Language practices and policies of Singaporean-Japanese families in Singapore

Francesco Cavallaro, Yan Kang Tan, Wenhan Xie and Bee Chin Ng
Abstract

The few studies on Family Language Policy in Singapore (FLP) have generally focused on FLP in local and immigrant Chinese families. This article explores language policies that seem to undergird Singaporean-Japanese families’ language practices. In-depth interviews and observations with five such families showed that Japanese only functions as the language of communication between the Japanese parents and their children if parents have invoked particular language policies to support its transmission and use at home. For most families, English was the main medium of communication among family members. Language policies and practices in these families were heavily influenced by the value emplaced on each language within the parents’ linguistic repertoire and their beliefs regarding language learning.

Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents

1.Introduction

The burgeoning field of studies examining Family Language Policy (FLP) that once focused on ‘typical’ family units and nuclear families has increasingly called for greater diversity in the types of families being studied. This paper answers the call by shedding light on the negotiation and enactment of FLP in families with binational parents – parents from two different nationalities. With binational marriages becoming a growing global phenomenon, binational families are a specific group of interest because binational parents must make very clear decisions about their children’s language repertoires they wish to support as they will have direct consequences for their future.

This study adds to the field of FLP by investigating the language policies and practices of Singaporean-Japanese families living in Singapore. By leveraging ethnomethodological tools such as interviews and participant observation sessions, we seek to document how language practices implemented in the home domain are shaped by the ideologies adopted by parents of different nationalities. In essence, our research focuses on answering the following questions through the lens of FLP: What are the linguistic experiences, ideologies, and practices of Singaporean-Japanese families? What factors influence the negotiation of FLP within these families?

In what follows, we present an overview of the extant literature on FLP and an overview of Singapore’s macro language policies. Following that, we detail the methodology and our findings from the interviews and participant observations. The article then concludes with an in-depth discussion of some possible factors that influence FLP within Singaporean-Japanese families.

2.Family Language Policy

Family Language Policy (FLP) focuses on “how languages are managed, learned and negotiated within families” and studies on FLP aim to describe and analyse the theoretical underpinnings behind language practices and policies in the familial domain (King, Fogle and Logan-Terry 2008King, Kendall A., Lyn Fogle, and Aubrey Logan-Terry 2008 “Family Language Policy.” Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (5): 907–922. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 907). Much existing research highlights how factors both within and outside this domain can influence family language practices and policies (Curdt-Christiansen 2016 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; King and Fogle 2006King, Kendall A., and Lyn Fogle 2006 “Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents’ Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9 (6): 695–712. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kirsch 2012Kirsch, Claudine 2012 “Ideologies, Struggles and Contradictions: An Account of Mothers Raising Their Children Bilingually in Luxembourgish and English in Great Britain.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kopeliovich 2010Kopeliovich, Shulamit 2010 “Family Language Policy: A Case Study of a Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Family: Toward a Theoretical Framework.” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education 4 (3): 162–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Oriyama 2016Oriyama, Kaya 2016 “Community of Practice and Family Language Policy: Maintaining Heritage Japanese in Sydney – Ten Years Later.” International Multilingual Research Journal 10 (4): 289–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Spolsky (2004)Spolsky, Bernard 2004Language Policy, Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar notes that FLP comprises three components: language ideology, language practices, and language management. The connection between the three components is by no means straightforward. While language ideology has been said to be a crucial motivator of language practices and management strategies (King and Fogle 2006King, Kendall A., and Lyn Fogle 2006 “Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents’ Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9 (6): 695–712. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; King, Fogle and Logan-Terry 2008King, Kendall A., Lyn Fogle, and Aubrey Logan-Terry 2008 “Family Language Policy.” Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (5): 907–922. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kirsch 2012Kirsch, Claudine 2012 “Ideologies, Struggles and Contradictions: An Account of Mothers Raising Their Children Bilingually in Luxembourgish and English in Great Britain.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Oriyama 2016Oriyama, Kaya 2016 “Community of Practice and Family Language Policy: Maintaining Heritage Japanese in Sydney – Ten Years Later.” International Multilingual Research Journal 10 (4): 289–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), the declared language ideologies of parents do not necessarily translate to language practices and policies within their homes that support these ideologies (Curdt-Christiansen 2016 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kopeliovich 2010Kopeliovich, Shulamit 2010 “Family Language Policy: A Case Study of a Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Family: Toward a Theoretical Framework.” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education 4 (3): 162–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Spolsky 2004Spolsky, Bernard 2004Language Policy, Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar).

3.Binational families

Binational marriages have made up an increasingly larger proportion of marriages across the world and in East and Southeast Asia in the last few decades (Fresnoza-Flot and Ricordeau 2019Fresnoza-Flot, A., and G. Ricordeau 2019International Marriages and Marital Citizenship: Southeast Asian Women on the Move. London, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar; Groes and Fernandez 2018Groes, C., and N. T. Fernandez 2018Intimate Mobilities: Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World. New York, USA: Berghahn Books. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Jones and Shen 2008Jones, Gavin, and Hsiu-hua Shen 2008 “International Marriage in East and Southeast Asia: Trends and Research Emphases.” Citizenship Studies 12 (1): 9–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Medrano 2020Medrano, J. D. 2020Europe in Love. London, UK: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In Singapore, the Department of Statistics uses the term ‘interethnic marriages’ to capture the broad category of intercultural and bi-national marriages. The latest census shows that the proportion of interethnic marriages in Singapore has increased steadily over the years, with interethnic marriages comprising 18.2% of total marriages in 2020 compared to just 12.1% of marriages in 2000 (Department of Statistics 2021Department of Statistics 2021 “Proportion of Transnational and Inter-Ethnic Marriages among Citizen Marriages, Annual.” Ministry of Trade and Industry, accessed 20 August 2022. https://​data​.gov​.sg​/dataset​/proportion​-of​-transnational​-and​-inter​-ethnic​-marriages​-among​-citizen​-marriages). Approximately two out of three of these interethnic marriages involved a partner who did not belong to Singapore’s four main ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian). Additionally, between a quarter and a third of all marriages annually have been between a Singaporean citizen and a non-Singaporean citizen since 1998 (Department of Statistics 2021Department of Statistics 2021 “Proportion of Transnational and Inter-Ethnic Marriages among Citizen Marriages, Annual.” Ministry of Trade and Industry, accessed 20 August 2022. https://​data​.gov​.sg​/dataset​/proportion​-of​-transnational​-and​-inter​-ethnic​-marriages​-among​-citizen​-marriages).

