Navigating bilingualism, autism, and apraxia: a Chinese immigrant mother’s language ideologies and translanguaging practices in Canada

This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) case study examines the language ideologies and practices of a Chinese immigrant mother raising a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) in Canada. Drawing on family language policy and translanguaging frameworks, the study investigates how ideological beliefs, management decisions, and enacted practices interact. The analysis reveals that the dual diagnoses profoundly ruptured the mother’s pro-bilingual ideology, resulting in a medicalized finite capacity belief and a survivalist English-only management strategy. Consequently, this shift generated a maternal language paradox wherein the mother sacrificed interactional quality by performing in a language of self-confessed inadequacy. However, her actual practices evidenced pragmatic fluidity: an intuitive, task-contingent translanguaging that utilised Mandarin, gestures, and culturally salient multimodal resources to scaffold meaning. These findings challenge deficit narratives, introduce the concept of pragmatic fluidity to translanguaging theory, and hold critical implications for culturally responsive practice with linguistically diverse families navigating complex communication needs.