Resumen de Family language policy and maintenance of Persian: the stories of Iranian immigrant families in the northeast, USA

Yalda M. Kaveh

• The purpose of this study is to describe family language practices, beliefs, and management approaches in relation to maintenance of Persian in a group of second-generation Iranian immigrant children in different parts of the Northeast United States. The study focuses on this group of Persian-speaking Iranian families to better understand family language policy and its impacts on dual language development of children in areas where the heritage community is more dispersed. The findings show that development of Persian in children of the participating Iranian families was dependent on a variety of factors including but not limited to family language policy. A complex web of connections between family language policy and several sociopolitical factors of the wider society was at work in shaping the language profiles of these families.