“ ‘Schwedis’ he can’t even say Swedish” - subverting and reproducing institutionalized norms for language use in multilingual peer groups

Abstract

The present study explores how minority schoolchildren in multilingual peer group interactions act upon dominant educational and linguistic ideologies as they organize their everyday emerging peer culture. The data draw from ethnographies combined with detailed analysis (CA) of video recordings in two primary monolingual school settings in Sweden. Bakhtin's processual view of how linguistic norms are used for overcoming the heteroglossia of language is used as a framework for understanding how monolingualism is talked-into-being in multilingual peer groups. As will be demonstrated, the children recurrently participate in corrective practices in which they playfully exploit multiple linguistic resources (syntactic, lexical and phonetic features) and the turn structure of varied activities (conflicts, accusations, insults, classroom discourse) to play with and consolidate a collective critical view of not-knowing correct Swedish. Moreover, they transform faulty talk (repeating structural elements, recycling arguments, using parodic imitations, joint laughter, code-switching) to display their language competence, assert powerful positions and strengthen alliances in the peer group. It is argued that such forms of playful heteroglossic peer group practices are highly ambiguous and paradoxically tend to enforce power hierarchies and values associated with different social languages and codes, thus co-constructing the monolingual ideology.

Doing Language Policy: A Micro-Interactional Study of Policy Practices in English as a Foreign Language Classes

“…Some studies do not situate their work as language policy studies per se but focus on language norms, for instance Evaldsson and Cekaite (2010), Copp Jinkerson (2011), Cromdal (2004, Jørgensen (1998), Nevile and Wagner (2008), Slottge-Lüttge (2007) and Söderlundh (2012). All of these studies have been conducted in a Scandinavian context but focus on different types of education and at different levels.…”

“…Let us look at three selective studies from the above mentioned list, which will serve to illustrate the studies which focus on language norms. Evaldsson and Cekaite (2010), for example, explore the multilingual peer group interactions of minority schoolchildren in two primary monolingual school settings in Sweden. The study consists of ethnographies combined with recordings and shows that the children display their ideological orientation towards the majority language through mimicking, teasing and criticizing one another's language use, even when not under adult supervision.…”

From family language practices to family language policies : Children as socializing agents

“…In bilingual SwedishEnglish children's play, multiple languages can be used to negotiate access to play activities (Cromdal, 2001;. Evaldsson and Cekaite (2010) examined peer interactions in monolingual Swedish educational settings and showed how minority language children engaged in corrective practices that targeted others' faulty Swedish, thereby co-constructing the prevalent societal monolingual ideology (see also Cekaite & Björk-Willén, 2013). Moreover, Evaldsson (2005) shows that children oriented to the hierarchical value of majority language by resisting others' criticism of their Swedish language skills and the categorization as not fully competent in Swedish.…”

Çocuklarin İki̇nci̇ Di̇l Kazani̇m Süreçleri̇: Kapsamli Bi̇r Li̇teratür Taramasi

“…Böylece, bir dil sınıfında konuşmanın gelişimi ve oluşumunun hassaslıkla araştırılması gereken bir alan olduğu çok açıktır. Son yıllarda, dil sınıflarında yapılan araştırmalar, dil öğrenim sürecini bireylerin bakış açıları ve eylemleri çerçevesinden incelemeye başlamıştır (Bannink, 2002;Cekaite, 2007;Evaldsson & Cekaite, 2010;Kyratzis, 2010;Tarım, 2011;Tarım & Kyrazis, 2012;Tarım, 2016). Çalışmalar, dil sınıflarındaki öğrenme fırsatlarını ve etkinlikleri, öğrencilerin kendilerinin bu farklı sınıf etkinliklerine yönelimlerini gösterme biçimleri açısından incelemenin önemini vurgulamıştır (Mori, 2004).…”