Family Language Policy in the Estonian Diaspora in Finland: Language Ideology and Home Language Education
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease see the attached report.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
The Quality of English Language in the text is overall adequate, but the text will need to be carefully copy-edited to achieve a higher level of clarity and readability.
Author Response
Please see the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsHere are some comments, hope you find these useful:
Page 1: ‘In the present article the term ‘home language’ is preferred to the often used term ‘heritage language’.’ - Why is home language preferred to heritage language (could you make your reasoning more explicit)? What is the background of ‘home language’? Now the heritage language is explained more in detail although this is the term that is not used in the article. Later on in a subchapter ‘Socioliguistic situation of …’ the term mother tongue is used that is, however, not discussed in the introduction as one of they key concepts of the study. Especially since Finnish authorities use the term ‘mother tongue’ instead of ‘home language’ you could explain at some point what is the motivation of using ‘home language’ as the main concept of the article.
Page 3: ‘Language practices remain outside the scope of this research.’ - Although the focus is not on language practices, these could still be briefly defined (what are the language practices constituted of)?
Page 3: ‘In order to analyze language beliefs and management, we need to look at a wider context, such as the sociolinguistic situation of Estonians in Finland in general, and the more specific context of each family.’ – In the Figure 1 four contexts are pointed out as assumingly equally important. Could you explain the readers the logic behind choosing here the sociolinguistic context out of these four?
Page 4: ‘Clearly, caregivers’ tendency to overestimate the significance of oral speaking and underestimate the fact that high command of the Estonian language of children living in Estonia is achieved both by the family input and the academic input of the education they receive in their mother tongue.’ -> living in Finland, not in Estonia I presume?
Page 5: ‘There is not enough research on the field of FLP concerning home language classes among Estonian diasporic families in Finland.‘ – To support this claim it would be first good to give an overview of what has been studied so far and against this background you could show which aspects have remained uncovered / what is the gap your research is going to fill.
Page 6: ‘Estonian was also the mother tongue for all the participants and their children.’ – In how many families one of the parents was Finnish (so the home languages were Estonian and Finnish)? Concerning the childrens’ mother tongue is this claim based on the statement of the caregivers? Should it be also discussed more critically (in theory if one of the parents is a native speaker of Estonian logically Estonian is also (one of the) mother tongue(s) of the children. However, especially in bilingual families do the kids feel that Estonian is their mother tongue)?
Data and methodology: From which areas were your interviewees? Operationalization of the research problem could be given some attention (how were the two domains taken into account in the interview questions, what aspects did the questions concern)? Also, how was the interview data analyzed?
Page 6: ‘The section is structured as follows: first, everything that concerned language beliefs and ideology (Q1), following actual practices of the Estonian diasporic families (Q2).’ -> clear subheadings would make reading easier and also strengthen the argument. Now there is no subheading related to Q1 and the one related to Q2 seems to be part of the body text.
Page 10: ‘Since not all participants had experience with HL classes, it was instructive to learn how they explain beliefs of other Estonian families regarding not participating in these free municipal classes.’ – This is very interesting and could be elaborated more (also more critically).
Page 10: ‘In this section actual language practices (linguistic behavior) of Estonian families are examined and analyzed.’ – On page 3 you write: ‘In the present study, we concentrate on language beliefs and language management of Estonian parents in Finland. Language practices remain outside the scope of this research.’ So what is the focus – language management as stated in the theory section or language practices as written in the analysis section?
Page 13: ‘However, it seems that HL classes are underestimated as an important academic activity and rated as another extracurricular activity.’ Page 14: ‘Free municipal home language classes are not always seen as an option to maintain the Estonian language among children, these are mostly listed as one of possible extracurricular activities rather than an essential and effective academic activity.’ – What is the position of the authors here – do they take for granted that the HL classes are ‘an important academic activity’ and if yes, on what basis? So is the reasoning here that the parents do not understand the real value of the HL classes as ‘an essential and effective academic activity’?
Page 14: Comparison with the study of Kaldur et al. – what kind of study did they conduct, what was their sample etc.?
Page 15: ‘The sociopolitical context is that of two friendly states with a long history of cultural connections, no antagonism. In general, there is no social cost of using Estonian (i.e. no stigmatization as a rule).’ – Despite that there are studies that indicate discrimination faced by Estonians in Finland (e.g. Mankki, L. and M. Sippola. 2015. “Maahanmuuttajat suomalaisilla työmarkkinoilla. Intersektionaalisuus ja ‘hyvä kansalainen’ työmarkkina-aseman määrittäjinä.” Työelämän tutkimus 13 (3): 193–208; Zacheus, T., M. Kalalahti, J. Varjo, M. Saarinen, M. Jahnukainen, M.-L. Mäkelä and J. Kivirauma. 2017. “Yläkouluikäisten syrjinnän, kiusaamisen ja rasismin kokemukset.” Terra 129 (1): 3–15.)
Page 15: ‘The families in question have white-collar occupations and are well integrated into Finnish society, yet they believe that their children might choose to build their life in Estonia in future, and proficiency in Estonian would enable this.’ – Or perhaps partly because of that – they have a secure and firm subject positions and therefore also a feeling that they/their children are free to make whatever choices they want to?
The article would definitely benefit from some editing (e.g. periods missing; the reference ‘Kaldur et al. 2022’ is missing from the references; subheading in the analysis section is not formatted accordingly; formatting on the text on page 12 does not seem adequate. There are also some structuring issues (e.g. in the Introduction a new paragraph in the middle of explaining the concept ‘heritage language’). You could also mention that Latokartano school is situated in Helsinki.
Author Response
Please see the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI believe that the manuscript has been sufficiently improved to warrant publication.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe quality of English language of the current version is adequate for publication
