Abstract:

The observation in vivo of family bilingualism that have their origin in the inmigration in Paris, reveals that theoretic methods that prove to be more familiar (through notions like diglossia or domains), do not prove to be the most suitable for describing such situations. In these cases, a ”double mediation” occurs in families, to the effect that parents transmit their native language to their children, but these ones, at the same time, take French home. The strict separation ”one language / one person” is not fit for daily interactions and the researcher must make use of models of a preferential kind. Likewise, children from these families build a strong functional bilingualism, acquiring their parents´ language not only inside the family but also on the occasion of their holiday season in their parents´ native land. On the other hand, code-switching fulfills the actual asymmetry between the repertoires of both generations, and constitutes the implementation of a real poliphony through the simultaneous inter-play of conversational alliances and expressive modalizations. The bilingual speech of these families receives a negative picture in the case of the native monolingual speakers from both countries, and frequently this picture is also internalized by bilinguals. However, some designations (”fran-yougo”) and some demands for the normality of such speech, and also for its natural character, are signs of a change in the emergent identities framework among this new generation.

Author: Christine Deprez