Use of internet forums by multilingual families

Abstract

Raising children in a multilingual family is a demanding task. Seeking support, many parents turn to the internet where they post questions eliciting advice and feedback to forums and blogs. In our study, we identify the most pressing issues around the practice of multilingual upbringing reported in this rich source of data from the perspective of parents themselves. We collected over 500 posts from seven such forums, selected by purposive criterion sampling. We focused on characterizing users’ demographics and identifying most frequent themes. Our sample included mostly Western European and North American families with 2–4 languages each and 2–3 children up to 15 years old. The most frequent inquiries were from parents asking for language transmission strategies to support their minority language, which is especially salient among the children aged 4–6, coinciding with the start of full time schooling, but it lasts longer. Language mixing and finding resources are a concern for younger children but fade with age, although the former remains in the form of language preference by the children. Language mixing is disproportionally present for trilingual or multilingual children (children with three or more languages). Other categories include environmental criticisms, literacy, mobility, raising a child in a non-native language, language delays, linguistic insecurities, timing, and a (large) miscellaneous category.