In this episode Dr Marie-Josee-Bisson talks to Dr Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen about language choices in the family. How do parents decide which language they will speak to their children at home and are there rules to follow? Xiao Lan talks about Pride, Prejudice and Pragmatism and how these impact on family language decisions. Parents have a big role to play in providing a rich linguistic context for their children. But, parents are not alone and the community, school and government can do more to support the learning and maintenance of heritage languages. Let's start with small initiatives and scale it up!  

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Links to Dr Curdt-Christiansen's research:   

https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/xiao-lan-curdt-christiansen  

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8973-5251  

https://familylanguagepoli.wixsite.com/familylanguagepolicy  

https://www.languageathome.info