May and June are the months to celebrate and give honor to mothers and fathers in this country. I get May 10 (Mexican Mother's Day) and the 12th (U.S. Mother's Day) to celebrate. We have special days to take them out, buy gifts and cards, and remember their contributions to our development in this world.
I remember the special gift from my parents was another language in the home other than English. It definitely had a different 'feel' than what I experienced when I went over to visit my friends who were also Mexican Americans growing up in Houston. Spanish was the proud language of my parents and English was the language of my siblings. We were a traditional Mexican American family who was experiencing slow assimilation. Not exactly like Edward James Olmos' 'American Family' on PBS.
I remember that my parents spoke only Spanish to us, unless my father wanted to impress some of my brother's friends with a little English. My father wasn't impressed with code switching, which my older brothers and sisters were more accustomed to doing with friends. My father's main concern was providing a home and making sure that all 6 of us finished high school. There wasn't the thought of 'strategies' to make us bilingual.
The article I would like to recommend to you this month is about 2 linguists who attempt to change the pragmatic strategies of when to use English and Catalan, so that their child would become a productive bilingual. What is the best strategy for developing bilingualism in young children whose parents are also bilingual? This is of course something that many educated bilinguals are concerned about. The authors used the one parent, one language strategy that has frequently been written about by linguists studying their own children. From these papers we know that simple exposure to more than one language, even with consistent patterns, does not necessarily guarantee bilingualism. Children recognize that the parents speak both languages and may follow the road of least resistance, learn the one that everyone can speak. The authors allude to the possibility that children may recognize that one language has more prestige than the other language and so learn the one with more social power. How children determine this may be more than mom and dad's influence. But it could be that children just recognize attitudes towards bilingualism that are encountered in the family and community.
This article is important because we need to understand how we can counsel families concerning bilingualism. Telling the parent to speak only English because their child has a communication disorder and will become confused is definitely not the answer. Telling the family to use both languages in the home may not be the answer either. There needs to be more specific instructions to those families who are active bilinguals. I usually advise parents to use complete utterances and not intrasentencial stitches. We don't know for sure if this is good advice. Hope you enjoy this article.
Juan-Garau, M. & Perez-Vidal,C. (2001). Mixing and pragmatic parental strategies in early bilingual acquisition. J. of Child Language, 28, 59-86.
Abstract
"This paper investigates the relationship between a child's degree of bilingualism and features of parental input. It seeks to demonstrate that parental discourse strategies have a direct bearing on the levels of mixing present in the child's utterances in his weaker language, English. It is based on the longitudinal study of a Catalan/English bilingual child from 1;3 to 4;2 years old. The strategies adopted by both parents in response to their child's mixing are examined following Lanza's (1992, 1997) categorization of parental discourse strategies. Whereas the Catalan-speaking mother negotiates a bilingual context of interaction with her son, as of the child's third year, the English-speaking father endeavours to impose a monolingual context. Such a change of strategy clearly favours the child's increasing use of the minority language, which entails a sharp decline in rates of mixing. It appears that parents' pragmatic choices may have an impact on the development of productive family bilingualism."
