S3 E7: Language choices at home

In this episode Dr Marie-Josee-Bisson talks to Dr Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen about language choices in the family. How do parents decide which language they will speak to their children at home and are there rules to follow? Xiao Lan talks about Pride, Prejudice and Pragmatism and how these impact on family language decisions. Parents have a big role to play in providing a rich linguistic context for their children. But, parents are not alone and the community, school and government can do more to support the learning and maintenance of heritage languages. Let’s start with small initiatives and scale it up!  

To find out more behind-the-scenes information about this topic or about our podcast, please visit our webpage, languagescientists.dmu.ac.uk. This is where you can go to ask questions, leave comments, or even participate in our current research! We’d love to hear from YOU.  

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Links to Dr Curdt-Christiansen’s research:   

https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/xiao-lan-curdt-christiansen

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8973-5251

https://familylanguagepoli.wixsite.com/familylanguagepolicy

https://www.languageathome.info


We’d love to hear your thoughts

What have you learnt from this episode? How has your attitude towards language learning been affected?

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