INTRODUCTION
A growing body of literature on peer interactions in multilingual
settings illustrates that adolescents and school-age children use
code-switching for a variety of functions, such as structuring play,
games, and other activities, negotiating meanings and rights, and
asserting their shifting identities and allegiances (e.g., Auer 1984, 1998; Cromdal 2004; Cromdal &
Aronsson 2000; Garrett 1999; Guldal 1997; Hewitt 1986;
Howard 2003; Jørgensen 1998; Paugh
2001; Rampton 1995, 1998; Schieffelin 1994;
Woolard 1995; Zentella 1997, 1998). Young
bilingual children, like older children and adults, may pragmatically
switch languages for emphasis, clarification, or addressee
specification, or to gain or retain attention (Goodz
1989; Lanza 1997). However,
children's use of two or more languages to construct imaginary
adult roles during spontaneous pretend play, particularly when adults
are not present,1
Schwartzman 1983 highlights the importance of
examining “child-structured play” that is not initiated or
directed by adults (also see Goldman
1998:102).
has received little systematic attention
(though see
Guldal 1997,
Halmari & Smith 1994,
Kwan-Terry 1992). Yet the ways in which children
employ the language varieties available to them to depict different
kinds of people, activities, and situations offer insights into their
emergent understandings of linguistic variation and multilingualism,
language attitudes, and the links between language and social identity.
The present study examines children's language choice as they
enact adult roles in spontaneous imaginary play with peers in Dominica,
where rural villages are undergoing a rapid language shift from
Patwa,
2 a French-based creole, to English,
the official language of the nation. Employing a language socialization
approach, the research illustrates that the examination of
children's social worlds provides a more nuanced picture of
language shift – and potential maintenance – than does
observing only adult-adult or adult-child interaction.
CHILDREN, LANGUAGE, AND ROLE PLAY
Children distinguish roles using language features that index salient
characteristics of the ways individuals speak. For example,
Anglo-American children have been shown to employ registers associated
with adult roles and activities in their play with peers (Andersen
1990, 1996; Hoyle 1998; Kyratzis et al.
2001). Among the Huli in Papua New Guinea, Goldman 1998 found that children overlay their role
play with adult storytelling genres, creating “mythological
narratives” about their play. In addition, they occasionally use
Tok Pisin lexemes, along with changes in intonation and voice quality,
in their Huli speech to add “role authenticity and
integrity” to their portrayals of post-colonial roles such as
administrators and hospital personnel who speak Tok Pisin
(1998:155–56). In two studies of bilingual children, Kwan-Terry 1992 and Halmari & Smith 19943
Kwan-Terry 1992 followed one bilingual
Cantonese-English child from age 3.5 to 5 years. Halmari & Smith 1994 observed two
Finnish-English bilingual sisters who were 8 and 9 years old.
found that the children enacted imaginary characters in English (their
second language in both studies), but they used their first languages
(Cantonese and Finnish, respectively) for running commentary on the
play or for negotiating play frames.
4 Three other studies of children's imaginary play in
bilingual settings did not find systematic language alternation in
adult role enactment. Guldal 1997, examining
three prearranged Norwegian-English bilingual play triads (ages
4–6 years) in Norway, found that children used contrasting code
selection to mark different “reality levels” in role play
(real life, directing, and fictional levels), but that norms for
language choice varied according to group preference rather than for
enacting particular roles. Similarly, Cromdal &
Aronsson 2000 attribute children's code-switching during
recess in a bilingual English-Swedish school (40 children ages
6–8 years) to individual language choice, accommodation to
monolingual children, or a need to display shifting
“footings” (Goffman 1981) or
orientations toward different play activities, rather than to playing
specific roles. These cases contrast with a language shift situation
described by Rindstedt & Aronsson 2002 in
San Antonio, Ecuador, where bilingual adults speak Spanish and Quichua,
while children under 10 years old are growing up primarily monolingual
in Spanish. The authors find that children only use Spanish in
imaginary role play, as “the adult's language, Quichua, is
not adopted as children's play language”
(2002:736).
Kwan-Terry (
1992:246–47) attributes this to English being
the language the child associates with “the world at
large.” Halmari & Smith (
1994:431),
on the other hand, suggest that code-switching acts with other
features, such as tense changes and use of imperatives, to indicate a
shift between two “sub-registers” in play:
“in-character play” and “negotiation of the
play” (also see
Guldal 1997). Thus,
language is a vital resource used by children to enact as well as to
signal particular social roles in play.
