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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Culture and Communication
Volume 9 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1514899
Language usage during shared reading -family communication as implicit plurilingual family language policy
Provisionally accepted- Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
This paper piece draws on original data regarding the language choices of Emirati fathers when sharing reading with their young children, to offer explanatory power for the authors' perspectives on the expression of implicit plurilingual family languages policies. Participants' responses were shared via WhatsApp messages following on from workshops provided by the team which offered tips for sharing reading. Fathers' reported language choices for communicating via shared reading prompted the authors to reflect on these practices and situate them within a larger discussion on plurilingualism and the ways in books may be shared within plurilingual homes. The language choices of Emirati fathers demonstrate a range of implicit family language policies. They allude to translanguaging and plurilingual practices, which become enacted policies within the home. With some children wishing to read in English, others wishing to read in Arabic, some fathers reading in Emirati Arabic and combinations of all of those languages and language varieties, and only a few of them reading the book in the language within which it was originally printed, it seems like a translanguaging stance is being taken for communication within homes, as plurilingual repertoires are being actively harnessed through this shared reading.
Keywords: language choice, family language policy (FLP), Plurilingual, multilingual, Shared reading, Translanguaging
Received: 21 Oct 2024; Accepted: 19 Dec 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Dillon, Gallagher, Saqr, Habak and AlRamamneh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Anna Dillon, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Sumaya Saqr, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
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