Paper short abstract:

Wakai (2023) investigated how parents deal with their child's heritage Japanese language use with Trajectory Equifinality Modelling (TEM). Therefore, in this presentation, I use TEM to examine how the child developed her Japanese. Then, compare her TEM with the parents.

Paper long abstract:

Only a few studies have examined how parents deal with their child's long-term (heritage) Japanese language use from a parenting perspective. Wakai (2022) and Wakai (2023) tried to investigate this using Trajectory Equifinality Modelling (TEM). In Wakai (2022), J, a Japanese father living abroad, used auto-ethnographic TEM to study his decision-making process about his child's use of the Japanese language. On the other hand, Wakai (2023) analyzed how J's foreign wife, who uses Japanese daily, made decisions regarding their child's use of Japanese with TEM and compared them to J's decisions to clarify the J family's language policy. The findings of the study were as follows. First, in the J family, the couple decided on a family language policy and maintained this policy until their child reached adulthood. They felt that their child had become an autonomous user of Japanese at about the same time. Secondly, each made minor changes to their home language policy, but these small changes were not always consciously shared. However, just like parents are independent, children also have their ways of growing up. Their progress in using Japanese might not always be the same as the parent's expectations. Therefore, in this presentation, we will again place "(my child) has grown up to be an autonomous user of Japanese" as the Equifinality Point and use TEM to examine how the child in family J reached this point. Then, by comparing the child's TEM with that of the parents, I would like to clarify (even a little) the relationship between the family language policy and my child's development.