In this paper, we use the term ‘binational marriage’ in the way Kraler et al. (2011Kraler, Alber, Eleonore Kofman, Martin Kohli, and Camille Schmoll 2011 “Introduction. Issues and Debates on Family-Related Migration and the Migrant Family: A European Perspective.” In Gender, Generations and the Family in International Migration, edited by Alber Kraler, Eleonore Kofman, Martin Kohli, and Camille Schmoll, 13–54. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 45) did “to highlight that public debates around these marriages are not just about cultural difference and ‘mixity’, but are very much linked to citizenship and residence rights. […] the term designates marriages involving spouses of different cultural or ethnic backgrounds and different citizenships.” Our use of the term ‘binational marriages’ excludes marriages between partners of the same ethnicity but of different nationalities, the so-called ‘transnational co-ethnic marriages’ (Kraler et al. 2011Kraler, Alber, Eleonore Kofman, Martin Kohli, and Camille Schmoll 2011 “Introduction. Issues and Debates on Family-Related Migration and the Migrant Family: A European Perspective.” In Gender, Generations and the Family in International Migration, edited by Alber Kraler, Eleonore Kofman, Martin Kohli, and Camille Schmoll, 13–54. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 28–30; see also Carol, Ersanilli and Wagner 2014Carol, Sarah, Evelyn Ersanilli, and Mareike Wagner 2014 “Spousal Choice among the Children of Turkish and Moroccan Immigrants in Six European Countries: Transnational Spouse or Co-Ethnic Migrant?International Migration Review 48 (2): 387–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

4.Factors affecting FLP in binational families

Binational parents typically speak languages that differ in their status and prominence within the family’s country of residence. Thus, there is a need to elucidate the factors influencing whether and what kind of FLP is implemented in such families.

4.1Intra-family factors

A factor that has been identified repeatedly as exerting a significant influence on FLP decisions in such families is the attitudes that family members hold towards their minority language (Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Schüpbach 2009Schüpbach, Doris 2009 “Language Transmission Revisited: Family Type, Linguistic Environment and Language Attitudes.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12 (1): 15–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). When the parent whose native language is a minority language holds positive attitudes towards said language, they are more likely to transmit it to their children (Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Schüpbach 2009Schüpbach, Doris 2009 “Language Transmission Revisited: Family Type, Linguistic Environment and Language Attitudes.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12 (1): 15–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Conversely, a parent who has negative attitudes towards the minority language may, even indirectly, discourage their children from using the language (Zaid and Mac 2017Zaid, Ainun Rozana Mohd., and Yin Mee Mac 2017 “The Language Choice among Chinese-Indian Mixed-Marriage Families in Malaysia.” Journal of Modern Languages 19 (1): 1–18.Google Scholar).

Minority language-speaking parents also tend to evaluate the usefulness of their language in relation to other languages spoken in the community (Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Schüpbach 2009Schüpbach, Doris 2009 “Language Transmission Revisited: Family Type, Linguistic Environment and Language Attitudes.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12 (1): 15–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Given that children are disadvantaged in the learning process when their languages are not the medium of instruction at school, parents typically consider it necessary for their children to master the majority language of the community to attain academic and professional success. English has been cited by minority language-speaking parents in various studies as being of equal or greater value than their minority languages due to its status as the putative global lingua franca, as well as its association with better employment prospects (Cavallaro, Ng and Tan 2020Cavallaro, Francesco, Bee Chin Ng, and Ying Ying Tan 2020 “Singapore English.” In Handbook of Asian Englishes, edited by Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha, and Andy Kirkpatrick, 419–447. New Jersey, USA: Blackwell-Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

An awareness of the benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism motivates minority language-speaking parents to transmit their language to their children (King and Fogle 2006King, Kendall A., and Lyn Fogle 2006 “Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents’ Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9 (6): 695–712. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kirsch 2012Kirsch, Claudine 2012 “Ideologies, Struggles and Contradictions: An Account of Mothers Raising Their Children Bilingually in Luxembourgish and English in Great Britain.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Oriyama 2016Oriyama, Kaya 2016 “Community of Practice and Family Language Policy: Maintaining Heritage Japanese in Sydney – Ten Years Later.” International Multilingual Research Journal 10 (4): 289–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Schüpbach 2009Schüpbach, Doris 2009 “Language Transmission Revisited: Family Type, Linguistic Environment and Language Attitudes.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12 (1): 15–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). However, having positive attitudes towards one’s minority language and bilingual development may be insufficient to ensure that one implements language management practices to transmit their minority language. According to Nakamura (2019)Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, without a strong impact belief, which refers to a parent’s confidence in their ability to control their children’s language development, parents may lack the conviction and the willingness required to implement and enforce language management practices in their home when faced with resistance or apathy.

Several studies have also underscored how children are not simply passive recipients of FLP but agents who play an active role in their language development (see Fogle and King 2013Fogle, Lyn Wright, and Kendall A. King 2013 “Child Agency and Language Policy in Transnational Families.” Issues in Applied Linguistics 19: 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Mirvahedi and Cavallaro 2019Mirvahedi, Seyed Hadi, and Francesco Cavallaro 2019 “Siblings’ Play and Language Shift to English in a Malay-English Bilingual Family in Singapore.” World Englishes Online first.Google Scholar; Said and Zhu 2019Said, Fatma, and Hua Zhu 2019 ““No, No Maama! Say ‘Shaatir Ya Ouledee Shaatir’!” Children’s Agency in Language Use and Socialisation.” International Journal of Bilingualism 23 (3): 771–785. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Tuominen 1999Tuominen, Anne 1999 “Who Decides the Home Language? A Look at Multilingual Families.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 140 (1): 59–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). The attitudes that children have towards their minority language and their responses towards their parents’ language management efforts have been shown to encourage or discourage the parents’ efforts (Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Takeuchi 2006Takeuchi, Masae 2006 “The Japanese Language Development of Children through the ‘One Parent–One Language’ Approach in Melbourne.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

4.2External factors

Other factors external to the family that shape FLP in binational families are the presence or absence of institutional and community support for the use of minority languages. Community support can help counter the influx of societal discourses and pressure and encourage minority language-speaking parents to transmit their language to their children (Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Oriyama 2016Oriyama, Kaya 2016 “Community of Practice and Family Language Policy: Maintaining Heritage Japanese in Sydney – Ten Years Later.” International Multilingual Research Journal 10 (4): 289–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). However, there is tangible societal and institutional pressure on parents to abandon their attempts at minority language transmission, with this pressure mainly coming from the education system and the societal perception that the majority language will better prepare the children for their future careers (Kirsch 2012Kirsch, Claudine 2012 “Ideologies, Struggles and Contradictions: An Account of Mothers Raising Their Children Bilingually in Luxembourgish and English in Great Britain.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

Making decisions about which language practices to foreground is a central component of parenthood and is therefore inextricably connected with and influenced by cultural and societal notions of what it means to be a parent, particularly public and familial discourses concerning what makes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ parent (King and Fogle 2006King, Kendall A., and Lyn Fogle 2006 “Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents’ Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9 (6): 695–712. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). While some parents might perceive developing bilingualism in their children to be in line with what a ‘good’ parent would do (King and Fogle 2006King, Kendall A., and Lyn Fogle 2006 “Bilingual Parenting as Good Parenting: Parents’ Perspectives on Family Language Policy for Additive Bilingualism.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9 (6): 695–712. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), others may choose not to develop their children’s proficiency in their minority language out of the belief that ‘good mothers’ should focus on developing their children’s proficiency in the majority language (Park 2019Park, Mi Yung 2019 “Challenges of Maintaining the Mother’s Language: Marriage-Migrants and Their Mixed-Heritage Children in South Korea.” Language and Education 33 (5): 431–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 439).

