Coloured language: identity perception of children in bilingual programmes

Abstract

Research involving bilingual education programmes has largely focused on cognitive and academic outcomes, with a paucity of studies investigating what involvement in these programmes means to the participants. Viewing identity using the dynamic systems theory perspective, this paper reports on a study analysing how children experience their linguistic and personal identities through their language awareness within bilingual programmes and explores the influence enforced bilingualism has on these perceptions. Seventy-six children from dual-language bilingual schools participated in the study. A ‘language silhouette’ was coloured by participants according to the languages they felt determined their identity and a questionnaire for fourth-grade participants sought to analyse feelings associated with participants’ languages and language use. Recurring patterns in the silhouettes were studied for frequency and further evaluated according to grade level, number of languages spoken, and type of language. Results support the hypothesis that responses from bilingual/multilingual participants whose languages are supported will differ from responses of those whose languages are unsupported in the schools. An unexpected difference was also observed between multilingual and bilingual perceptions of linguistic identity. The findings have important implications for language awareness for children in bilingual and multilingual education programmes.