Abstract
This chapter explores everyday talk among parents, children and preschool teachers that takes place in Swedish preschool entrance halls. The data is drawn from a project that studies the daily talk and interaction between parents and teachers in Swedish preschools where most families have a language background other than Swedish, while most teachers are monolingual Swedish speakers. The participants’ talk and social interaction has been video recorded in two preschools during the drop-off and pick-up time, and transcribed using conversation analytic methods. The theoretical framework of the study is influenced by theories on language socialization and by ethnomethodological work on social actions; focusing on the participants’ methods of accomplishing and making sense of social activities. The chapter highlights the children’s commuting between home and the preschool where the preschool entrance hall works as a ‘transit zone’ for the children’s talk to be interactively transformed from their mother tongue(s) into Swedish and vice versa. Besides the parents code-switching and physically handing over the child, the analyses show how ‘transformation objects’ like indoor shoes and mittens work as concrete signals for the child to handle the transit and to develop pragmatic skills about language use.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Björk-Willén, P. (2007). Participation in multilingual preschool play: Shadowing and crossing as interactional resources. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 2133–2158.
Björk-Willén, P. (2008). Routine trouble: How preschool children participate in multilingual instruction. Applied Linguistics, 29, 1–23.
Björk-Willén, P. (forthcoming). Interaction in the preschool entrance hall: How everyday talk between parents and preschool teachers is accomplished.
Björk-Willén, P., & Cromdal, J. (2009). When education seeps into ‘free play’: How preschool children accomplish multilingual education. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1493–1518.
Blum-Kulka, S., & Snow, C. E. (2004). Introduction: The potential of peer talk. Discourse Studies, 6, 291–306.
Blum-Kulka, S., & Gorbatt, N. (2014). “Say princess”: the challenges and affordances of young Hebrew L2 novices’ interaction with their peers. In: A. Cekaite Thunqvist, S. Blum-Kulka, V. Grøver Aukrust & E. Teubal (Eds.), Children’s peer talk: learning from each other pp (169–193). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bylund, A., & Björk-Willén, P. (2014). Multilingual becoming in reading: A picture storybook-reading-assemblage in early years education. In S. Morão & M. Lourenço (Eds.), Early years second language education: Interactional perspective on theories and practice (pp. 78–92). Abingdon: Routledge.
Cekaite, A., & Aronsson, K. (2004). Repetition and joking in children’s second language conversation: Playful recyclings in an immersion classroom. Discource Studies, 6, 373–392.
Corsaro, W. A. (1985). Friendship and peer culture in early years. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Duff, P. A. (2000). Repetition in foreign classroom interaction. In J. K. hall & L. S. Verplaetse (Eds.), Second and foreign language learning through classroom interaction (pp. 109–39). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc.
Glenn, P. J. (2008). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C. (2003). The semiotic body in its environment. In J. Coupland & R. Gwyn (Eds.), Discourses of body (pp. 19–22). New York: Palgrave.
Goodwin, M. H. (forthcoming). Haptic sociality. The embodied interactive constitution of intimacy through touch. In C. Meyer; J. Streeck & J. S. Jordan (Eds.), Intercorporality: Beyond the body. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and etnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Karrebæk, M. (2010). “I can be with!” A novice kindergartner’s successes and challenges in play participation and development of communicative skills. Pragmatics and Language Learning, 12, 325–58.
Kyratzis, A. (2014). Peer interaction, framing and literacy in preschool bilingual pretend play. In A. Cekaite, S. Blum-Kulka, V. Grover & E. Teubal (Eds.), Children’s peer talk. Learning from each other (pp. 129–148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leiminer, M. J., & Baker, C. D. (2000). A child’s say in parent-teacher talk at the pre-school: Doing conversation analytic research in early childhood settings. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 1(2), 135–152.
Mourão, S. (2012). English picturebook illustrations and language development in early years education unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Namei, S. (2002). The bilingual lexicon from a developmental perspective. Centrum för tvåspråkighetsforskning (Centre for bilingual research) Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization. Three developmental stories and their implications. In I. R. A. Schweder & R. A. Le Vinen (Red.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion (pp. 276–320). NY: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. M. Atkins & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social actions: Studies in conversational analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (1999). Discource, pragmatics, conversation analysis. Discource Studies, 1, 405–435.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction; A primer in conversation analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swedish National Agency for education, Skolverket. (2010). Curriculum for the preschool LPFÖ 98: revised 2010. Stockholm: The Swedish National Agency for education.
Wei, L. (2011). Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1222–1235.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Björk-Willén, P. (2017). The Preschool Entrance Hall: A Bilingual Transit Zone for Preschoolers. In: Bateman, A., Church, A. (eds) Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1703-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1703-2_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-1701-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-1703-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)