5.Factors affecting the success or failure of families to attain their desired language outcomes

King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry (2008)King, Kendall A., Lyn Fogle, and Aubrey Logan-Terry 2008 “Family Language Policy.” Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (5): 907–922. DOI logoGoogle Scholar have pointed out that the leading cause of families’ disparity in language outcomes is a lack of adherence to a viable language management strategy. The parents who adhere more strictly to their planned approach generally achieve better outcomes than the parents who have not. Döpke’s (1992)Döpke, Susanne 1992One Parent – One Language: An Interactional Approach, Studies in Bilingualism. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar study clearly illustrates this point, with the children whose parents were most consistent in their language choices attaining the greatest degree of proficiency in both the minority and the majority language.

How parents in binational families successfully promote minority language use amongst their children is also affected by how consistently they use the language with their children. In Takeuchi’s (2006)Takeuchi, Masae 2006 “The Japanese Language Development of Children through the ‘One Parent–One Language’ Approach in Melbourne.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar study, almost all the children whose mothers had continued to set aside time to interact with them in Japanese even after they had entered primary school consistently spoke to their mothers in Japanese, while those whose mothers had stopped or reduced their interactions with them after they had entered primary school spoke with their mothers in English. However, as emphasised by Takeuchi (2006)Takeuchi, Masae 2006 “The Japanese Language Development of Children through the ‘One Parent–One Language’ Approach in Melbourne.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, the quality and quantity of the minority language-speaking parent’s interactions with their children are also essential for their minority language development.

How parents respond to their children’s use of the majority language during their interactions has been a significant determinant of their success in maintaining the minority language (Lanza 2004 2004Language Mixing in Infant Bilingualism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar). A minority language-speaking parent may adopt multiple discourse strategies in response to their children’s use of the majority language, ranging from more monolingual strategies that encourage the exclusive use of the minority language to more bilingual strategies that allow for the use of both the majority and minority languages. Lanza (2004) 2004Language Mixing in Infant Bilingualism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar suggests that when minority-language speaking parents adopt a more monolingual discourse strategy, it helps promote greater use of the minority language by their children (see also Döpke 1992Döpke, Susanne 1992One Parent – One Language: An Interactional Approach, Studies in Bilingualism. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kasuya 1998Kasuya, Hiroko 1998 “Determinants of Language Choice in Bilingual Children: The Role of Input.” International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (3): 327–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kirsch 2012Kirsch, Claudine 2012 “Ideologies, Struggles and Contradictions: An Account of Mothers Raising Their Children Bilingually in Luxembourgish and English in Great Britain.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Takeuchi 2006Takeuchi, Masae 2006 “The Japanese Language Development of Children through the ‘One Parent–One Language’ Approach in Melbourne.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

6.Singapore’s linguistic situation and FLP in Singapore

Singapore has four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. English is the language of law, business, and instruction in schools. In contrast, the other three languages are referred to as ‘Mother Tongue Languages’ (MTLs) and are only taught as second languages in schools (Cavallaro and Ng 2020Cavallaro, Francesco, and Bee Chin Ng 2020 “Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Singapore.” In Multilingual Global Cities: Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, edited by Peter Siemund, and Jakob R. E. Leimgruber, 133–159. New York, USA: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). This language policy has its roots in then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s vision that English should connect Singaporeans to the rest of the world, while MTLs acted as a ‘cultural ballast’ to keep locals rooted in their ethnic culture and values (Cavallaro, Ng and Tan 2020Cavallaro, Francesco, Bee Chin Ng, and Ying Ying Tan 2020 “Singapore English.” In Handbook of Asian Englishes, edited by Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha, and Andy Kirkpatrick, 419–447. New Jersey, USA: Blackwell-Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). It should be noted that, within the Singapore context, ‘mother tongue is a departure from the standard linguistic definition, where a mother tongue is typically an individual’s native language spoken and acquired from birth. MTLs in Singapore may or may not be the mother tongues of many Singaporeans and are, instead, the languages that match the ethnic background of Singaporeans (Tan 2014Tan, Ying Ying 2014 “English as a ‘Mother Tongue’ in Contemporary Singapore.” World Englishes 33 (3): 319–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). All school students are, with few exceptions, assigned MTLs based on their ethnicity (i.e., Mandarin Chinese for the Chinese, Tamil or, recently, another Indian language for the Indians, and Malay for the Malays) and are required to learn an MTL for a minimum of ten years during Primary and Secondary school.

The government promotes bilingual education as the cornerstone of the education system in Singapore. It is thus not surprising that the importance of learning MTLs has consistently been reiterated by the government (Lee 2019Lee, Hsien Loong 2019 “PM Lee Hsien Loong at 40th Anniversary of Speak Mandarin Campaign.” Accessed 16 Nov. pmo​.gov​.sg​/Newsroom​/PM​-Lee​-Hsien​-Loong​-at​-40th​-Anniversary​-of​-Speak​-Mandarin​-Campaign). Nonetheless, despite the government’s best efforts to encourage MTLs among Singaporean children, there continues to be a steady shift away from MTLs amongst Singaporean families, with English fast becoming the language of choice across all domains (Cavallaro and Ng 2020Cavallaro, Francesco, and Bee Chin Ng 2020 “Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Singapore.” In Multilingual Global Cities: Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, edited by Peter Siemund, and Jakob R. E. Leimgruber, 133–159. New York, USA: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

FLP studies in Singapore have pointed out that many parents have internalised the government’s language ideologies and rhetoric concerning bilingualism and the MTLs (Curdt-Christiansen 2016 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Accordingly, parents tended to take a positive view of the country’s bilingual education policies and echo the government’s position that the MTLs serve as a link to one’s culture and heritage. However, notwithstanding their positive attitudes towards bilingualism and the MTLs, the FLP in these families was ultimately heavily shaped by the socio-political reality in Singapore, which privileges English over the MTLs and has made it the medium of all major examinations as well as the primary language required for employment in Singapore (Cavallaro, Ng and Tan 2020Cavallaro, Francesco, Bee Chin Ng, and Ying Ying Tan 2020 “Singapore English.” In Handbook of Asian Englishes, edited by Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha, and Andy Kirkpatrick, 419–447. New Jersey, USA: Blackwell-Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Cheng 2020Cheng, Chen-Chen 2020 “Eye on the Future: Diverse Family Language Policy in Three Singaporean Malay Homes with Preschool Children.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education 14 (1):125–147.Google Scholar; Hu and Ren 2017 2017 “Language Ideologies, Social Capital, and Interaction Strategies: An Ethnographic Case Study of Family Language Policy in Singapore.” In Family Language Policies in a Multilingual World: Opportunities, Challenges, and Consequences, edited by John Macalister, and Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi, 195–216. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar).

Within Singapore’s educational system, three courses of action are available to parents in binational families (Ministry of Education Singapore 2021Ministry of Education Singapore 2021 “Exemption from Taking a Mother Tongue Language.” Accessed 20 August 2022. https://​www​.moe​.gov​.sg​/primary​/curriculum​/mother​-tongue​-languages​/exemption).

