Grandparents As Language Socialisation Agents: Intergenerational Caregiving, Family Language Policy, and Heritage Language Maintenance in Chinese Multilingual Families

This paper examines how grandparents function as language socialisation agents in Chinese multilingual families, with particular attention to intergenerational caregiving, family language policy, and heritage language maintenance. Recent family language policy research has increasingly questioned parent-centred models of language transmission and has called for more attention to extended kinship, everyday caregiving, emotional relations, and multilingual family ecologies (Bose et al., 2023; Chen & Cao, 2025). Drawing on a systematic-style review of studies published from 2022 onward, this article synthesises recent scholarship on Chinese multilingual families, heritage language maintenance, fangyan transmission, minority language maintenance, and intergenerational family communication. The review suggests that grandparents are not merely passive carriers of ancestral languages; rather, they often become practical language planners through daily routines such as feeding, storytelling, homework supervision, festival practices, and digital communication with children (Fang & Yao, 2025; Gong et al., 2025). The paper proposes a qualitative multiple-case methodology for future empirical research, combining semi-structured interviews, family language diaries, home language mapping, and naturally occurring interactional recordings. It argues that intergenerational caregiving should be conceptualised as an interactional site where family language policy is enacted, negotiated, and emotionally evaluated. The article contributes to family language policy and language socialisation research by reframing grandparents as active agents whose caregiving practices mediate children’s access to Mandarin, fangyan, minority languages, English, and Chinese heritage languages (King, 2023; Tse Crepaldi & Mirvahedi, 2024).

Grandparents; language socialisation; family language policy; heritage language maintenance; Chinese multilingual families; intergenerational caregiving

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