Bilingual Language Socialization in a Translanguaging Space: A Case Study of a Chinese Rural Preschool

Abstract

In this dissertation, centered on the experience of a group of Longlinghua speaking children in MWB preschool learning Putonghua as a new language variety in their first year of preschool, I examine children's development of bilingual competence. I examined how the children came to understand the different social meanings and functions of the two linguistic varieties and how they navigate the school as a fluid cultural and linguistic space that involves engaging in and playing with languages in a variety of forms. One of the major goals of the study, then, is to explore what kinds of social and linguistic competence the children display by examining children's use of these two language varieties in the preschool. This endeavor involves documenting the linguistic variation to which children are exposed, how they participate in interactions with teachers and peers, and how this variation is deployed for different communicative purposes in different contexts. The microanalysis of the teacher’s and children's bilingual practices in the school is embedded in an ethnographic study of the community's language ideologies and language practices to illuminate language development as a social process shaped by and in turn shaping community beliefs and values. Drawing on the theories of language socialization and translanguaging, my analysis highlights children’s in situ language performance as they agentively and creatively expand their bilingual repertoire in the everyday interactions in MWB preschool. The analysis of teacher-student interactions has shown that a translanguaging space was created by and through the teacher and the children's everyday bilingual practices. Both the official code, Putonghua, and the shared home language, Longlinghua, were used as valuable resources to teach, to learn, and to communicate in this fluid bilingual space. The children not only learned the conventions of how to use Putonghua to participate in formal classroom interactions, they also came to understand how to use features of their bilingual linguistic repertoire selectively and purposefully to fit their communicative needs. Furthermore,a focus on peer interaction in the playground shows that interactions around play as an essential part of children's social life requires new and creative uses of their linguistic repertoires, which also constitutes a rich site of the socialization of bilingual competence. The children’s bilingual play in peer interactions further expanded the school as a translanguaging space in which they were broadening their bilingual repertoire, exploring new identities, and constructing their social world. The findings of this study challenged the deficit perspective toward rural children and their language development that dominates the public discourse of rural early childhood education in China. By more accurately tracing how children in rural communities develop languages, cultural knowledge, and social practices, the ethnographic approach at its best calls on us to see what children know and what they can do with language.