  1. They may choose to have their children study one of the three official MTLs.

  2. They may opt to let their children take one of six approved foreign languages instead of an MTL.

  3. They may apply to exempt their children from studying an MTL.

There remain two significant caveats to having one’s child take an approved foreign language or be exempt from taking an MTL. The first is that there are only six approved foreign languages (Ministry of Education Singapore 2021Ministry of Education Singapore 2021 “Exemption from Taking a Mother Tongue Language.” Accessed 20 August 2022. https://​www​.moe​.gov​.sg​/primary​/curriculum​/mother​-tongue​-languages​/exemption), and no provisions exist for parents who wish to have their children study other languages. The second and arguably more major caveat is that being exempt from taking an MTL or taking an approved foreign language instead of an MTL can have an appreciable impact on a child’s subsequent educational opportunities, as these students will be assigned a lower grade for their MTL during the computation of their Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE) scores.

Given that the composite score for the PSLE is calculated with equal weighting to English, Mathematics, Science, and MTL, being assigned a lower grade for MTL will undoubtedly impact which secondary school these students can be admitted into as admission to ‘good’ secondary schools is highly competitive. Enrolling their children in a good secondary school is a significant concern for most parents in Singapore.

While several studies have explored the influence of the government’s language policies on the language practices and policies of Singaporean families (Cheng 2020Cheng, Chen-Chen 2020 “Eye on the Future: Diverse Family Language Policy in Three Singaporean Malay Homes with Preschool Children.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education 14 (1):125–147.Google Scholar; Curdt-Christiansen 2016 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Hu and Ren 2013Hu, Guangwei, and Li Ren 2013 “Prolepsis, Syncretism, and Synergy in Early Language and Literacy Practices: A Case Study of Family Language Policy in Singapore.” Language Policy 12 (1): 63–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2017 2017 “Language Ideologies, Social Capital, and Interaction Strategies: An Ethnographic Case Study of Family Language Policy in Singapore.” In Family Language Policies in a Multilingual World: Opportunities, Challenges, and Consequences, edited by John Macalister, and Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi, 195–216. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar), these studies neither featured nor focused on the experiences of binational families living in Singapore. The study presented in this article is the first to examine the language practices and policies of Singaporean-Japanese families in Singapore through the lens of Family Language Policy.

7.Methodology

A qualitative approach was adopted for data collection. The data was collected from five Singaporean-Japanese families living in Singapore. The following criteria were used for participant recruitment: (1) the parents in the family should comprise a Singaporean citizen and a Japanese citizen; (2) the parents should have at minimum one child that was at least of kindergarten-going age; (3) the family should currently reside in Singapore.

7.1Participants

Two of the families were acquaintances of one of the authors, while the other three were recruited through the snowball sampling method (Tye-Williams 2017Tye-Williams, Stacy 2017 “Sample Versus Population.” In The Sage Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, edited by Mike Allen, 1523–1526. Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar). The profiles of the families interviewed are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1.Summary of participants’ profiles
Family Role Age Nationality Years living in Singapore
Family A Father 47 Japanese 19
Mother 45 Singaporean
Son 12 Dual
Daughter 10 Dual
Family B Father 55 Japanese 33
Mother 55 Singaporean
Elder Son 25 Singaporean
Daughter 22 Singaporean
Younger Son 18 Singaporean
Family C Father 62 Japanese 26
Mother 58 Singaporean
Son 24 Singaporean
Daughter 23 Singaporean
Family D Father 44 Singaporean
Mother 41 Japanese 12
Son  8 Dual
Daughter  6 Dual
Family E Father 44 Singaporean
Mother 44 Japanese 13
Elder Son 12 Dual
Younger Son  9 Dual

7.2Instruments and procedure

A semi-structured interview was conducted with the parents in each of the five families and two children from two of these families. The two children interviewed were the elder son from Family B, aged 25 years old, and the younger daughter from Family C, aged 23 years old. The two of them were interviewed separately from their parents. The younger children were not interviewed, and the other older children were not available for an interview due to work and study commitments.

A list of interview questions was prepared before the interviews. The questions included the participants’ linguistic backgrounds, their language choices inside the home, the linguistic environment within their homes, and their attitudes towards acquiring and transmitting the languages used within their families. The children were asked similar questions except for questions relating to the process of crafting an FLP.

The initial interviews for each family lasted between one and a half to two and a half hours and were conducted face-to-face at the participants’ houses. Additional clarification concerning the content of the interviews was sought through follow-up Skype interviews. The primary language used by both the author and the interviewees during these interviews was English. The interviewer only used Japanese to clarify the meaning of specific questions as and when it was thought that doing so would aid the interviewee’s comprehension. All the interviews were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed.

7.3Participant observation

The visits for the interviews also doubled as participant observation sessions. The timing of the visits was arranged so that most of the family members were at home, which allowed the interviewer to observe family interactions. Particular attention was paid to the languages used in parent-child and sibling interactions. The interviews followed these observations sessions.

8.Findings

8.1Language practices

The five families fall into three distinct categories per the language used when the children speak with their parents. The three categories are outlined below.

8.1.1Category 1 – The family speaks predominantly in Japanese to the children

In both Family D and Family E the Japanese mothers reported that they spoke predominantly in Japanese with their children. English was only used when the children could not understand them or when other non-Japanese-speaking persons were involved in the conversation. The husband of Mother E reported that she used “100% Japanese” whenever she spoke with her children, while Mother D described herself as using Japanese only 70% of the time. Mother D’s interactions with her children were observed to contain instances of intrasentential code-switching, including hybridised constructions such as wash wash shitekureru (‘could you help me wash this?’).

The children in both families were observed to use some Japanese when speaking with their Japanese mother, with the children in Family E appearing to do so far more consistently than the children in Family D. Lending weight to the observation is Father D’s assertion that “they understand [Japanese], but they don’t speak so much.” The children in Family E were also observed to intermittently incorporate some Japanese vocabulary in their exchanges, giving rise to such constructions as hurry up and do hamigaki (‘hurry up and brush your teeth’).

8.1.2Category 2 – The family speaks in an English-dominant mixed code

Families B and C demonstrated the highest variability in proficiency among the children. Both families have at least one child who is proficient in Japanese, while their siblings have minimal proficiency. The mothers in both families reported being able to speak some Japanese, but reported talking to their children almost exclusively in English. Father B occasionally spoke to his elder son and daughter in Japanese when joking or scolding them and when discussing topics related to Japan, such as Japanese culture and Japanese food. Yet, he does not speak to his younger son in Japanese, as he does not understand as much Japanese as his siblings. Father C stated that he sporadically spoke Japanese to his children as he was afraid that he would “confuse” them. This idea is a prevalent misconception highlighted in the literature on multilingual language acquisition. For instance, De Houwer (2020) 2020 “Harmonious Bilingualism: Well-Being for Families in Bilingual Settings.” In Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and Development: Social and Affective Factors, edited by Andrea C. Schalley, and Susana A. Eisenchlas, 63–83. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar describes how her taxi driver of Ethiopian descent chose not to speak his mother tongue, Oromiffa, to his new-born for fear of confusing him because the baby was being brought up in the United States. His conscious effort to only speak English to the baby parallels Father C’s motivations in our study.

Both families reported using an English-dominant mixed code when communicating as a family. This was evident during the participant observations at their homes. In Family B, code-switching to Japanese is generally restricted to food names and teasing. In Family C, many Japanese words used by the father have been assimilated into the family’s lexicon over time. Father C described this process succinctly: “my English vocabulary is limited, so certain things I use Japanese, so that word became our common language.” Mother C would frequently code-switch when speaking to her children. For example, she was heard blending English and Japanese to make utterances such as English, deshō? (‘English, right?’).

