Hesitant versus Confident Family Language Policy: A Case of Two Single-Parent Families in Finland

During the past decade, the field of family language policy has broadened its scopeand turned its attention to diverse family configurations in versatile sociolinguistic contexts.The current study contributes to this endeavor by focusing on two single-parent families wholive in Finland and who strive to support Russian as a family language. Applying nexusanalysis as an epistemological stance and as an analytical lens, the study takes an emicperspective on family language policy. Furthermore, it examines how family language policy ismanifested and negotiated during mother-child play and what discoursesshape it. The findings reveal two contrasting ways in which family language policy ismanifested and negotiated in the families. Confident family language policy in one of thefamilies is informed by the mother’s historical body (i.e., prior experience of raising childrenbilingually), while in the other family, discourse in place represented by divergent languageideologies plays a significant role in shaping family language policy and is connected withhesitant decisions about language use in the family.