Language and literacy practices and ideologies of Asian interlingual families in Japan

This qualitative case study explores the language practices and language ideologies of five mixed-heritage adolescents from interlingual families living in Japan, in which one parent identifies as Japanese and the other is non-Japanese Asian. For interlingual families, maintaining home languages entails significant difficulties and complexities. Furthermore, mixed-heritage individuals in Japan often face discrimination and stereotyping, and little is known about how language ideologies that suppress diversity impact their language practices. Using the lens of family language policy, raciolinguistics, and translanguaging, this study addresses this gap by examining how mixed-heritage adolescents and their families navigate hegemonic language ideologies. One Japanese-Sri Lankan Canadian family, one Japanese-Filipino family, and two Japanese-Taiwanese families participated in this study, and the home languages represented were Sinhala, Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese Hokkien, Japanese, and English. Qualitative data was collected from multiple data sources and were analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). The findings indicate that the adolescents engaged in translingual practices with their family in physical and digital spaces, some using English in addition to or in the place of their home languages. However, their language practices were impacted by raciolinguistic ideologies in Japanese society connecting their phenotypical appearance with language proficiency, marginalizing multilingual language practices, and discriminating "foreigners," particularly Chinese people. Members of each family, however, held contradictory beliefs, language practices, and expectations, and negotiated the value and usage of home languages and English within the family. This study also revealed the gendered aspect of multilingual parenting, where mothers accommodated to the father’s language preferences and took on the role of raising the children multilingually. Families, educators, and policymakers can draw from insights from this study to better understand the linguistic environment and development of mixed-heritage children and adolescents and foster their multilingualism.