Bilingual siblings : language use in families

226 Pages·2010·1.638 MB·English

by  Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert

Bilingual Siblings
PARENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ GUIDES
Series Editor: Colin Baker, Bangor University, UK
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PARENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ GUIDES
Series Editor: Colin Baker, Bangor University, UK
Bilingual Siblings
Language Use in Families
Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS
Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Barron-Hauwaert, Suzanne.
Bilingual Siblings: Language Use in Families/Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert.
Parents’ and Teachers’ Guides: 12
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Bilingualism in children. 2. Brothers and sisters. 3. Families--Language. I. Title.
P115.2.B368 2010
404’.2083–dc22 2010041285
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-327-3 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-326-6 (pbk)
Multilingual Matters
UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.
USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA.
Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada.
Copyright © 2011 Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Contents
List of Figures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgments ........................................................ xi
Introduction ............................................................. 1
Two or More Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Siblings in Bilingual or Multilingual Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Who this Book is for ................................................. 6
Three Very Different Siblings ......................................... 7
Questions on Family Language Use .................................. 10
1 What Do We Know about Bilingual Families? ............................ 15
The Lack of Sibling Sets in Academic Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Parent Researchers and Diary Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Linguists Researching Bilingual Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Advice for Paren ts in Books for Bilingual Families ..................... 30
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2 The Growing and Evolving Family ..................................... 38
Balancing Majority and Minority Language Use ....................... 38
Adapting Family Strategies to the Growing Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Fine-Tuning Family Language Strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Relocating and Rebalancing Language Use ............................ 45
In Comes the Majority, Out Goes the Minority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Special Situations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
The First or Only Child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
v
vi Bilingual Siblings
3 The Sibling Relationship .............................................. 54
Our ‘Preferred’ Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Child-to-Child Language Use ....................................... 57
The School Language Effect ......................................... 60
Mixed Language Use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Siblings Helping to Maintain a Minority Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4 Age Difference, Family Size and Language Orders ........................ 73
Close-in-Age Siblings .............................................. 74
Wider Age Gap between Siblings .................................... 76
Siblings as Teachers ................................................ 79
Families with Three or More Children ................................ 83
Siblings with Different Language Orders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5 Gender and Language ................................................ 91
The Gender Divide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Girls, Boys and Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Early-Speaking Bilingual Girls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Foreign Languages and Gender. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
The Girl Myth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6 Birth Order: A Child’s Position in the Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
First-Born, Middle-Born or Last-Born Children ....................... 104
The Birth Order Debate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Birth Order and Language Use within the Bilingual Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Vocabulary and Language Use Linked to Birth Order. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111
Does Birth Order Make a Difference?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118

7 Individual Differences: Same Languages, Different Language Histories. . . . . 120
The Nature or Nurture Debate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Language Acquisition ............................................. 123
Different Language Histories ....................................... 125
Language-Gifted Children ......................................... 128
The Extrovert Myth ............................................... 130
Language Friction ................................................ 135
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Contents vii
8 Bilingualism and Twins, Adoption, Single Parents and Step-Families ....... 141
Twins and Language Use .......................................... 142
Bilingual Twins ................................................... 144
Adoption and Bilingualism ........................................ 148
International Adoptions ........................................... 150
Single Parents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Siblings with Half-Sisters and Brothers .............................. 154
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
9 Five Themes on Family Language Patterns ............................. 159
Our ‘Preferred’ Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Home to School Transition ......................................... 160
A Strategy to Suit the Children ..................................... 161
Same Languages, Different Children ................................ 162
Inter-Sibling Language Use ........................................ 163
Conclusion ...................................................... 163
Family Profiles ......................................................... 165
Appendix 1 Summary of Strategies ...................................... 185
One-Parent–One-Language (OPOL). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Mixed Language Use: Bilingual and Multilingual ..................... 187
Minority-Language-at-Home (ML@H) ............................... 189
Lingua Franca. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Non-Native. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Time & Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Appendix 2 The Online Survey ......................................... 194
Location and Nationality of the Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
The Parents and their Language Skills ............................... 196
The Sibling Sets .................................................. 198
Parent’s Opinion s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Glossary ............................................................... 202
Websites and Chat Forums ............................................... 206
Recommended Books for Bilingual Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
References ............................................................. 210
Index ................................................................. 215
List of Figures
2.1 Strategies followed by families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2 Establishing bilingualism is easier when you have only one child ........ 51
3.1 Sibling’s preferred language ........................................ 59
3.2 School/home language use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.3 Minority/majority language choice at home .......................... 70
4.1 An older child will usually help teach a younger child to speak a
language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.2 Children speaking the same or different languages .................... 87
5.1 A girl will usually be more successful at becoming bilingual
than a boy ........................................................ 98
6.1 Is the first-born child likely to be the most successful at
becoming bilingual? .............................................. 112
6.2 Widest vocabula ry use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.3 Widest vocabulary use in all languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.4 Most correct language use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.5 Most imaginative use of language .................................. 115
A.2.1 Location of families ............................................... 195
A.2.2 Time spent in country of residence ................................. 196
A.2.3 Year of birth . .................................................... 198
A.2.4 Sibling sets .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
A.2.5 Gender of children ............................................... 200
ix
Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank the Multilingual Matters team. I was fortunate to have
Colin Baker as my editor and I am grateful for his insights and clarity. The Grover
family has played an important role too. Tommi Grover guided the book through to
production and Marjukka Grover gave useful feedback on the first draft. For over six
years Sami Grover, editor of The Bilingual Family Newsletter has commissioned my
quarterly column ‘Notes from the OPOL Family’ where I write about my children
and family life in two languages.
I am very grateful to all the multilingual families who replied so promptly to my
call for data through The Bilingual Family Newsletter and websites around the world.
Thanks to the 25 families who took the extra time to give me more information for a
case study and reply to all my emails and questions. Their replies and comments
formed the basis of the book. Thanks to Sami Grover and Corey Heller from
Multilingual Living mag azine (www.multilingualliving.com) who helped me reach a
wide range of international families for the online survey via their readers.
Thanks to all the parents and teachers who have attended my talks on Family
Bilingualism or have joined the Bilingual Support Groups I ran in Kuala Lumpur and
France over the last seven years. Your stories and experiences were important and
have percolated through into this book. Thanks to all my wonderful friends around
the world; Kuala Lumpur’s multilingual cooking group, French mamans in Chicago
and my English friends here in France. Your chats over coffee inspired me and I hope
some of my advice helped your families. Thanks to Sharon and June for their proof-
reading of the first draft.
Closer to home I would like to say merci to Jacques, my French husband, for his
critical support and computer help. Last, but not least, my three amazing children,
xi
xii Bilingual Siblings
Marc, 13, Nina, 11 and Gabriel, 7, who have provided me with working models of
various stages of bilingualism over time. I would like to say thank you to all their
hard-working teachers and assistants over the last 10 years, who have dealt with
various stages of language refusal, mixed language and speech problems.
As this book goes to print we are living in rural France and our three children are
all attending French schools here. My children continue to surprise me with their
ability to use two languages on a daily basis and feel at home in many cultures. It is
with great pride that I see them making friends in both languages, maintaining links
with their grandparents and cousins in two languages and feeling at home in two
very different countries. Bravo!
http://opol-family.blogspot.com