Bilingual Ways with Words: Children’s Identity Enactment and Negotiation in a Dual Language Immersion Class

Abstract

ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines strategies used by children in a kindergarten dual language immersion (DLI) class, when enacting and negotiating intersecting social constructions such as ethnicity, social class, and bilingualism. Drawing on data collected during the 2017–2018 academic year, this paper uses an intersectional lens to describe the ways in which children are actively engaged in sociocultural processes of language use and socialization. In addition, it employs the notions of identity and social class position to analyze how children's bilingual understanding and strategic language use is manifested in different ways. The paper ends by encouraging educators and researchers to reconsider the way they evaluate power at work in educational settings and children’s ways of displaying it. A more nuanced understanding of children’s interactions in bilingual settings is necessary in order to stretch our considerations of power and social relations in present-day school contexts.