Turkish Heritage Children’s Code-Switching Practices in Classrooms: Creating Interactional Spaces for Becoming Bilinguals
Author(s):
Seyda Deniz Tarim (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Format:
Paper

Session Information

ERG SES C 09, Children and Education

Paper Session

Time:
2014-09-01
11:00-12:30
Room:
FPCEUP - 248
Chair:
Maria Pacheco Figueiredo

Contribution

Many children today grow up in multilingual communities characterized by conflicting language ideologies, with majority languages often seen as routes to school and commercial success, and heritage languages seen as carriers of cultural heritage. As language ideology theorists argue, speakers construct values for the languages in contact in their communities through their language practices (e.g., Irvine & Gal 2000). Language ideologies are very significant in terms of linking language and social identities. Irvine and Gal (2000) define language ideologies as “the ideas with which participants and observers frame their understanding of linguistic varieties and map those understandings onto people, events and activities that are significant to them” (p. 35).Hence, as language ideology theorists point out, there are major ideological associations between language, culture and community. Especially close ties between language ideologies and language use and identity construction may become visible in contexts where languages come into contact. Therefore, when we are talking about a linguistic minority group in a majority culture, as in the present study of Turkish immigrant students living and attending school in the US context, we must consider the children’s language practices in terms of how they are responding to the English-only ideologies of the US school context and the Turkish-only ideologies of their home communities.

However, only a small number of studies looked at how young people respond to conflicting language ideologies in their communities through language practices in everyday peer group interactions (Minks 2010; Garrett 2007; Kyratzis, Reynolds, & Evaldsson 2010; Paugh 2005; Reynolds 2010; Schieffelin 2003; Zentella 1997). Drawing on a view which sees children as social actors in socializing other children (Goodwin 2006; Goodwin & Kyratzis 2007), this paper conducts an ethnographic fieldwork on the everyday interactions of peer groups of second generation Turkish heritage children in two Arizona settings; an elementary school, and a Turkish Saturday (heritage language) School, over a year to examine how the children negotiate ideologies and identities in interaction with peers.

Method

The children in the peer group of Turkish immigrant children followed were between 8 years and 12 years of age. They were either born in the United States, or came to the country as toddlers from Turkey, Meskhetia or Russia. All of the children used Turkish or Mesketian Turkish as their primary language spoken at home. Most of them attended preschools in the U.S. and started to learn English as their second language at early ages. The data collection for this study started at the end of the 2009-2010 academic year (April to June), was continued (for one month in summer 2010, and was then continued throughout the 2010-2011 academic year (October to April). The children’s spontaneous peer interactions with their friends were videotaped at the charter elementary school 3-4 hours a day, two times a week over a year. The children’s peer interactions at the Turkish Saturday School were videotaped 4 hours a day once a week over a year. A small number of friendship groups of children which overlapped in membership across the two school contexts were focused on. The study combines methods of ethnography with talk-in-interaction for data analysis. A reason to utilize ethnography is that it enables a long-term perspective on the range of “linguistic practices entailed in child-based social control and negotiation” (Goodwin & Kyratzis 2012: 383; Goodwin 2006;Evaldsson 2005; Kyratzis 2010) and forms of social organization that are possible for a local peer group of children and an ethnographic perspective is necessary to complement analysis of talk-in-interaction because “participants’ shared background knowledge needs to [also] be taken into account” Evaldsson (2005, 178). The data in this study were transcribed using the Gumperz and Berenz (1993) transcription system. Episodes featuring Turkish-English bilinguals' code-switching practices were identified throughout the data. After transcribing conversations and activities in which I noticed code-switching to be occurring, I compared across activities and conversations and identified some similar practices of code-switching across different activities and recording dates. I used Conversation Analysis to analyze how the children's code-switching functioned locally in moment-to-moment sequences of interaction within their friendship groups. For example, I looked at how the children used code-switching to accomplish changes in 'footing' (Goffman 1981) and participant frameworks (Goodwin 2006)