Children in Dominica also engage in complex code-switching practices
between English and Patwa in their role play with peers. Their language
choice in role enactment illustrates their emerging sensitivity to the
ways in which these contrasting languages index particular social
identities, places, and activities (Ochs
1996). The analysis of children's role play presented here
is thus contextualized within an in-depth examination of language
socialization practices at home and at school, and of the linguistic
practices and language ideologies (Kroskrity
2000, Schieffelin et al. 1998, Woolard & Schieffelin 1994) of their
communities and nation. Language socialization research maintains that
children are socialized through language as they are
socialized to use language (Ochs 1988, 1996; Ochs & Schieffelin 1984; Schieffelin 1990; Schieffelin & Ochs 1986a, 1986b; also see
recent reviews by Garrett &
Baquedano-López 2002 and Kulick &
Schieffelin 2004). In other words, through interactions with
more knowledgeable members (such as adults and older children),
children learn and are socialized to learn the cultural and linguistic
knowledge necessary to participate in everyday social activities and
interactions, including ideologies about class, status, race,
ethnicity, gender, morality, and language itself. Children are viewed
as active agents in both reproducing and subtly changing linguistic
practices and ideologies through the jointly occurring processes of
sociocultural and linguistic learning (Ochs
2001). Though language socialization studies initially focused
on monolingual societies, this approach offers unique insights into the
study of multilingual speech practices and language contact phenomena
such as language shift, convergence, and maintenance (Fader 2000, 2001; Garrett 1999, 2000, 2003; Garrett &
Baquedano-López 2002; Kulick
1992; Paugh 2001, in
press; Riley 2001; Schieffelin 1994; Zentella
1997).
Peer play offers a prime context for such cultural and linguistic
learning, exploration, and socialization. Older children are socialized
through acting as directors of social action, mentors, and examples for
others to follow, while younger children imitate “more competent
partners” (Goodwin 1990:12). Yet
children's play is not simply a process of imitating others or
passively developing into an adult end state; rather, it offers a
context within which children can actively explore power dynamics,
social rules, identities, and roles normally not accessible to them in
everyday life, when they are subordinate to adults (Kyratzis 2000). Through role play, children display
and exploit their understandings of morality, ethnicity, gender
relations, social identities, and power hierarchies at familial, local,
national, and global levels (Aronsson & Thorell
1999; de León 2002; Goldman 1998; Goodwin 1990, 1993; 2002; Kyratzis et al.
2001; Kyratzis & Wade 2002; Reynolds 2002; Rindstedt &
Aronsson 2002; Schieffelin 1990; Thorne 1993).5
In
addition to these studies, pretend play has long been a focus in
developmental psychology in terms of children's psychosocial and
linguistic development (e.g., Bretherton
1984, Göncü et al. 1999,
Piaget 1962, Vygotsky
1966). For detailed reviews of various approaches to
children's pretense, see Schwartzman 1976, 1978 and Goldman
1998. According to Goldman, “We still
know very little about what role culture plays in child pretend play”
(1998:39).
As they structure and engage
in such activities in peer groups, they are able to practice them without
an adult presence, trying on various social identities or
“voices” (in Bahktin's sense) otherwise restricted
from them. In this exploration and reflection on social norms, children
create alternative social realities in which
they hold the
positions of authority, power, and control, and in doing so, they may
also challenge and transform those realities (
Reynolds 2002). The examination of role play
activities as children construct them offers a window into their
understandings of adult culture and practices, demonstrating “the
salience and importance of these activities and the child's
ability to understand the details and sequences that constitute
them” (
Schieffelin 1990:225).
A focus on children's role play in Dominica demonstrates the
importance of observing children interacting with and socializing other
children within their own peer groups (cf. Corsaro 1985, 1997; Goodwin 1990; Hirschfeld
2002), particularly in situations of significant sociocultural
and linguistic change where children are a pointed focus of language
policies in both official (e.g., school) and informal (e.g., home)
settings. While their language choice in role play could be viewed as
reproducing broader ideologies about the kinds of people and places
appropriate for Patwa, it simultaneously challenges adult/child
status differences as expressed through language (Patwa for adults,
English for children), and it may transform children's own
perceptions of the languages and people who speak them. Children, in
turn, socialize one another in these performance genres of play,
opening up a creative space that may better represent their
multilingual world as they experience it. The examination of
children's language use in role play (and play more generally)
offers insights into their agency,6
Language use is a critical site to examine the enactment of
agency, which can be defined as the “socioculturally
mediated” capacity or ability to act in a way that affects other
beings or objects in the world (Ahearn 2001,
Duranti 2004).
particularly in using
a linguistic variety they are otherwise forbidden to speak in the
presence of adults. Such investigation sheds light on children's
roles in processes of sociocultural and linguistic reproduction as well
as those of innovation and change.
