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Children’s beliefs about bilingualism and language use as expressed in child-adult conversations

  • Elin Almér EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 26, 2017

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe young children’s beliefs about language and bilingualism as they are expressed in verbal utterances. The data is from Swedish-medium preschool units in three different sites in Finland. It was generated through ethnographic observations and recordings of the author’s interactions with the children. The meaning constructions in the interactions were analyzed mainly by looking closely at the participants’ turn taking and conversational roles. The results show that children’s beliefs of bilingualism are that you should use one language when speaking to one person; that languages are learnt through using them; and that the advantage of knowing more than one language is being able to talk to (other) people. The results also show that this knowledge of languages is no different from other knowledge within their world. This will probably change over time as the children enter school, and it is something in which our presence as language researchers will have played a part.

Funding statement: Academy of Finland, Research Council for Culture and Society (Grant number 266850).

Transcription key

Regular text

Swedish

Bold text

Finnish

Italics

translation from original languages to English

(( ))

comments of the transcriber

:

prolonged syllable

[ ]

demarcates overlapping utterances

(.)

micropause, i. e. shorter than (0.5)

(2)

numbers in single parentheses represent pauses in seconds

AMP

relatively high amplitude

x

inaudible word

(tack)

unsure transcription

° °

denotes speech in low volume

?

denotes rising terminal intonation

.

denotes falling terminal intonation

=

denotes latching between utterances

ar-

interrupted word

Fare

sounds marked by emphatic stress are underlined

[---]

utterance(s) left out

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Published Online: 2017-4-26
Published in Print: 2017-7-26

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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