Expected Outcomes

The elementary school and Turkish Saturday School adhered to an English-only ideology and Turkish-only ideology, respectively. The Turkish-English bilingual/multiligual children of this study used mostly English in their peer group interactions at both sites. The children created domain-associations (Fader, 2001; Garrett, 2005; Paugh, 2005; Schieffelin, 2003) for Turkish and English through their language practices (e.g., Turkish for adult voicing and religious messages; English for peer talk). They also code-switched between Turkish and English to accomplish a variety of conversational purposes, including shifting to a new “frame” (Auer, 1998;Goffman,1981) or kind of talk other than the on-going school task, where could ask questions of and help one another or make commentary. By using fluid bilingual language practices, children affirmed a bilingual peer group identity (Bailey, 2007; Jorgensen, 1998;Kyratzis, 2010; Kyratzis, Reynolds and Evaldsson, 2010; Shankar, 2008; Zentella, 1997). Children’s language practices in ways reproduced, yet also challenged, monolingual language ideologies of the dominant US society and elementary school, as well as of the Turkish Saturday School.

References

Auer, P. (1998). Code-Switching in conversation: language, interaction and identity. London/New York: Routledge. Bailey, B. (2007). Hetereglossia and boundaries. In M. Heller (Ed.), Bilingualism: A social approach (pp. 257-274). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Evaldsson, A. C. (2005). Staging insults and mobilizing catergorizations in a multiethnic peer group. Discourse and Society, 16(6), 763-786. Fader, A. (2001). "Literacy, bilingualism and gender in a Hasidic community." Linguistics and Education, 12(3), 261-283. Garret, P. B. (2005). What a language is good for: Language socialization, language shift, and the persistence of code-specific genres in St. Lucia. Language in Society, 34, 327-361. Garrett, P. B. (2007). “Language socialization and the (re)production of bilingual subjectivities.” In M. Heller (ed.), Bilingualism: A Social Approach (pp. 233-256). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goodwin, M. H. (2006). Hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status and exclusion. Blackwell Publishing. Goodwin, M. H. & Kyratzis, A. (2007). Children socializing children: Practices for negotiating the social order among peers. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 40(4), 1-11. Irvine, J. T., & Gal, S. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P.V. Kroskrity (Ed)., Regimes of language: Ideologies, politics and identities (pp. 35-83). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Jorgensen, N. (1998). Children’s acquisition of code-switching for power wielding. In P. Auer (Ed.). Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity. London/New York: Routledge. Kyratzis, A. (2010) Latina girls’ peer play interactions in a bilingual Spanish- English U.S. Preschool: Heteroglossia, frame-shifting, and language ideology. Pragmatics, 20(4), 557-586 . Kyratzis, A., Reynolds, J., & Evaldsson, A. C. (2010). Heteroglossia and language ideologies in children’s peer play interactions. Pragmatics, 20(4), 457-466. Minks, A. (2010). Socializing heteroglossia among Miskitu children on the Caribbean Coast of Nicarague. Pragmatics, 20(4). Paugh, A. (2005). Multilingual play: Children’s code-switching, role play, and agency in Dominica, West Indies. Language in Society, 34, 63-86. Reynolds, J. (2010). Enregistering the voices of discursive figures of authority in Antonero children’s socio-dramatic play. Pragmatics, 20(4). Shankar, S. (2008). Speaking like a model minority: “FOB” styles, gender and racial meanings among Desi teens in Silicon Valley. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18(2), 268-289. Schieffelin, B. B. (2003). Language and place in children’s worlds. Texas Linguistics Forum (SALSA), 45, 152-166. Zentella, A. C. (1997). Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. Oxford: Blackwell.

Author Information

Seyda Deniz Tarim (presenting / submitting)
Mugla S.K. University
Primary Education
Mugla

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