Bilingual Child’s Socialization Through Interactions With Peers and Sibling Across Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Contexts

• In Event: Poster Session 8
  In Poster Session: Research in Bilingual Education

Abstract

Socialization refers to a process of acquiring essential knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and skills to participate in a social group and society. Children are considered to be taught such sociocultural knowledge largely by adults or experts. By analyzing a 7-year-old bilingual child’s interactions with her peers and sibling in her school, Sunday school, and home for six months, this paper discusses the active and bi-directional nature of socialization process occurring among children. Children question, assess, and teach each other based on social values, practices, rules, knowledge, and subjective opinions. In addition, as bilingual children engage in linguistically, culturally, and functionally different communities, the social interactions contribute to the development of the bilingual child’s dynamic and complex sociocultural knowledge.

Author

• Hyonsuk Cho, State University of New York, Buffalo