Order in the chaos : nurses’ perceptions of multilingual families in a society marked by a monoglossic ideology

This paper explores the connection between nurses' multilingual beliefs and their advice on multilingual parenting to families with young children. Data was gathered through video-stimulated reflection dialogues with 11 nurses employed at infant welfare clinics in Belgium. Our analysis disclosed two salient counter topics regarding participants' multilingual beliefs: order versus chaos. The latter refers to nurses' view of multilingualism as a linguistic imbroglio. By 'order', we understand the benefits of multilingualism for cognitive and emotional development, provided that the multilingual environment is strictly regulated, particularly through the rigorous adherence to a consistent multilingual parenting strategy. Nurses' panacea for this linguistic farrago is manifested in their advice to multilingual parents. Their recommendations are consistent: multilingualism can only be advantageous for children through a functional language segregation within spaces (i.e. home versus school) and individuals (i.e. One-Parent-One-Language). Nurses' positive perspective on multilingualism thus hinges on the condition that home languages are neatly transmitted in which the acquisition of the school language will not be impeded. Our findings illuminate how nurses' ostensible multilingual orientations are in fact coloured by a monoglossic ideology in which multilingualism is acknowledged from a monolingual vantage point: as the simple sum of separate languages.

Publication year:2023

Accessibility:Open