Factors Affecting the Successful Transmission and Active Use of Minority Languages in a Multilingual Family

The current study explores the factors affecting the successful transmission of minority languages in a transnational multilingual family raising their child in a “double-minority language” context. The mother addresses her 8-year-old child in Japanese and the father in Armenian, and the common language among the family members is Turkish, the societal language, and English. Naturalistic audio data of family conversations are analyzed to demonstrate the language use patterns of the parents and the child's language choice. Furthermore, a semi-structured interview is conducted with the parents to identify their ideologies about languages, and the child's views are elicited through a language portrait. The results reveal that heritage languages are overwhelmingly used in child-parent interactions and that the parents’ use of the societal language and English does not hinder the child's active use of the minority languages with her parents. Interview data further suggests that parents’ language ideologies, strong impact beliefs, realistic expectations, the influence of other caregivers, and child agency may also play a role.