Dinner conversations with a trilingual two-year-old: Language socialization in a multilingual context

Abstract

Family dinner conversations can serve as a medium for the mutual involvement of children and parents in language socialization. In this study, early pragmatic development in a trilingual child is addressed from the perspective of the language dynamics of a multilingual family. How young children learn to adjust their speech to their interlocutors can be seen clearly in the language choices and the mixing patterns of the trilingual two-year-old. The child selected language(s) not only from the language(s) spoken to her but also with attention to her interlocutor's linguistic proficiencies and the language context in which she found herself along a monolingual to trilingual continuum. She shifted languages in family dinner conversations according to the norms established in the home.