Martín and the pink crayon: peer language socialization in a kindergarten bilingual classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the interactional dynamics of one bilingual, two-way immersion classroom where children came from diverse linguistic, cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Based on an ethnographic discourse analytic study of one kindergarten TWI classroom, I analyze interactional data using participant frameworks as the unit of analysis and develop a linguistic analysis from a language socialization lens. Findings illustrate the ways that children’s talk and communicative behaviors act as peer socializing processes as children move in and out of various participatory roles in conversation. By virtue of their intentional spatial positioning around communal tables, students are socializing each other as participants into a bilingual learning community, even when they are silent participants or overhearers. I argue that this framework is a productive lens through which to analyze bilingual multiparty conversations in a way that does not privilege linguistic codes as a basis for analysis.