Childhood bilingualism is a gift; for some …

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Naomi Fillmore, Hanna Torsh, Yanisa Jakklom
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These Australian students learning Indonesian are described as “executives of tomorrow”, whilst students who are already multilingual are framed as facing disadvantages or barriers to achievement. (Source: ABC News, Claire Lindsay)

Imagine four Australian children playing in a playground. Yu speaks Chinese and English, Jakob speaks Arabic and English, Molly, who is from the APY Lands, speaks Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Aboriginal English and, finally, James speaks English and is learning Japanese. All four children use or are learning multiple languages. But which child’s multilingualism is recognised, supported and celebrated by their school, their peers and society at large?

Our new research in the Journal of Sociolinguistics reveals how Australian news media systematically applies different ideological frameworks to each of these children’s language learning based on their racial positioning.

We analysed 85 news articles published between 2013 and 2024 across major Australian outlets like the ABC, Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph. We looked at how journalists frame children’s language learning and use. What we found was a systematic pattern of the same linguistic practices being valued entirely differently depending on whether the children involved were learning additional languages at school as enrichment or were already multilingual through their home and community languages – and critically, on their racial positioning.

Taking a raciolinguistic perspective

In order to examine the relationships between race and language, we took a raciolinguistic perspective. This means we asked how language and race are co-constructed, that is, how language constructs notions of race and how constructions of race influence ideas about language. A raciolinguistic perspective helps us understand why certain linguistic practices (like speaking multiple languages) are celebrated as enriching for some speakers whilst being constructed as deficient for others.

‘Future-proofing’ privileged children vs ‘barriers’ for racialised children

Once we applied this perspective it became clear that there were patterns in the ways different groups of children were represented in our corpus. Perhaps the most striking pattern in our data was the overwhelming association between white, monolingual children’s language learning and neoliberal ideologies of competitive advantage. When media coverage discusses additional language learning for white Australian children, it consistently frames this through economic benefit and cognitive advantage. Languages become “currencies of the new world order”, and children learning them are positioned as “executives of tomorrow”.

In this framing, the articles promote how learning Mandarin, Japanese, or French will “future-proof” privileged children, give them a “competitive advantage”, and provide “opportunities” for advancement. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism are repeatedly emphasised, and language learning is constructed as an optional enrichment; a “gift” parents can give their children to enhance their already secure position in society.

But for children who are already multilingual, the framing shifts dramatically. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who speak Indigenous languages, or children from migrant backgrounds who speak languages like Arabic, Vietnamese, or Punjabi at home, the media coverage is very different. Rather than celebrating their existing multilingualism, articles construct their home languages as “barriers” to learning, obstacles to academic achievement, or problems requiring intervention.

The contrast can be seen in the language used to describe the impact of being a multilingual. For example, one article proclaims the “big impact” that learning another language can have on (implicitly white) children’s educational success. Meanwhile, another headline states there is “no advantage to being multilingual”, referring to a study of students who speak languages other than English at home, predominantly from Indigenous and migrant families. For multilingual Indigenous children in remote contexts, their languages are framed as “barriers” to NAPLAN performance”, with calls to prioritise English “for the benefit of their future employment opportunities”.

A father teaches his children Punjabi at home. Despite Punjabi being one of the largest community languages in Australia, it received minimal media attention in our corpus (only 2 articles) (Source: ABC Central Victoria, Larissa Romensky)

We see that same linguistic practice – multilingualism – is simultaneously an advantage to be gained and a deficit to be overcome, depending entirely on the racial positioning of the child.

Suspicion and securitisation

However, for some racialised communities, particularly Chinese and Arabic-speaking children, media coverage goes beyond deficit framing to active suspicion. Whilst Mandarin learning for white children is promoted as economically advantageous (“the language of the future”), Chinese community language schools serving heritage learners are constructed as potential sites of foreign influence and indoctrination.

For example, headlines warn of “Aussie schoolkids indoctrinated by CCP propaganda” and discuss the “infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party into the NSW public school system”. The same language positioned as valuable for white children becomes threatening when associated with Chinese heritage learners, with articles questioning students’ loyalty: “children will easily grow into a Beijing sympathiser in a conflict situation between Australia and China”.

Similarly, when an early childhood centre in Queensland introduced Arabic through the federally funded Early Language Learning Australia (ELLA) program (the same program celebrated in other articles for teaching Chinese, Japanese, and French to white Australian children), they faced such hostility and threats that the program was discontinued. Rather than framing this as a racist incident, the article normalised the backlash, reporting that “the family understands the sensitivity around offering children language by the way of Arabic”.

Rights for some, but not for all

Beyond these patterns of celebration and suspicion, one additional pattern emerged in our data. Coverage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages frequently employed linguistic human rights discourse, framing language use and education as fundamental, inalienable rights. However, the dynamics of how this rights-based framing operates within Australia’s settler-colonial context are complex and raise important questions about sovereignty and recognition. We explore this pattern in depth in our full article.

Why this matters

Our findings reveal that Australian media doesn’t just report on childhood multilingualism – it actively constructs and maintains linguistic inequalities through racialised framings. The same linguistic practices are valued entirely differently based on children’s racial positioning.

Our research matters because media discourses shape public attitudes, which in turn influence policy and practice.

Our full article, Big Impact or No Advantage? Raciolinguistic Framings in Australian Media Coverage of Young People’s Multilingualism, is now available in the Journal of Sociolinguistics.

The question we’re left with is not whether Australian media upholds raciolinguistic ideologies (our data shows it clearly does) but rather: how can we, as linguists, educators, and activists, from our various positionalities, challenge and reframe these ideologies to advocate for more linguistically just approaches to childhood multilingualism in Australia?

Reference

Fillmore, N., Torsh, H., & Jakklom, Y. (2026). Big Impact or No Advantage? Raciolinguistic Framings in Australian Media Coverage of Young People’s Multilingualism. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 30(2). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.70005