加拿大华人家庭语言政策类型及成因

Canadian Chinese Immigrants' Family Language Policies: Types and Causes

移民后代祖语的维护及可持续性学习是众多移民家长不得不面对的严峻问题之一。虽然加拿大拥有庞大的华裔群体,但因为语言替换及语言流失广泛存在于华裔移民家庭中,汉语作为祖语往往不能得到有效的维系或在移民代际间得不到有效的发展。以往的对华裔家庭的祖语及双文双语教育的研究多专注于个案研究,却忽略了对于中文在移民家庭环境中的教育和习得的整体认识。在本文中,作者整理出以往在加拿大不同地区华裔移民家庭搜集到的访谈及观察数据,构建了加拿大华裔家庭语言政策的连续发展的模型,以提供一个横向比对、解读家庭语言政策的概念框架,并从中撷取四个具有代表性的家庭,就家庭语言政策的类型及成因进行比较分析。本文在现有的家庭语言政策的理论框架基础上,为海外多语的宏观社会环境下移民家庭的语言政策与少数裔语言保护提供了另一种概念化的视角。

Children's heritage language maintenance and development is a challenging issue that many immigrant parents have to face nowadays. Despite the multitude of Chinese immigrants overseas, Chinese as a heritage language often fails to be effectively sustained and suffi ciently developed inter-generationally due to pervasive language shift and language loss in Chinese immigrant families. Previous research focusing on Chinese families' heritage language and bilingual/biliteracy education tends to privilege studies on single cases, resulting in a gap in the existing literature of an integrated perspective on how heritage language acquisition and education take place in the home milieu of Chinese immigrant families. Based on the qualitative data collected from Chinese immigrant families residing in different geographical regions in Canada, the authors developed a continuum development model to horizontally compare and analyze the dynamics of family language policies across different families. Four representative families are purposefully selected for a further discussion on the potential factors behind the formation of particular types of family language policies. Framed within the the oretical construct of family language policy, this paper aims to provide a new conceptual perspective towards immigrant family language policy development and minority language protection within the multilingual, macro social context of the host society.