Reported parent-teacher dialogues on child language learning: voicing agency in interview narratives

Abstract

This study investigates parent–teacher dialogues on child language learning as constructed in 19 interviews with migrant parents of Polish ethnolinguistic background, resettled in Norway and caring for young preschoolers and school-goers. Targeting reported speech as a linguistic resource for enacting agency in discourse, the focal interest is in tracing how the interviewed parents draw on this resource to enact and negotiate their agency vis-à-vis their children’s educators. The analysis reveals that the parents use reported speech as a strategic discursive tool to variably claim their agency across time and space. While L2 emerges as the most prominent theme of the dialogues, the participants also display a sense of ownership of the meaning-making processes involved in their children’s L1 development. Through constructions of concerted bilingual home-pre/school support, the parents thus propel their capacity to imagine their children’s membership in the host and home language communities to the fore.