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Bilingual children’s repairs of breakdowns in communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2007

LIANE COMEAU ,
FRED GENESEE  and
MORTON MENDELSON
LIANE COMEAU
Affiliation:
Invest in Kids
FRED GENESEE
Affiliation:
McGill University
MORTON MENDELSON
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Abstract

This study examined two- (n=10) and three-year-old (n=16) French–English bilingual children’s repairs of breakdowns in communication that occurred when they did not use the same language as their interlocutor (Language breakdowns) and for other reasons (e.g. inaudible utterance). The children played with an experimenter who used only one language (English or French) during the play session. Each time a child used the other language, the experimenter made up to five requests for clarification, from non-specific (What?) to specific (Can you say that in French/English?). The experimenter also made requests for clarification when breakdowns occurred for other reasons, e.g. the child spoke too softly, produced an ambiguous utterance, etc. Both the two- and three-year-olds were capable of repairing Language breakdowns by switching languages to match that of their experimenter and they avoided this repair strategy when attempting to repair Other breakdowns. Moreover, they switched languages in response to non-specific requests. The results indicate that even two-and-a-half-year-old bilingual children are capable of identifying their language choice as a cause of communication breakdowns and that they can differentiate Language from Other kinds of communication breakdowns.

Type
Note
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 159 - 174
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to F.G., and a graduate scholarship by the National Science and Engineering Research Council to L.C. We also wish to thank the families of the children who participated in this study for welcoming us into their homes. Finally, we wish to thank Julie Bélanger, Jessica Little, Marie-Claude Besner, Véronique Dupont-Chalaoui and Sandra Shapiro for their help in carrying out this study.