A Bilingual Child's Politeness Development in Multiple Contexts

• In Event: 35.065 - Understanding the Lived Experiences of Young Children With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds

Abstract

A complex but important aspect of human social interaction, politeness, is taught to children from infancy. Because politeness is defined and expressed differently across cultures, bilingual and bicultural children experience multiple norms and expressions of politeness. This multi-sited case study follows a bilingual child in three linguistically and culturally different contexts, examining the child’s politeness practices and socialization. The study describes not only how a child is socialized into politeness by adults (e.g., teachers and parents) in multiple contexts but also how the child creatively and actively behaves (im)politely with her peers and her sibling.

Language socialization theory postulates how novices learn appropriate language and behavior to become a competent member of a social group (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2012). Novices have agency, so their socialization is promoted–not determined–by experts. Through learning social communicative norms, novices can become a speaker of culture. Culture is local and situated as members of a community use semiotic resources particularly available in the community (Mead, 1934).

This multi-sited case study follows a child across multiple sites, using the ethnographic approach (Marcus, 1995). The focal child of the study, Meeso (pseudonym), is a 7-year-old Korean-American girl, born and raised in the United States. She attends an English monolingual public elementary school and a Korean-American church for religious service, Sunday school, and Korean heritage language school. In her home, her parents and younger sister use Korean. Data collected over a year mainly through observation include 696 speech events. After open coding (general interactional descriptions and specific events related to politeness), I looked at patterns and analytical insights in each context and in interactions with different interlocutors (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).

The analysis finds three patterns. First, unique politeness socialization processes were observed in each context due to the dominant language and culture. In the English-speaking elementary school, the teacher reminded students of formulaic expressions (e.g., “thank you” and “please”) and Meeso made sure to use them in interactions with her teachers and peers. In the Korean-speaking home, Meeso’s mother emphasized the polite Korean greetings, including greeting formulas, pronunciation, honorifics, timing, posture, and physical distance. Second, regarding speech styles, a difference existed between the patterns of politeness between adult-child and child-child interactions. While adults tended to teach children appropriate politeness by modeling, reminding, and correcting, children showed more active, creative, and diverse ways of (im)politeness. Third, expectations about the same polite language and behavior (e.g., respect-speech, honorifics, or contaymal) varied depending on situations and parents’ and teachers’ perspectives on what were, for Korean-American children, appropriate and acceptable levels of (not) using honorifics.

By paying careful attention to a school-age bilingual child’s linguistically and culturally diverse socialization into politeness in interaction with a range of interlocutors, this multi-sited study deepens our understanding of politeness development of children with membership in multiple communities. The study suggests that educators and parents be more sensitive to their bilingual children’s (im)politeness and help them discern diverse values and norms so that the children build strong multiple communicative competence and bicultural identity.

Author

• Hyonsuk Cho, State University of New York, Buffalo