A corpus-assisted discourse study of parental concerns regarding multilingual child-rearing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many parents have concerns about raising their children with multiple languages. However, there is a paucity of previous research regarding parental concerns about multilingual child-rearing, particularly in multilingual societies. We address this gap with a corpus-assisted discourse study of parental concerns regarding multilingual child-rearing in Quebec, Canada. We created two corpora comprising 641 parents’ responses to an open-ended survey question regarding their main concerns about raising multilingual infants/toddlers (English corpus: 12,502 words, French corpus: 9,360 words). We examined frequencies, collocations, concordance lines, and longer segments to investigate the nature and strength of different concerns. Our results revealed that two previously-attested concern types – cognition concerns and exposure-fluency concerns – were most prominent. The results also provided more nuanced insights into the nature of these concerns. Moreover, the results revealed two additional concern types: concerns regarding trilingual/heritage language transmission and concerns about the effect of multilingualism on children’s identity and social/emotional well-being. These had not previously been attested. Our research makes a theoretical contribution by advancing knowledge about parental concerns and how they can contribute to the study of family language policies. Additionally, our findings may serve as the basis for improving support for multilingual families.