In Family B, the older siblings who possess greater proficiency speak to their father in Japanese more frequently. In particular, the elder son, who is the most proficient of the three children, reported that he sometimes uses Japanese instead of English when speaking to his father. In Family C, the youngest sibling, who is relatively proficient in Japanese, reported using it with greater frequency with her father. During the participant observations, she frequently switched to Japanese with her father to make herself better understood.

Taken together, these points seem to suggest that the use of Japanese in the home is contingent on how proficient and comfortable the children are with the language. In a way, these children foreground the agentive role that they play in directing not only the content of conversations but also co-construct the language ecology of the home through the selection and use of specific languages over others in their communication with their fathers. These children act as language brokers (Morales, Yakushko and Castro 2012Morales, Alejandro, Oksana F. Yakushko, and Antonio J. Castro 2012 “Language Brokering among Mexican-Immigrant Families in the Midwest: A Multiple Case Study.” The Counseling Psychologist 40 (4): 520–553. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Tse 1995Tse, Lucy 1995 “Language Brokering among Latino Adolescents: Prevalence, Attitudes, and School Performance.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 17 (2): 180–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), interpreting their utterances in a language that their fathers would understand better as they engage in meaning creation.

8.1.3Category 3 – The family speaks mainly English

The Japanese father in Family A reported speaking to his children in English and only used Japanese with them when forced by his wife. The mother claimed to speak to their children in English 80% of the time, with the remaining 20% of interactions carried out in Mandarin. Like Mother C, she opts to use Mandarin with her children as their “secret language.” The language of communication between husband and wife is English, but report using simple Japanese with each other when they do not want the contents of their conversation to be known to others, including their children. This unique way the three languages are used indexes how language functions as a communicative commodity for meaning-making within the household (cf. Wright 2020Wright, Lyn 2020Critical Perspectives on Language and Kinship in Multilingual Families. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). The selection of which linguistic resources to use with each interlocutor is intentional and goal-driven, fulfilling the speaker’s intended purpose of including and excluding different parties from the content of select conversations. The children were reported and observed to communicate mainly with each other in English.

8.2Family Language Policies

A three-way distinction may be made regarding how the five families had implemented language policies in their homes. This three-way distinction is between (1) families that had overtly discussed and implemented an explicit FLP, (2) families that had discussed but had not implemented an explicit FLP, and (3) families that had not explicitly discussed the implementation of FLP.

8.2.1Families that discussed and implemented an explicit FLP

The parents in Family E did discuss what language to use with their children before their children were born and decided that they should use both English and Japanese with their children. They decided to adopt a One Parent One Language (OPOL) approach (Döpke 1992Döpke, Susanne 1992One Parent – One Language: An Interactional Approach, Studies in Bilingualism. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). As Döpke (1992Döpke, Susanne 1992One Parent – One Language: An Interactional Approach, Studies in Bilingualism. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 49) suggests, the OPOL framework encompasses a ‘macrostructure’ belief that is “realised through micro-structure” language choice strategies. This created a continuum between monolingual and bilingual language exposure as in their interactions with their children the mother would speak to them only in Japanese, whereas the father would speak only in English.

When speaking to her children, Mother E actively pretended not to understand her children if they spoke to her in English and would ask “Eh, what did you say again?” in Japanese until they spoke to her in Japanese. This parallel’s the ‘minimal grasp strategy’ described by Lanza (1998)Lanza, Elizabeth 1998 “Raising Children Bilingually in Norway.” International Journal of Sociology of Language 133 (1998): 73–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, where parents would feign incomprehension of their child’s utterance to socialise the child to use the desired target language – in this case, Japanese.

Overall, the language practices of the parents in Family E reveal that they embrace a language ideology that is pro-multilingualism. The effort put in by the parents to decide what languages should be used by whom and in what contexts suggest that they implicitly value the three languages that their children are acquiring. Their FLP has allowed them to attain the desired language outcomes for their children: a certain level of communicative competence in Japanese and proficiency in English and Mandarin.

8.2.2Families that discussed but had not implemented an explicit FLP

The parents in Family A and Family C had initially planned that the father would speak Japanese while the mother would use English and/or Mandarin with the children. Family A had planned to have the father teach their first child Japanese at least once a week with the aid of Japanese textbooks. However, according to Mother A, Father A would only speak to their children in Japanese when she forced him to and would only do so for a few minutes before reverting to speaking with them in English “because he says the kids don’t understand.” Father A felt that his attempts at teaching Japanese were not well received and ultimately stopped holding such sessions consistently. Following this failure to implement their intended language practices for their first child, the parents in Family A did not attempt to put in place any concrete steps to teach their second child Japanese. As Mother A puts it,

When she [their second child] came, totally no need already … because it failed, so we also not motivated.

In Family C the father was often away from home on business trips, which gave him little opportunity to interact with his children as they were growing up. On the occasions that he was at home, he would sometimes attempt to speak to his children in Japanese, but he quickly switched to English as they did not respond to him.

After I go overseas, come back, and I speak them in Japanese, no reaction. I try English to talk to them, then got reaction. Then, also naturally I speak English to them.(Father C)

Ultimately, the parents in Family C gravitated towards an ad-hoc FLP that revolved around using the English-dominant mixed code described earlier. While Father C noted that his younger daughter could presently speak Japanese “quite well,” he maintained that her proficiency could not be credited to him.

These case studies of Families A and C highlight the reality of the challenges parents face and their impact beliefs. In particular, parental language ideologies play a significant role in determining the language practices and management within the home (Schwartz 2020Schwartz, Mila 2020 “Strategies and Practices of Home Language Maintenance.” In Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and Development: Social and Affective Factors, edited by Andrea C. Schalley, and Susanna A. Eisenchlas, 194–217. Berlin, Germany and Boston, USA: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Consequently, if parents believe that the language in question is not a priority for the child, it is unlikely that they will persevere in exposing their child to the language when faced with failure and opposition (Curdt-Christiansen 2009Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan 2009 “Invisible and Visible Language Planning: Ideological Factors in the Family Language Policy of Chinese Immigrant Families in Quebec.” Language Policy 8 (4): 351–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Nakamura 2019Nakamura, Janice 2019 “Parents’ Impact Belief in Raising Bilingual and Biliterate Children in Japan.” Psychology of Language and Communication 23 (1): 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Furthermore, in our study, the children’s lack of responsiveness to language exposure can further detract from the confidence that parents might have when planning to teach their children Japanese, creating a vicious circle that results in the eventual halting of language use between the interlocutors.

8.2.3Families that had not explicitly discussed the implementation of an FLP

Families B and D did not discuss implementing a ‘policy’ for how language should be used at home. English was the default language with all family members in Family B, and code-switching to Japanese typically occurred when they were teasing each other or talking about Japanese food. According to Father D, “it’s just very natural. I speak to them [their children] in English, she [Mother D] will speak to them in half Japanese, half English.” Notwithstanding Father D’s claim that it was “natural” for his wife to speak to the children in Japanese, Mother D spoke English with her children up until they were about one year old, when she realised that they might not be able to pick up Japanese if she continued to speak with them only in English. That is when she started using more Japanese with them. She also reported that Father D’s relatives would chide her and tell her to use Japanese whenever they overheard her speaking English to the children. Mother D also taught her children hiragana and katakana and occasionally asked them to practice writing in Japanese.

