Exploring differences between mothers’ and fathers’ language attitudes in multilingual London

This study investigated the language attitudes of parents raising multilingual infants in London. Using a newly developed questionnaire, 131 mothers and fathers rated their attitudes towards their languages across three themes: (1) their emotional resonance with the language, (2) the significance of the language in their personal life, and (3) its importance in bringing up a multilingual child. Parents varied in the combination of languages they reported speaking, and English, the society language, was either parents’ L1, L2 or L3. Our results showed that both mothers and fathers had similarly positive attitudes towards English, but differed in their attitudes towards their L2: mothers rated their L2 higher than fathers when considering the emotional resonance and the importance of the language but not its role in raising a multilingual child. Both parents rated their L1 higher than L2 when considering emotional resonance, but rated their L1 and L2 similarly for the other themes. Unlike previous work, our results showed that parents were more likely to use L1 (alone or with another language) with their infant, regardless of their attitude scores. Future research can build on our questionnaire to investigate factors shaping parental language attitudes in various contexts, including fluency and language use.