GEOGRAPHIC AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC BACKGROUND
Located in the eastern Caribbean between the French overseas
departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, Dominica is a mountainous
island nation with a population of approximately 71,000. Agriculture is
the mainstay of the economy, with bananas the chief export crop.
Dominica has a complex sociolinguistic situation that was shaped by a
dual French-British colonial history, with the island changing hands at
least seven times before becoming British in 1763. Since then, English
has remained the official language of the nation, government, schools,
and urban settings, while Patwa has been the oral language of the rural
population since French colonization in the 17th century. Because of
historical and geographical factors, the most “standard”
English is spoken in the capital town, Roseau, while Patwa and
varieties of English are spoken in rural villages.7
Proficiency in Patwa varies across geographic,
generational, and socioeconomic lines, with the most spoken by village
elders and the least by urban youths (Christie 1990, 1994; Stuart 1993) and rural children (Paugh 2001).
In the past, urbanites and
education officials disdained Patwa as the impoverished language of
poor, uneducated peasants and did not allow their children to speak it.
However, since Dominica became independent from England in 1978, the
state and an urban intellectual elite have claimed that Patwa is
integral to the nation's development and cultural identity, and
they have undertaken Patwa revitalization efforts.
8 The Konmité Pou Etid Kwéyòl (Committee
for Creole Studies, or KEK) was established in 1981 as part of the
government's Cultural Division in order to preserve and revitalize
Patwa. KEK has developed Patwa literacy, promotes its use during annual
Independence celebrations and on “Creole Day,” and seeks to
introduce Patwa education in schools.
Nevertheless, both
languages have come to index differences and boundaries related to
class, rural/urban origin, level of education, gender, and age or
generation (cf.
Irvine & Gal 2000).
Different ideologies about the languages, as well as opinions about
when, where, and with whom to use them, influence language choice and
usage in everyday interactions in both urban and rural settings. Rural
adults are acutely aware of this, and over the past few decades they
have become concerned that Patwa hinders children's acquisition of
English and thus restricts social mobility. Most rural adults strive to
speak only English to their children and forbid them to speak Patwa in
their presence. These widespread language socialization practices are
contributing to a rapid language shift from Patwa to varieties of
English (however “nonstandard” or creolized) in most
villages.
9 The varieties of English have
been described in terms of a distinction between “standard”
and “creole” English, with variation between the two ends
of the continuum (Amastae 1979b; Carrington 1969; Christie 1983, 1990, 1994; Holm 1989).
Christie 1990, 1994
suggests that there is an emergent English creole, Dominican English
Creole or DEC, that shares many features with Patwa, largely through
calquing of Patwa syntax and phrases (for a similar situation in St.
Lucia, see Garrett 1999, 2000, 2003). Locally,
there are no specific terms for the Englishes spoken throughout the
island, except for a historically distinct variety called Kokoy spoken
in one small geographic area (see Christie 1990, 1994). Most
villagers distinguish between “good” and “bad”
or “broken” English.
Village adults have complex and often competing ideologies concerning
the languages of their communities. Despite expressing overtly negative
attitudes toward Patwa, adults simultaneously value it for intimate
communication and to fulfill a range of expressive functions. In
practice, the languages are functionally distributed across different
contexts, activities, participants, and speech acts, with
code-switching (both intra- and inter-sentential) a regular part of the
community's adult language practices. Generally speaking, English
is associated with more formal contexts and the activities and persons
that take part in them, such as going to school, church, village
meetings, and Roseau, while Patwa is considered appropriate for more
informal contexts, such as gathering with friends at home or on the
road, working in the banana field, or washing clothes at the river.
However, Patwa is considered by most to be “better” for
emotionally expressive speech acts like gossiping, arguing, joking,
cursing, teasing, and assessing others. Adults draw on this expressive
quality of Patwa in their speech to children, frequently speaking Patwa
directly to them for affectively marked functions. These include
expressing positive affect through a Patwa babytalk lexicon, lullabies,
and some routines, and more negative affect through using Patwa for
discipline and scolding, for intensified directives, and as a moral
discourse to negatively evaluate children's behavior or demeanor
(Paugh 2001, in
press).