Two crucial issues can be gleaned from these findings. Firstly, despite the lack of a ‘solid plan’ for language, the absence of overt planning does not preclude parents’ FLP or their language ideologies. Their approach of not directing their children’s language choice or stipulating specific bounds of linguistic exposure suggests a language ideology that does not attribute significant value on one language over another. Drawing parallels from Curdt-Christiansen’s (2013) 2013 “Negotiating Family Language Policy: Doing Homework.” In Successful Family Language Policy, edited by Mila Schwartz, and Anna Verschik, 277–295. New York, USA & London, UK: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar study on the discourse strategies three mothers used with their children while doing homework, one family adopts a ‘total laissez-faire policy’ that permits the use of various languages without prejudice.

Secondly, we observe the impact of family-external factors, such as the influence of relatives, on the way parents think about language and subsequently how they effect change in the language practices at home (Curdt-Christiansen and Huang 2020Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan, and Jing Huang 2020 “Factors Influencing Family Language Policy.” In Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and Development: Social and Affective Factors, edited by Andrea C. Schalley, and Susana A. Eisenchlas, 174–193. Berlin, Germany and Boston, USA: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Due to the strong ‘shame culture’ most Japanese are socialised to from a young age (Takada 2019Takada, Akira 2019 “Socialization Practices Regarding Shame in Japanese Caregiver-Child Interactions.” Frontiers in Psychology 10: 1545. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), criticism, especially by family members, is seen as highly embarrassing. This could have pressured Mother D to teach Japanese to her children so that they would not be ‘shamed’ for being part-Japanese and unable to speak the language. Several studies have shown that some parents express negative emotions ranging from dissatisfaction, shame, and even anger towards their children if they cannot speak or are not proficient in their heritage language (De Houwer 2017 2017 “Minority Language Parenting in Europe and Children’s Well-Being.” In Handbook on Positive Development of Minority Children and Youth, edited by Natasha Cabrera, and Birgit Leyendecker, 231–246. Berlin, Germany: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Hence, the children’s inability to speak their heritage language well might detract from the family’s overall ‘harmonious bilingual development’ or their subjective appraisal of the bilingual experience.

8.3Reinforcing practices

The families employed a variety of other practices alongside the implicit and explicit language policies that they have implemented in their homes. Many reinforcing methods were adopted by these five families as well.

8.3.1Enrolment in community or language schools or classes

The children in Families A, B, C, and E attended or were attending Japanese language classes conducted by home tutors and language schools. However, most families stopped these classes after a short time as they felt that their children needed to prioritise school activities and believed that these classes were taking up too much time and money. Family D did not enrol their children in any Japanese class. Only the parents in Family E persisted in sending their children to Japanese language classes and enrolled them in a primary school in Japan during the June school holidays. The parents in Families A and B encouraged their children to take up Japanese as a third language in secondary school.

Outside of Japanese language classes, all the children other than those in Family D regularly attended Mandarin tuition classes. Unlike Japanese language classes, Mandarin tuition classes formed a persistent part of the school-age children’s schedules, with classes at least once a week. This highlights how language beliefs can influence practices within the home and may also result in parents involving external agents to provide additional exposure to Japanese and Mandarin, even when it would add to their child’s already heavy workload.

8.3.2Exposure to Japanese outside of parental interaction

In general, all the Families in the study visited Japan annually or biennially to visit their relatives and extended family. Families B and E also receive members of their Japanese extended family in Singapore once a year. The participants across all five families reported that Japanese members of their extended family would speak almost exclusively in Japanese with the children. As noted by Mother B, this was one situation in which her children would be ‘forced to speak Japanese, because they [their Japanese relatives] can’t speak English.’

Aside from maintaining contact with their Japanese extended family, Families D and E also meet with other Japanese or Singaporean-Japanese families living in Singapore. In particular, Family E meets up with other Singaporean-Japanese families several times a year to celebrate Japanese holidays such as Tanabata (star festival) and Children’s Day.

The parents in all five families made an effort to expose their children to various forms of Japanese media when their children were young. This came in the form of Japanese bedtime stories, Japanese games such as Karuta (Japanese card game), and Japanese animations and animated movies. Conversely, children’s daily exposure to Japanese animations and electronic materials was the norm for Family E before the children started kindergarten (pre-school). The rest of the families reported non-structured approaches to Japanese media, resulting in irregular and incidental exposure to the language during the children’s developmental years.

This highlights an important advantage that the younger parents in this study, such as Families A, D, and E, had over their older counterparts, as the spread of digital media and communication technologies in recent times meant that they had a wider variety of resources that they could leverage upon to expose their children to the Japanese language. Furthermore, the internet facilitated Family D and E’s links with other Singaporean-Japanese and Japanese families living in Singapore, granting them access to a supportive community.

9.Discussion

Many factors contributed to these five families’ language policies and practices being the way they are now. This section will present an examination of several of these factors.

9.1Competing language ideologies

The effort that the parents in these five families put into transmitting Japanese to their children was closely linked with the degree of importance they placed on their children learning the language. This degree of importance was, in turn, strongly influenced by the interaction between the language ideologies that they held, specifically the beliefs that they had regarding the emotional, cultural, and practical value of the Japanese language.

The responses of the Japanese parents in the families interviewed demonstrate a shared belief that the Japanese language was intimately connected with Japanese identity and that being Japanese was to speak Japanese. More than one family highlighted this seemingly inextricable connection between language and ethnicity as a reason why they believed it to be essential for their children to pick up Japanese. Father A noted,

Because they [his children] carry [a] Japanese surname. Family name is Japanese. People look at them, and they don’t speak Japanese and [say] how come you got Japanese name and can’t speak Japanese?

Most of the parents also acknowledged that Japanese plays a role in maintaining and strengthening familial ties, as the use of Japanese helps to facilitate communication between their family and Japanese members of their extended family. Indeed, our findings corroborate prior studies suggesting that ‘connectedness’ to one’s culture and family are significant motivating factors in promoting the learning of heritage languages (e.g., Little 2020Little, Sabine 2020 “Whose Heritage? What Inheritance?: Conceptualising Family Language Identities.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23 (2): 198–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

An equal, if not more significant concern for the parents was whether learning Japanese had practical or economic value for their children. Learning Japanese was seen by Mother B to afford the ‘bonus’ of allowing their children to work in Japan or a Japanese company. To most parents, though, this was contingent on whether their family or their children would stay in Singapore or move to Japan. This decision of whether to stay or move was one that parents felt their children would have to make in the future, and especially salient for parents in Families D and E as their children possessed dual citizenship.

Because in the future, as you know, they are dual citizen right. So, in the future, if they decided to stay in Japan, at least they know the language.(Father D)

Accordingly, if they and their children chose to remain in Singapore, then learning Japanese was believed by the parents to be less important for their children than learning English and Mandarin, which were perceived to be of greater value for their children within the Singaporean context because of their pragmatic value as examinable subjects in their child’s primary and secondary school education.

