UAE Bilingual children’s early linguistic environments: nannies and maids as embodied agents of parental language ideologies

Fatma F.S. Said, Zayed University
Nadine Jaafarawi, Zayed University

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Abstract

Children’s early social environments are crucial for their emotional, social, cognitive, and, most importantly, language development. Parents and caregivers design environments through deliberate and non-deliberate choices and actions that contribute to creating unique home linguistic environments. This first-of-its-kind paper is based on a common, yet complex, phenomenon of Emirati parents deliberately hiring domestic staff to help their children acquire English or Arabic in the preschool years. It employs a family language policy and thematic analysis lens to increase understanding of how linguistic environments are formed and the effect hired help may have on children’s language development. Data were collected through researcher field notes, maid conversations, and parental interviews. The findings suggest that language ideologies, practices, and management strategies are intertwined with parental desire to offer their children as much cultural capital as early as possible through acquiring symbolic resources by hiring maids and nannies who possess them. This evidence may offer important reasons for individual differences in children’s bilingual language development outcomes. The data offer a rich account of how Emirati parents enact agency to ratify their beliefs about what constitutes family, child-rearing, and language learning in a society often viewed as homogeneous, passive, and completely dependent on domestic help.

ISSN

0143-4632

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Disciplines

Education | Linguistics

Keywords

Arabic, family language policy, Family multilingualism, linguistic environment, power, symbolic resources

Scopus ID

105010215956

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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