Is it language relearning or language reacquisition? Hints from a young boy’s code-switching during his journey back to his native language

Abstract

Do we reacquire or relearn latent native languages? How can we tell? The language used by a 4-year-old ‘language reactivator’ in his preschool setting was audio recorded for several weeks upon return to the language community of his latent native language. Through a sociocultural lens focusing particularly on the use of code-switching and mixing during the language reactivation process, we analyzed how this young boy spoke, how that gradually changed over time and how he used the social and linguistic resources around him to facilitate that. The type and content of the boy’s code-switching and mixing showed time- and proficiency-related patterns that were both similar to and different from what one would expect of bilingual and of non-native language learners. Furthermore, the boy showed resourcefulness in how he used the linguistic resources around him — interacting primarily with interlocutors who had some competence in both his active and latent native languages early on until he developed sufficient proficiency to interact in the reactivated target language with his monolingual peers thereafter. This suggests a degree of learner mindfulness that distinguishes the language reactivation process from what one might expect were the process purely a matter of reacquiring bilingual proficiency.

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