Except for Family E, the language hierarchy in the other families largely mirrors the hierarchy that Curdt-Christiansen (2016) 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar identified as being present in Singapore. The use of English as the main language of communication in Singapore and as a global language of business cemented its position at the top of this hierarchy. At the same time, Mandarin’s increasing economic value and its incorporation into Singapore’s education system ensured that it came in second place. This corroborates findings by other scholars who have shown how parents reflect the government’s language ideologies and rhetoric concerning bilingualism and the official MTLs (e.g., Cheng 2020Cheng, Chen-Chen 2020 “Eye on the Future: Diverse Family Language Policy in Three Singaporean Malay Homes with Preschool Children.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education 14 (1):125–147.Google Scholar; Curdt-Christiansen 2016 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

Hence, despite the notion of being in touch with one’s cultural roots being a core feature for each family, we observe that only two families were more successful in maintaining their heritage language. This could be attributed to the confluence of competing ideologies, parents’ feelings of insufficiency and inability, as well as the deeply entrenched institutionalised policy in Singapore that has promoted English and MTL over heritage languages. This suggests that the home is no longer an insulated, ‘unexpendable bulwark’ of language maintenance (Fishman 1991Fishman, Joshua A. 1991Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual matters.Google Scholar, 94). In totality, the different families reveal how each family’s divergent language beliefs are influenced by factors both within the family and externally. The language ideologies adopted by parents become a multi-way ‘tug of war’ between different push and pull factors. To make matters more complicated, these various factors are foregrounded at different life stages where they could be prioritised differently due to family external circumstances, such as the influence of educational policies or planning for their child’s future career. Hence, our study reiterates the push for a broader range of research describing unique contexts of FLP and their linguistic ecologies so that scholars can better appreciate the diversity and divergence in the way families negotiate and co-construct their language policies and practices.

9.2Beliefs about language learning

The findings from this study highlight the fact that a significant issue faced by most parents is a lack of awareness on how to raise their children bilingually or multilingually. The decisions made by the parents in these five families tended to be based in part on their beliefs regarding language learning. The Japanese parents in Families B, C, and D believed that language learning could only occur if the children were interested in learning the language. Hence, they were reluctant to ‘force’ their children to learn Japanese. Although most parents were aware of the importance of language input in developing a child’s proficiency in a language (Kasuya 1998Kasuya, Hiroko 1998 “Determinants of Language Choice in Bilingual Children: The Role of Input.” International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (3): 327–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Takeuchi 2006Takeuchi, Masae 2006 “The Japanese Language Development of Children through the ‘One Parent–One Language’ Approach in Melbourne.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Yamamoto 2001Yamamoto, Masayo 2001Language Use in Interlingual Familes: A Japanese-English Sociolinguistic Study. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), a few were pessimistic about their ability to provide their children with enough exposure to Japanese to cultivate an acceptable level of proficiency in the language. Consequently, these parents’ impact beliefs (Curdt-Christiansen 2009Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan 2009 “Invisible and Visible Language Planning: Ideological Factors in the Family Language Policy of Chinese Immigrant Families in Quebec.” Language Policy 8 (4): 351–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) led to weak attempts at transmitting Japanese to their children.

Conversely, knowing the importance of language input for their children’s language development convinced Mothers D and E to redouble their efforts to expose their children to the Japanese language.

If I speak (only) English, they cannot catch up the Japanese right.(Mother D)

Even so, these mothers worried that their language policies would hurt their children’s proficiency in English and Mandarin. Mother E expressed concern that her older son appeared to have more difficulty expressing himself in English than her younger son, and she believed this to be the result of his having spent more time communicating with her in Japanese. Such worries concerning the impact that one’s language policies might have on their children’s majority language development are not uncommon amongst parents who are attempting to bring up multilingual children (Kirsch 2012Kirsch, Claudine 2012 “Ideologies, Struggles and Contradictions: An Account of Mothers Raising Their Children Bilingually in Luxembourgish and English in Great Britain.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar) and may be partially attributed to their incomplete or incorrect understanding of children’s language acquisition.

9.3Institutional Policies and Pressures

In keeping with the findings of other studies on FLP in Singapore (Cheng 2020Cheng, Chen-Chen 2020 “Eye on the Future: Diverse Family Language Policy in Three Singaporean Malay Homes with Preschool Children.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education 14 (1):125–147.Google Scholar; Curdt-Christiansen 2016 2016 “Conflicting Language Ideologies and Contradictory Language Practices in Singaporean Multilingual Families.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37 (7): 694–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Hu and Ren 2013Hu, Guangwei, and Li Ren 2013 “Prolepsis, Syncretism, and Synergy in Early Language and Literacy Practices: A Case Study of Family Language Policy in Singapore.” Language Policy 12 (1): 63–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2017 2017 “Language Ideologies, Social Capital, and Interaction Strategies: An Ethnographic Case Study of Family Language Policy in Singapore.” In Family Language Policies in a Multilingual World: Opportunities, Challenges, and Consequences, edited by John Macalister, and Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi, 195–216. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar), this study has found that the state’s education policies exerted a considerable influence on the language policies and practices in these five families. Notably, Singapore’s MTL policy has directly and indirectly constrained FLP in these families. The parents in Families C and E stated that they would have preferred their children to be exempt from taking Mandarin as an MTL at school. Still, they were aware of the negative impact that doing so might have on their educational prospects.

Actually want to exempt, yes. But .., the Singapore education system is like, they have more.., like, benefit if you choose the mother tongue. I don’t think there’s a benefit to take Japanese as mother tongue in Singapore education system.(Mother E)

Mother E highlighted that her children’s PSLE scores could be affected if she chose to have them be exempted from taking Mandarin as an MTL. Mother C reported being advised by the Ministry of Education that her children needed to take an MTL to improve their chances of being admitted to a Singaporean university in the future.

Evident by the fact that their children all proceeded to take Mandarin as an MTL, the importance of Mandarin cannot be overstated for these parents. This was driven by the reason that it was simply a requirement of the Singapore education system. Consequently, the parents devoted time and resources to developing their children’s Mandarin proficiency. These efforts imposed additional demands on their children’s time, which discouraged some of these parents from making Japanese language learning a priority for fear of overloading their children. Such ideology draws parallels between earlier studies where parents were even opposed to bilingualism as they were afraid it might confuse or impose a significant cognitive burden on their children (Byers-Heinlein and Lew-Williams 2013Byers-Heinlein, Krista, and Casey Lew-Williams 2013 “Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says.” LEARNing landscapes 7 (1): 95–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar).

9.4Children’s agency

For some of the children in these families, their current Japanese proficiency is as much, if not more, the result of their efforts rather than their parents’. Both the elder son in Family B and the younger daughter in Family C report that they now actively engage with Japanese media, especially Japanese anime, comics, and games. When both entered university, they chose to enroll in Japanese language courses. Since none of their parents had made a concerted attempt to transmit Japanese to their children, the Japanese proficiency of the children in these two families largely stems from their attempts to learn the language. Both believe it is vital for them to learn the language, not for its practical value but for its emotional and cultural significance. The elder son in Family B notes that the importance of learning Japanese arises from a perceived need to understand his “roots” and prevent Japanese culture from “[dying] off.” For the younger daughter in Family C, Japanese is important to her because she is half-Japanese and because it connects her with her father. She was emphatic about this: “it’s like, choosing English, Chinese, and Japanese is like breathing water [air], it’s like I don’t even have to think about it, that’s definitely the thing I’m gonna choose.” This belief in the importance of Japanese is what compelled them to learn the language, even in the absence of any explicit language policies in their homes that support its transmission or use.

