Keywords

1 Introduction

The growth of globalisation and increased global mobility caused demographic shifts in countries welcoming migrants, transnational families, and jobseekers. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) received an influx of workers and experts called ‘expatriates.’ Haak-Saheem and Brewster (2017) define ‘Expatriation’ as “to be relocated to a country of which they are not a citizen; intend to be there for a year or more but for their stay not to be permanent; have a regular job in the host country” (p. 424). According to UN, the fifth-largest international migrant stock in the world is in the UAE (Malit & Al Youha 2013) creating a superdiverse population (Hopkyns, Zoghbor & John Hassall 2018). This engendered a ‘demographic imbalance’ with Emirati locals becoming a minority and expatriates the majority (Dubai Statistics Center 2020). Consequently, English emerged as the lingua franca despite Arabic being the official language (Randall & Samimi 2010). Thus, the Arabic-speaking community in the UAE mostly comprises Emirati locals and Arab nationals while English language is used pervasively in several sociolinguistic domains, such as families, media, education, work, and business. Hence, the bilingual model in the UAE has shifted to becoming subtractive in nature wherein English is the primary language used in communication (Al-Issa & Dahan 2011; Sullivan 2015; Musmar 2018; Hopkyns 2020). As a result, numerous studies focused on the implications of this subtractive bilingual model in this unique context on Emiratis’ linguistic hybridity and cultural identity (Hopkyns, Zoghbor & Hassall 2021). However, limited studies focus on the implications of this subtractive model on expatriate families and their children. To address this gap, a pilot study was conducted on two families to test data-gathering instruments and ensure trustworthiness before the full-scale research.

1.1 Research Problem

Family Language Policy (FLP) research has been conceptualised in the works of King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry (King & Fogle 2006, 2013; King, Fogle & Logan-Terry 2008) and Spolsky (2012a, 2012b). After the widespread of English as a global language, FLP research focused on three topics: the centrality of the family domain in children’s linguistic competence, the necessity of intergenerational home language transmission, and the reversal of language shift. This pilot study represents a small-scale research project that is conducted prior to the final full-scale one and addresses methodological challenges to assure trustworthiness.

1.2 Research Questions

  1. 1

    What are the methodological challenges encountered by the researchers in piloting the data collection instruments? A sub-research question is: how did the researchers adapt the methodology to respond to challenges?

  2. 2

    What are the initial themes that emerged from the pilot study in the case of the two Jordanian expatriate families and their FLP?

1.3 Significance of the Study

This study is timely and relevant given that His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, launched the UAE declaration of Arabic language in 2021 (Saleh & Mohamed 2021).In addition, the study aims to contribute to the existing body of literature on FLP and Arabic sociolinguistics concerning methodology. Smith-christmas (2016) Albirini (2016), and Bassiouney (2020) identified the lacunae for future research in the field of FLP as there is a lack of studies situated in the Middle East/Arab region -since the majority of FLP studies are situated in Western, industrialized societies- and the need for methodological innovations.

1.4 Theoretical Underpinning

This study is underpinned by Spolsky’s (2012a, 2012b) Family Language Policy (FLP) theoretical model that comprises language beliefs, practices, and management (Fig. 1). Spolsky posits that “the home is probably the most important domain for language maintenance” (2012a, 2012b, p.11). King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry define FLP as “explicit and overt planning in relation to language use within the home among family members” (2008, p.1), and argue that FLP represents a comprehensive framework for understanding language use and language choice within the family sphere and tries to answer questions on how languages are learned, managed, and negotiated among family members.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Spolsky’s Family Language Policy Model (adapted from Gaynor 2018)

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2 Methodology

2.1 Data Collection

The study employed a purposive sampling technique that defined the selection criteria of the participating families:

  1. 1-

    Both parents hold a Jordanian passport.

  2. 2-

    Family has been living in Dubai for a minimum of two years.

  3. 3-

    Family has school-age children.

  4. 4-

    Both parents are native speakers of Arabic.

The lead researcher approached families from her friendship circle (since she belongs to this speech community) and the ones who showed interest and met the eligibility criteria signed informed consent forms.

