Code negotiation in bilingual families: ‘My body starts speaking English’

Abstract

This study examined patterns of language choice and code‐switching behaviour in the discourse of ten families whose primary home language was Mandarin Chinese. Parent‐child dyads were observed reading a wordless book together, and both parents and target child (age 4.0–6.0 years) were audiotaped during an evening meal. Compared to parents, children incorporated English into more of their utterances, and were more likely to codeswitch in the Chinese‐to‐English direction. Children also complied with the codeswitches of other family members less often than parents, even when the switch was in their preferred direction. Results are interpreted with respect to parents’ and children's differential tendencies to accommodate their speech to their interlocutor, and implications for the maintenance of minority home languages are discussed.

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