Conceptualising a continuum of plurilingual family language policy: a systematic literature review

Family Language Policy (FLP) has received considerable research attention in the last two decades since the term was popularised by King, K. A., L. Fogle, and A. Logan-Terry. [2008. “Family Language Policy.” Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (5): 907–922. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00076.x]. Researchers working in diverse contexts have applied various concepts to frame their empirical work, creating substantial differences in how FLP has been conceptualised and understood in the scholarly literature. Importantly, it is noteworthy that researchers have been predominantly working within the boundaries set by Western-centric epistemologies with little attention given to theories from the Global South. Accordingly, we conducted a systematic review of empirical studies published between 2007 and 2024 to explore this diversity in FLP conceptualisations. We used the most recent version of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Metanalysis (PRISMA) and identified 147 articles that examine FLP. We mapped FLP strategies along the parental ideology continuum; this ranges from monolingualism, which favours a strict separation of languages, to a heteroglossic ideology, which embraces fluid and flexible multilingual practices in the family space. We contend that this continuum contributes to developing a typology of diverse multilingual practices in FLP, further challenging the ‘one-size fits all' approach and drawing attention to the importance of contextualising FLP practices.