These examples parallel prior studies showing how children can be agentive in deciding the languages they wish to acquire (Fogle and King 2013Fogle, Lyn Wright, and Kendall A. King 2013 “Child Agency and Language Policy in Transnational Families.” Issues in Applied Linguistics 19: 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). Our research shows that some of the children’s desire to learn Japanese pushes them to explore other avenues to acquire the language because it is something they want, despite the lack of input from their parents or support from the family. Thus, although the children put off learning Japanese until they were old enough to act on their own, the volition to seek out classes when they entered university is telling of how intrinsically valuable the Japanese language is to them.

9.5Successful policies

Of the parents interviewed, the parents in Families D and E have undoubtedly been the most successful in cultivating their children’s Japanese proficiency through their home language policies. Notwithstanding the differences in the make-up and circumstances of these five families, the language policies – explicit or otherwise – undertaken by the parents in Families D and E distinguished them from the other families.

The language practices in these two families most closely resemble an OPOL approach. As language input plays a critical role in the development of a child’s proficiency in a language (Kasuya 1998Kasuya, Hiroko 1998 “Determinants of Language Choice in Bilingual Children: The Role of Input.” International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (3): 327–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Takeuchi 2006Takeuchi, Masae 2006 “The Japanese Language Development of Children through the ‘One Parent–One Language’ Approach in Melbourne.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27 (4): 319–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Yamamoto 2001Yamamoto, Masayo 2001Language Use in Interlingual Familes: A Japanese-English Sociolinguistic Study. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar), the adoption of such an approach by the parents in Families D and E had allowed them to provide their children with a greater amount of Japanese input as compared to the parents in the other three families. The fact that the children in Family E were reported and observed to have better proficiency for their age than the children in Family D can be attributed to two factors: the difference in the amount of Japanese input received by the children in the two families, and the differences in enacting an explicit FLP at home.

Differences in linguistic input can account for the varied linguistic proficiencies achieved by the children. Prior research by De Houwer (2018) 2018 “The Role of Language Input Environments for Language Outcomes and Language Acquisition in Young Bilingual Children.” In Bilingual Cognition and Language: The State of the Science across Its Subfields, edited by David Miller, Fatih Bayram, Jason Rothman, and Ludovica Serratrice, 127–153. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar suggests that both the quality and quantity of language input are essential predictors of children’s eventual bilingual language outcomes. These parental input patterns – their choice of language for communication and the contexts in which the languages are used, play a significant role in determining whether children growing up in a bilingual household will use both their languages as well as their fluency (De Houwer 2007De Houwer, Annick 2007 “Parental Language Input Patterns and Children’s Bilingual Use.” Applied Psycholinguistics 28 (3): 411–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In our study, we observed that Mother E used Japanese with her children more frequently and consistently than Mother D. Moreover, Mother E seems to be the only one to have actively employed Lanza’s (2004) 2004Language Mixing in Infant Bilingualism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar monolingual discourse strategies. She pretends not to understand her children’s English utterances and consistently insists they speak Japanese to her. Thus, we observe from these families that specific monolingual discourse strategies such as the OPOL strategy can effectively raise exposure to the target language.

Each family’s FLP plays a significant role in determining language outcomes. Comparing Families D and E, another variable (other than the abovementioned language input) that could explain the difference in outcomes is how explicit each family was in openly discussing their language ideologies and the consequent practices they wanted to adopt. Although both families were pro-multilingualism, Family E opted to enforce an explicit FLP, while Family D took a more relaxed approach to let nature run its course. Our paper is unique in highlighting that input and practices alone are unlikely to be the sole determining factor of successful heritage language transmission and bilingualism within the home. It shows that having an explicit FLP that is clear in its goals and outcomes shapes parents’ linguistic choices, practices, and management. This results in more effective language learning than a more laissez-faire approach to FLP.

10.Conclusion

This study investigated the language ideologies and practices present within the homes of five Singaporean-Japanese families living in Singapore. As the first FLP study to give an account of binational families in Singapore, this article provides a fuller picture of how families in Singapore are affected by the country’s linguistic environment and education policies.

When communicating with their Singaporean parents, English served as the primary language between parents, siblings, and children in all five families. The situation was somewhat different when speaking to Japanese parents. We observed English dominated conversations between the Japanese parents and their children among three out of the five families. Notably, the families did not intend or manage to implement any language practices that support the transmission of Japanese to their children. In the two remaining two families, Japanese was used primarily between Japanese parents and their children. These two families were the only ones to successfully cultivate a level of Japanese proficiency in their children through their implicit or explicit language FLP and practices.

The relative success of the two families demonstrates that, in keeping with previous studies on FLP, adopting an OPOL approach between parents of different nationalities can help promote the transmission of a target language so long as it is adhered to strictly and consistently. Despite not being observed in our study, other possible approaches, such as both parents choosing only to speak the minority language (or target exposure language), could also foster effective language transmission. The efficacy of such approaches could be further explored within the context of bi-national families in future studies. Our study revealed that the absence or failure to enact the intended language practices among families was attributable to multiple factors, including (1) the lack of importance that the parents ascribed to their children learning Japanese, (2) misguided or uninformed beliefs concerning language learning, (3) constraints that the state’s education policies placed upon their access to Japanese language classes, and (4) practical problems such as a lack of time and resources.

Funding

This research is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Research Project 2019-T1-001-080 (Cavallaro).

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Address for correspondence

Francesco Cavallaro

Linguistics and Multilingual Studies

School of Humanities

Nanyang Technological University

639818

Singapore

[email protected]

Biographical notes

Francesco Cavallaro is an Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics. His research interests are in sociolinguistics and the social aspects of bilingualism, especially of minority groups in multilingual contexts. He has published on language maintenance and shift, the demographics of the Italian community in Australia, language attitudes in Singapore, family language policy, language and ageing, and on minority groups in South East Asia.

Yan Kang Tan is now a document quality reviewer supporting the operations of a company in Japan. Prior to this, Yan Kang completed a Bachelors degree in the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Yan Kang is primarily interested in bilingualism and multilingualism from social and cultural perspectives. His research experience is in topics related to family language policy and language attitudes.

Xie Wenhan is a PhD candidate in the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. He completed a Bachelors and Masters in the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Wenhan is primarily interested in examining bilingualism and multilingualism from social, cultural, and psycholinguistic perspectives. His research interests include topics related to family language policy, language attitudes, and the intersection of bilingualism, executive functions, and culture.

Ng Bee Chin is an Associate Professor in Linguistics and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies. She works in the area of bilingualism and multilingualism with a focus on the impact of language contact on individuals and their community. Her research approach is to explore both cognitive and social aspects of language use. Currently, she is working on language and emotion in multilinguals, language attitudes, identity and social categorisation and communicative aspects of aging.