Child Agency In The Family Language Policy Of The Yue-dialect-speaking Families

Child agency has received burgeoning attention in family language policy(FLP)research in recent years.Although child agency has been widely studied in transnational bi-or multilingual families,little research has been conducted to explore child agency in dialect-speaking families in the Chinese context.Hence,the present study aimed to investigate the forms and the influencing factors of child agency in the FLP of Yue-dialect-speaking families.A total of 8 Yue-dialect-speaking families participated in this study,including 1from Guangzhou,3 from Jiangmen,2 from Zhuhai,and 2 from Zhaoqing.Qualitative data were collected through questionnaires,semi-structured interviews,family talk recordings,home visits,and participant observation.The obtained data were analyzed by drawing on Smith-Christmas’(2022)child agency in FLP research model and Curdt-Christiansen and Huang’s(2020)dynamic model of family language policy.The major findings demonstrated that:(1)Different values and roles were assigned to the Yue dialects,Putonghua,and English,by which parents would provide different learning resources and allocate a different proportion of investments for their children’s language learning.Furthermore,intergenerational gaps in language use and preference were discovered in the analysis of the participating families’ language practices.(2)Four forms of child agency in the FLP of Yue-dialect-speaking families were uncovered.First,children would make good use of their perceptions of others’ linguistic repertoire and language preferences to reverse the role between them and caregivers and set different linguistic norms with different people.Second,children worked as language brokers between grandparents and siblings by using the Yue dialects.This language brokering not only strengthened the existing linguistic norms but also promoted the inheritance of dialects.Third,children’s compliance with their parents’ medium requests was the result of the negotiation between them over time.As time went by,it would become the linguistic norm between them.Fourth,children would use their metalinguistic knowledge to self-assess their linguistic competence.(3)The child agency in the FLP of Yue-dialect-speaking families was influenced by external factors like socio-political,economic,cultural,and linguistic factors and by internal factors such as parental impact belief,emotional factors,and identity factors.The current research provides insights into the child agency in the FLP of Yue-dialect-speaking families.The findings offer a number of implications for the maintenance and inheritance of dialects.The thesis ends with the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.