Sustainable Family Language Policy in Multicultural Communities: An Empirical Study of Macao Permanent Resident Families

This study investigated family language policies (FLP) in the current context of the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR). It explored family language ideologies, management strategies, and intergenerational practices through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and participant observations. The findings indicate that Macao permanent residents’ families take Cantonese Chinese as the primary medium of communication and cultural identity. Simultaneously, Mandarin and English are often valued for their roles in academic and professional advancement. Portuguese exhibits a trend of marginalization, despite remaining one of the official languages of the Macao SAR. As for other dialects, they may be used in family conversations but are not considered important languages. Beyond this hierarchy of language values, the researchers also revealed that the FLP of Macao’s permanent residents’ families tends to be driven by both experience and foresight, enabling family members to engage in effective consultation on language choice and language learning. Regarding language practice, children’s multilingual fluency is significantly better than that of their parents. The dominant family language tendency does not influence the consensus of multilingualism and allows code-mixing to appear in conversations. In this article, FLP in Macao families is found to be shaped by both experiential knowledge and future-oriented practical considerations, while also reflecting parents’ affective concerns and responses to broader structural pressures. All these factors together form a decision-making system. In this system, both emotion and reason play their roles simultaneously. If a hierarchical distinction must be made, the rational recognition of the diverse characteristics of the linguistic environment and the dominant status of the main language will be primary.