Linguistic autobiographies of children living in a society with languages in contact

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an ethnographic research study based on the collection of a corpus of autobiographical texts written by a sample of children from a Barcelona primary school. Through an understanding of the representations that bilingual children between the ages of eleven and twelve hold of their language and of their own personal linguistic history, this study seeks to interpret the way in which these perceptions may impact their language use. Quite especially, the research focuses on cases of early bilingual children. The analysis of the texts allowed the development of several theories of child language acquisition. While it was found that most subjects do not appear to be aware of their experience of life in a society of languages in contact, the study brings to light indicators of an implicit understanding of this phenomenon.  

Keywords: bilingualism, language contact, representational redescription, linguistic representations, implicit theories of language acquisition.