Mindsets and family language pressure: language or anxiety transmission across generations?

Abstract

This paper addresses language anxiety and monolingual mindsets not only as they relate to family language use, but also to divergent social, cultural, and emotional domains of family language policy (FLP) decisions. It explores associations between language practices within the family, beliefs about multilingualism and language ability (language mindsets), family relations, and negative emotions such as anxiety. Based on interview data from two Turkish families in the Netherlands with high levels of language anxiety, this paper demonstrates how anxiety plays a central and unavoidable role in FLP, influencing family language practices and language development unfavourably. Furthermore, it illustrates how parental anxiety about monolingual language norms among first- and second-generation immigrants affects children’s language use and development. The transmission of anxiety across generations can be prevalent in multilingual, transcultural families due to ‘fixed monolingual mindsets’, negatively influencing multilingual language practices in and outside the family. Anxiety and pressure in regard to monolingual mindsets influence family communication and bonding as well as immigrants’ social interaction both in the host and so-called home country. FLP, when it is built on monolingual mindsets, pressure and anxiety, therefore, has not only linguistic but also social and psychological costs for individuals, families, and society.