Shifting frames: Turkish immigrant children's rescaling practices in two school settings in Arizona

Abstract

This study uses the framework of space and scale to examine how bilingual Turkish heritage children in Arizona respond to conflicting scalar language hierarchies (Blommaert et al., 2005; Blommaert, 2007) they are exposed to in the bilingual worlds and spaces which they navigate. At their US elementary school, where monolingual English language practices are advocated and heritage languages such as their own Turkish language are downscaled, they use Turkish at the margins to create private spaces and footings (Shankar, 2008; Goffman, 1981) where they can help and interact with Turkish peers and express personal stances, rescaling Turkish language practices. In their Turkish Saturday school, where monolingual Turkish practices and “speaking Turkish beautifully” are advocated by teachers, child peers embrace English language practices and Turkish–English code-switching as their preferred media of peer talk away from teachers and as media to explore home and personal meanings (e.g., religious meanings). Children's patterns of code-choice and language use rescale language resources in the two school settings, and allow them to forge alignments with peers. They also provide a resource for stance-taking and commenting on boundaries between languages drawn by adults in the bilingual worlds they navigate (Bailey, 2007; Jaffe, 2009; Kyratzis and de León 2019).