5. Urban multilingualism and family language policy

This article addresses the need to investigate family language policy in regard to issues concerning immigration in contemporary urban spaces. Family language policy is an emerging field of inquiry that bridges the gap between studies of child language and the field of language policy research in its approach to understanding language maintenance and shift in multilingual families and communities. A case study on Norway concerning the school performance of children with an immigrant background is presented to illustrate the importance of addressing language ideologies at the societal level and how they may affect language policies in the home. While Norway has been considered a sociolinguistic paradise in the widespread acceptance of dialectal variation, without diglossia, the use of other immigrant languages is not looked upon as favourably. Drawing on media data of a particular case that received considerable national attention, the article highlights how political pressures were placed on families with an immigrant background in order to promote their speaking Norwegian in the home. Such a policy would ultimately promote monolingualism in society. The study shows how family spaces, traditionally considered private domains, have essentially become public spaces through mediatised discourses. A comparison is made with other similar cases in Europe.