Context:

After several trials of trying to find eligible families, two Jordanian expatriate families met the criteria and agreed to participate in the pilot study in May-June 2022.

Instruments:

Face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews with the mother and father, and two to three audio recorded observations of the children’s natural utterances. The observation was planned to be video-recorded; however, the participants expressed their reservations regarding this method; the lead researcher altered it to audio recording which received the participants’ informed consent. Throughout the research process, the researcher kept a reflexive journal and reflected upon with the participants’ feedback and suggestions.

2.2 Participants

Table 1 shows the participants’ pseudonyms to ensure the confidentiality of their identities (Johnson & Christensen 2017), the families’ demographic profile, and given consent. Family 1 had two children, one girl and one boy while Family 2 had one girl and two boys. All participants consented fully to participate, except for Lina who partially provided her consent. This is considered one hurdle that is discussed in the results section.

Table 1. Participants’ Profile and Consent Forms for Interviews and Observations
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3 Data Analysis

Interviews:

Parents were interviewed for 34–48 min using an audio recorder. The topics of interviews commenced with some demographic information such as name, age, gender, education, profession, number of children, and their ages (Merriam & Tisdell 2016). This was followed by the languages they speak. Then, participants were asked to elaborate on language shift-related topics, such as codeswitching between Arabic and English, schooling, language acquisition and bilingualism, the parents’ thoughts, beliefs, practices, and what strategies do/did parents implement at home to manage the languages used in this domain and maintain the home language. Interview data were analysed using thematic content analysis (Williams & Moser 2019).

Observations:

Observations of natural speech took place in the following social activities: child play time, family lunchtime or/and dinnertime, gaming, after-school pickup time, and bedtime chitchat. The settings included: kitchen, living room, car, kids’ bedrooms. Natural speech was transcribed and analysed linguistically to provide evidence to language shift through codeswitching patterns and the dominant language.

4 Results

4.1 Methodological Challenges and Adaptations

Contextual Challenges and Recruiting Families:

The first contextual challenge occurred when members of participating families tested positive for COVID-19. In 2022, families were still concerned about the pandemic, and schools and universities were still implementing the mandatory provision of wearing masks in closed places (Patterson 2022). Though the UAE relaxed the social distancing rule in the first quarter of 2022, families were still worried and this resulted in difficulty finding voluntary participants at the beginning of the year 2022.

Another contextual challenge that faced the researcher in the second round was that after recruiting families to participate in the pilot study, both families ended up relocating to other GCC countries. Dubai is well known for being a transient emirate wherein expatriates stay for a relatively short period and return to their home countries or move to other countries seeking better opportunities (Rinella 2019). This is part of the contextual challenges that researchers might face and feel obliged to restart the whole recruiting process as it requires flexibility while accepting ambiguity throughout the process (Merriam & Tisdell 2016).

In the third round of recruiting, one family that provided consent and had been interviewed withdrew before the observation took place. Parents expressed their reservations regarding the topic as they reflected on their family’s linguistic practices for the first time and realized that the interview questions were eye-openers. The mother said, “It’s a wakeup call, things need to change.” The mother became cognizant of the fact that there was no conversation happening to be observed. Every member was habituated to sitting on their devices, when at home. The example from this family could perhaps be worth further investigating as a phenomenon that could be a result of modernity, technological advances, and perhaps the pandemic. These changes may have impacted on the socialization and communication patterns in the family.

Even though the recruitment of families was planned to take a month in the research pilot plan, it took nearly five months. A fourth round of trials commenced to find eligible participants. Nevertheless, one of the participants withdrew midway. The consent issue emerged as a prominent challenge in the pilot study. Lina, who expressed her restlessness, asked to not be observed in the middle of the observation data collection process. When asked about the data that was already collected before her decline then, she had no objection to that data being used in the pilot study. It is necessary to point out that Lina wanted to stop at that point in time and her right not to continue was fully respected instantaneously. Hence, the data collected from her was limited, which is one ethical hurdle that qualitative researchers might face when conducting observations.

