Anticipating expectations. family language policy and its orientation to the school system

Abstract

ABSTRACT Family Language Policy never takes place only in private but is embedded in larger discourses in society or rather in several societies to which the multilingual family is linked. One main point of contact of families and discourses on language is the education system. Previous research has shown that bilingual families orient towards teachers for advice on their language policies and tend to adopt the schools’ view on languages. This especially applies to families, in which three or more languages are spoken. In this article, I will present the results from a case study with two highly multilingual families in Germany and the parents’ orientation to the education system. Findings show that in the case of the two families, teachers do not have extensive direct influence. Instead, the main impact that the education system has on the families’ language policy is indirect by conveying and enforcing mainstream language ideologies and supporting high prestige languages such as English and French, while the parents constantly try to anticipate potential expectations by stakeholders in the education system.