industrial base,a scientific and educational base and a comprehensive transportation hub.Because of its unique geographical location and humanistic education resources,Wuhan attracts a large number of people from all over the country to work and settle down in Wuhan every year,and dialects from the north and south are also gathered here.The parents of these three families are between 30 and 45 years old.They all studied in universities in Wuhan and settled down in Wuhan from their hometown after graduation.They have medium incomes and stable careers and belong to intellectual migrants.What language planning and language choice will parents in intelligent migrant families make for their children when faced with multiple languages or language variants such as hometown dialect,local dialect,Putonghua and English? What are their attitudes towards different languages or language variants?What factors influence language planning in these families? These questions are the key research topics of this study.This study used language management theory to compare the similarities and differences of language planning in the three intellectual migrant families of Wuhan from three dimensions: language practice,language belief and language management.At the same time,the study used dynamic model of family language planning to explain and analyse the factors that influenced family language planning.This is a qualitative study.Data were collected by semi-structured interviews,audio recordings,home visits and participant observation.The results showed that there were several commonalities in family language planning in these three families:(1)The dialect ability of the next generation of migrants is greatly weakened,and they have only the ability to understand their hometown dialect;(2)Putonghua and English are highly evaluated by parents and children of these migrant families,while dialects are highly evaluated by grandparents;(3)With the development of the time and economy,parents of migrant families realize the importance of multilingual ability on the premise of training their children’s English learning;The parents of the three families used the resources around them to encourage their children to learn English,such as sending their children to language training center,accompanying their children to English corners in the community to practice oral English,and sending their children to bilingual schools.(4)In communication with the outside world,families were influenced by external factors such as sociolinguistic,sociopolitical,socioeconomic and sociocultural forces,as well as internal factors such as emotion,identity,family culture and tradition,parent impact belief and child agency.Family language planning is formed under the joint action of macro,meso and micro levels.The factors inside and outside the family coexist alternately,either explicitly or implicitly affecting the language practice,language belief and language management in the family.This study suggests that family language planning plays an important role in children’s language development.The most crucial place for children to develop language skills is in the home.Parents’ language belief,language practice and language management affect the development of children’s language ability.The conclusion of this study is based on the analysis of three participating families.The small sample size cannot represent the situation of family language planning of all intellectual immigrant families in Wuhan.Secondly,community is also a relatively important place in family language planning,and the researcher has made few investigations on the situation of community culture and environment on family language planning,so it is impossible to know exactly the specific impact of community on the family language planning of these three families.In future studies,the sample size and regional scope can be expanded to further improve relevant studies by considering community factors.