Cultural Challenges:

The observations in Jordanian families were faced with few hurdles. Although parents read the consent form, signed it, and were fully aware of the procedures, the moment that the researcher planned an observation the mothers in both families felt uneasy about video recordings. These examples of two Jordanian families could be limited and ungeneralisable, yet they do reflect the extent of privacy boundaries within their micro-culture that characterizes them when it comes to video-recording the children’s utterances. Hence, they both agreed that audio recording is a better alternative that makes them feel more at ease. Juxtaposed against the FLP literature that is mostly situated and carried out in Western contexts (Curdt-Christiansen 2020), in which the researchers reported negligible instances of hurdles or difficulties emerging when conducting their ethnographic research on families that were not related to the researcher, the researchers in the current study report facing cultural challenges that required adaptations in the methods.

Adaptation of Interview Questions:

The interview questions had minor modifications. New questions were added to the semi-structured interview questions. In the reflective journal, the lead researcher pinpointed that there were questions that seemed vague to the participants, hence, they were rephrased to become more succinct. Two questions were also added; one on the extracurricular activities related to Arabic or Islamic such as after-school calligraphy and Quran memorization, in which parents enrolled their children as a means to strengthen the use of their mother tongue; the other one was on strategies parents applied to or wish to apply to preserve Arabic language use in the home environment to allow parents to explicitly ponder their strategies or lack thereof which could result in the lack of a linguistic directionality/family policy.

Adaptation of Observation Method:

The researcher negotiated the best model of audio observation with the mothers. This resulted in altering the role of the lead researcher from being a participant-observer to a non-participating and unobtrusive observer and the role of mothers from mere participants to co-researchers. The benefits of adopting this participatory model of observation arise from the reduction of Hawthorne’s effect (Cohen, Manion & Morrison 2018) and optimizing mothers sense of ownership and partnership (Creswell 2012; Creswell & Creswell 2018). This major adaptation of the observation method required a brief face-to-face training in which the researcher provided guidelines on the procedures of when, where, and how to record. The mothers started sending short and long audio recordings that they were happy to share.

4.2 Initial Themes of FLP

After visiting the transcribed data, three themes emerged from the thematic analysis that are underpinned by FLP:

4.3 Language Ideology

Positive Attitudes and the Perceived Value of Languages:

All parents were native speakers of Jordanian dialect. Parents in both families reported that their competency in Arabic was excellent and reflected a positive attitude towards speaking it. Fathers said that their English is excellent, however, mothers indicated that their English skills are weak/Good. This could be indicative of the fathers’ value of languages and embracing bilingualism (Razem 2020a, 2020b), and even more accurately additive bilingualism (King & Fogle 2006). For both families, identity construction was a major theme that was linked to Arabness and Islam (Razem & Pandor 2023).

Parental Perceived Value of Schooling and the Role of School:

In both families, parents were well educated. Both fathers are business owners while mothers are housewives. Parents chose to enrol their children in private international schools. This could be indicative of a high standard of living of these families. Fishman (1991) and Spolsky (2012b) asserted that parental choice of school has a huge impact on the language development of children, language choice, bilingual model, and language shift.

Language Practices:

The analysis showed that the data gleaned on language practices from the parents’ interviews is congruent with the data gathered from observing the natural utterances of children.

Language Management:

Parents reported using several types of language management strategies to help their children develop both languages while maintaining the use of home language, Arabic, daily at home. In both families, mothers played a crucial role in trying to control, manage, and negotiate language practices of their children. The fact that families perceived Arabic as the home and heritage language led to the parental natural desire to maintain it at home.

5 Conclusion

This pilot study unravelled methodological challenges, prompting flexible adjustments and gleaning key themes. Contextual challenges arose when the researcher sought to find eligible participants. The first key modification was to the interview questions. The interview protocol was an insightful opportunity for the lead researcher to gain practical experience and enhance her interviewing skills prior to conducting the doctoral study. To respect participants’ privacy and agency, observation procedures were altered from video to audio recordings. Mothers became coresearchers, receiving face to face training on audio recording their children's natural utterances, which is an essential development in the observation protocol. Obtaining children's consent was a paramount ethical requirement for retaining the audio recordings. The pilot study fostered reflexivity and respect for participants while grounding key themes in Spolsky’s FLP theory. It significantly shaped the research design and offered invaluable firsthand experience on research with families.