Conflicting expectations in multilingual literacy acquisition, SOAS, University of London

• published: 09 Mar 2015
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http://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics/ This Linguistics seminar by Constanze Weth titled "Conflicting expectations in multilingual literacy acquisition - How bilingual children deal with multilingual literacy practices in France" was given at SOAS, University of London on 11 November 2014. More about this event: http://bit.ly/1E62P65 Conflicting expectations in multilingual literacy acquisition - How bilingual children deal with multilingual literacy practices in France This paper presents children’s writing in the official school language, French, and in their family language, Arabic and Occitan. It aims to show that the linguistic diversity in France is not only due to multilingualism but as well to writing traditions and the educational level of family members (Heath 1983). The latter influences the family writing in the sense of approaching or moving away from the“language of schooling” (Schleppegrell, 2002). The talk will first provide some background to the family and school literacies of nine-year-old children of Moroccan Arabic (MA) and Occitan background growing up in France with French literacy practices and Written Arabic / Occitan literacy practices. The paper then presents the results of an orthographic analysis of the children’s attempts to write French and the “other” language: (1) The MA children are used to write French and follow Arabic classes. In the task to write down a given picture story, they chose however not Written Arabic but MA, an Arabic dialect not generally used for written purposes. When writing MA for the first time, the children have to rely on the implicit and explicit knowledge of the writing systems they have already acquired, namely, French, the language of schooling, and Standard Arabic which is regularly present in the home, although the children’s competence in it is limited. (2) Occitan is a Romance language and the language of alphabetisation and communication in the bilingual school of the children. Hence, the Occitan children are used to write French and Occitan. In spite of the fact that the linguistic and sociolinguistic background of Arabic and Occitan writing practices in France differ very much, the socio-political focus on minority languages is very present in the parental and teacher discourse in both settings. The analyses of the children’s writing in the minority language elucidate this discourse on minority languages in France.