Identity revealed through talk among young language-minority children in Norwegian classrooms

Abstract

The study investigated the ethnic identity development of Turkish-speaking children in Norwegian preschool and first-grade classrooms, examining how they made their ethnicity interactionally relevant in everyday talk. Classroom conversations and interviews revealed their interest in ethnic diversity. The manner in which the children talked about Turkey suggested that their relationships with it represented an important emotional resource for them. The children were not naïve or indifferent to the boundaries and dissimilarities following from their ethnic minority status within Norwegian society. We identified two underlying questions in the children's talk about ethnicity – ‘Who are my people?’ and ‘How do other people see me?’ – and applied these questions as analytic categories in the exploration of ethnic identities in these young children. This study adds to the understanding of ethnic identity as situational, context-sensitive and multidimensional.