Multilingualism in the crossfire–language ideologies among Polish parents and their adolescent children/community in Ireland

Abstract

Parents and their language attitudes and ideologies exert a strong influence over their children’s language development strategies. This study examines how Polish families mediate language ideologies concerning their heritage language, English, and Irish. This paper is a part of a longitudinal study (five years) involving four adolescents and their parents, some of whom also attended Polish weekend schools in addition to mainstream secondary schools. The theoretical and analytical approach combines an ethnographic approach to data collection including observations, audio recordings of children’s interactions with their peers and their parents, and ethnographic interviews with a discourse analysis approach (Davies and Harre, 1990; Duff, 1995; Harre and Langenhove, 1999; Ochs and Capps, 2001). The results of the analysis are interpreted through the lens of the language socialization theoretical framework (Garrett and Baquedano–López, 2002; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986). This micro-analysis of language ideologies among Polish families in Ireland is contextualized within a more holistic account of the Polish community in Ireland, a community culturally shaped by, and in turn shaping, wider societal and educational ideologies, values, and power relations. This study suggests that parents often struggle to support their children’s multilingualism. In their everyday conversations with children, they often reproduce dominant linguistic ideologies. It is, however, their overt action that exerts the greatest influence on their children.