By Silvia Nunez
A couple of weeks ago, inside the classroom of the daycare where I work, one of my students was excited about saying something and he exclaimed: “J’aime the red car, il est my favorite!” I am sure he is able to say this whole phrase in English, but sometimes code-switching emerges. (https://bilingual-babies.com/code-switching-in-bilingual-children/). It is not the first time that this happens to me, and even though, I am teaching English in an immersion program, other languages are welcomed in my classroom too!
For children being raised as bilinguals or multilinguals, it is common to use all the languages inside their repertoire to make meaning of the world around them (Seltzer, Ascenzi-Moreno & Aponte, 2020). It is fascinating to see how their choices are being influenced by the community where they grow up. There is evidence that children, at the preschool level, already “have some understanding of language choice patterns and levels of bilingualism [or multilingualism] in their community” (Paradis & Nicoladis, 2008 p. 294), so they already know what language to use depending on the interlocutor that will receive the message or the context they are immersed in. (You can find more about it in this case study). But even though they are able to make take these choices, sometimes they mix languages without even noticing it!
By validating the variety of languages that we bring to the class, students feel more confident in integrating English in their lives, they are more open to learning from mistakes and they support each other when languages are mixed. Even sometimes, I am also betrayed by my unconscious mind and I mix Spanish and English, especially in phrases involving feelings where I am trying to tell how much I love them or how much I care for them. But why does this occur? Why do we unconsciously mix languages even when our intention is not to do it? Has it ever happened to you? In my example, the reason why I mix languages could be related to the fact that my native language is Spanish. As it is the one that I have always used to express love at home with my parents, husband, daughter, son, and closest friends, my brain might just follow the same path producing affectionate words in this language, but I don’t think this kind of unconscious language mixing is always related to feelings.
According to Van Herk (2018), each person has the ability to consciously control his/her choices and do what he/she wants in relation to language, we have speaker agency, and we use it most of the time, but what happens when we lose control of these decisions and our unconscious mind takes control deciding when to mix the words or languages we use? I am still trying to find the correct answer and keep understanding how languages, society, and mind are interconnected, but meanwhile, I will continue to provide a safe place to my students where they can code-switch or code-mix languages while becoming multilingual children in this world.
References:
Paradis, J. & Nicoladis, E. (2007) The Influence of Dominance and Sociolinguistic Context on Bilingual Preschoolers’ Language Choice. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10:3, 277-297, DOI: 10.2167/beb444.0
Seltzer, K. Ascenzi-Moreno, L. & Aponte, G. (2020) J.A. Panagiotopoulou et al. (eds.), Inclusion, Education and Translanguaging (pp.24-39). Inklusion und Bildung in Migrationsgesellschaften, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28128-1_3
Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
