“Maybe it was a shield, you know”: Exploring family language policy through the lens of perezhivanie

Abstract

The current study builds an argument for using Vygotskian perezhivanie as a theoretical perspective to explore the becoming and being of family language policy (FLP). We shift the focus from the three components constituting FLP – language beliefs or ideologies, language practices, and language planning or management – to the individual. Namely, we suggest focusing on the individuals who sift their explicit and implicit FLP decisions through their emotional lived experiences – perezhiviniya. The study draws on interviews with two single Russian-speaking mothers in Finland. It explores how they refract their experiences connected to language use (i.e., Finnish and Russian) through the prism of perezhivanie, focusing on individual dramatic events that shape family language policies. The analysis illustrates that participants attach different or even controversial, however, co-existing, meanings to their FLPs. Furthermore, it accentuates the non-linear nature of individuals’ development, and, as a result, the development of their FLP. Above all, tracing the two mothers’ development through the lens of perezhivanie allowed making visible the complex trajectories that led them, despite struggles and obstacles, to gain the volition to act and implement a bilingual language policy in their families.