Children’s agency in creating and maintaining language policy in practice in two “language profile” preschools in Sweden

Boyd, Sally,1949Gothenburg University,Göteborgs universitet,Institutionen för filosofi, lingvistik och vetenskapsteori,Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science (author)

This paper presents results from an ethnographic study of language policy as it is enacted in everyday interaction in two language profile preschools in Sweden with explicit monolingual language policies: English and Finnish, respectively. However, in both preschools, children are free to choose language or code alternate. The study shows how children through their interactive choices create and modify language policy-in-practice. We analyze extracts from typical free play interactions in each setting. We show how children use code alternation as a contextualization cue in both settings, but with somewhat different interac- tional consequences. Children in both preschools tend to follow the lead of the preceding speaker’s language choice. Code alternation is also a means to manage conversational roles, for example, to show alignment. While the staff give priority to the profile language, the children show through their interaction that skills in both the preschool’s profile language and in Swedish are valuable.

HUMANIORA Språk och litteratur Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik hsv//swe
HUMANITIES Languages and Literature General Language Studies and Linguistics hsv//eng
Bilingualism
child agency
code alternation
language policy
preschool
Linguistics
Lingvistik
Bilingualism
child agency
code alternation
language policy
prescshool

Huss, Leena,1948-Uppsala universitet,Hugo Valentin-centrum,Projektgruppen Language Policy in Multilingual Preschools and Families(Swepub:uu)leenhuss (author)
Ottesjö, Cajsa,1949Gothenburg University,Göteborgs universitet,Institutionen för filosofi, lingvistik och vetenskapsteori,Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science(Swepub:gu)xottca (author)
Göteborgs universitetInstitutionen för filosofi, lingvistik och vetenskapsteori (creator_code:org_t)

In:Multilingua - Journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication: Mouton de Gruyter36:4, s. 501-5310167-85071613-3684

By the author/editor: Boyd, Sally, 194 ...; Huss, Leena, 194 ...; Ottesjö, Cajsa, ...

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