An Indonesian family's strategies and practices for maintaining a child's Japanese in their home country

Abstract

Previous studies on bilingual education have primarily focused on maintaining the heritage language. However, second language maintenance for children in a family setting remains relatively underexplored. Placing her daughter's experiences in dialogue with her own experiences, the first author (auto)ethnographically examined how she and her daughter navigate their mother-daughter relationship and create multilingual strategies in maintaining a second language (Japanese) upon returning to her home country, Indonesia. The first author, who is also the main researcher, collected the ethnographic data for about 26 months, focusing on strategies and efforts to maintain her daughter's second language proficiency at home. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis from a narrative life story perspective, the findings show that these digital and home-based strategies effectively motivated her daughter and supported her Japanese language maintenance. Furthermore, the occasional use of Japanese as the home language strengthened emotional mother-daughter bonding while reinforcing language maintenance. This study proved empirical evidence that intentional home language strategies and practices can successfully support second language maintenance within a family environment. It highlights the importance of family language policy in creating a language-rich environment at home and a digital environment to retain a second language.