As children learn to speak, they simultaneously learn the complex
associations with both languages – particularly, that it is the
language of adults. While the majority now acquire English as their
first language and use it for most interactions, many also demonstrate
some productive competence in Patwa, particularly when alone with peers
and not monitored by adults. Their code-switching practices, though
restricted when compared to those of adults, illustrate the
associations of the languages with particular people, places, and
functions; in particular, Patwa is identified with affective stances
that complement or intensify those expressed through English (Paugh 2001, in press).
This becomes especially evident during everyday social interactions with
peers, when children use Patwa lexical items, expletives, and exclamations
for affective marking and intensification within their English
speech (e.g., curses like tèt papa'w ‘your
father's head’, or intensified directives like sòti
la ‘come out of there’). Like adults, they code-switch into
Patwa for various stylistic and pragmatic functions, such as directing,
evaluating, and criticizing one another's actions, speech, and
demeanor.
For children, code-switching into Patwa is a multifunctional
linguistic strategy used to assert dominance over other children, to
display shifting footings, and to claim adultlike roles and status
through the revoicing of adult commands, evaluations, and registers (Paugh 2001, in press; cf.
Cromdal 2004, Jørgensen
1998). This is particularly striking when children enact adult
roles in spontaneous imaginary play, which offers the most extensive
and elaborate Patwa usages that I observed among children. In other
types of play (such as object play) and everyday conversations with
peers, children primarily speak English with occasional isolated
code-switches into Patwa; in role play, however, children's Patwa
speech may span several turns and consist of complete Patwa sentences.
Children's role play is thus a rich site for the examination of
their competence in different language varieties and registers, and
their creativity and agency in using them to structure imaginative
play. Furthermore, it provides a prime context within which children
can practice, learn, and socialize Patwa among themselves.
METHODOLOGY AND DATA
I investigated children's language use and play through 18
months of ethnographic research and a longitudinal language
socialization study in one rural farming village in
1996–1998.10
Accompanying the home
recordings are extensive ethnographic notes on and audio-video
recordings of daily community and family life, everyday social
interactions, and village meetings and events. Linguistic practices and
language ideologies were also investigated in the school and nation.
The school component included periodic audio-video recordings of the
local preschool and grades one and two at the primary school.
Interviews were conducted with parents, teachers, and Ministry of
Education personnel. A point of contrast to these quotidian practices
was provided through investigation of the construction, representation,
and planned performance of culture in the national arena, including
KEK's Patwa-promoting efforts (see Paugh
2001 for more details).
Six language-learning children
ages 2 to 4 years were video-audio recorded over a period of 12
consecutive months (except for one child who was recorded for 6
months), with a minimum of 2 hours of each child's naturally
occurring speech recorded each month. The children interacted with
various family and community members and engaged in diverse daily
activities as active participants and observers (
Lave & Wenger 1991). The resulting recordings
were transcribed with the help of the children's caregivers,
eliciting metalinguistic commentary by more culturally competent
members, including older children, in the process (
Kulick 1992,
Schieffelin
1990). During recording I tried to assume the role of observer
rather than participant, and I did not elicit speech from the children
or other interlocutors (though I was occasionally pulled into ongoing
conversations, and would not assume that my presence had no effect).
The children seemed to become very comfortable with me, to the point
that during transcription, their caregivers often disapproved of how
they treated me as if I was another child (such as calling me
“girl” or taking me with them through the bush).
As a language socialization study, the central focus was on
adult-child interactions in the home, school, and community. However,
it became clear that a primary socializing context for both girls and
boys of differing ages is playing in large groups of children with
little adult supervision.11
The number of
children in such groups depends on how many children live in a given
area and the activity being pursued. Generally, the oldest girl is
responsible for looking after younger children. When no older girls are
present, adults generally hold the oldest boy responsible.
Children are surrounded by other children from birth, and most spend a
minimum of 2 to 3 hours a day playing with peers, and often much longer
on weekends and school vacations. In this verbally rich environment,
they first begin to engage in peer play with their siblings, cousins,
and other children who share the same home or yard, or live close by.
As soon as they begin to walk and talk, small children are generally
welcome to join in mixed-age and mixed-gendered peer and sibling
play.
12 However, by seventh grade (ages
11–12 years), both boys and girls are usually too busy to spend
time playing with younger children owing to an intensive after-school
study program in preparation for the Common Entrance Exam to attend
secondary school. In addition to this program and increased homework,
they are also given more responsibilities (especially chores) at
home.
Adults do not usually allow such groups of children
inside the home, claiming that children disrupt the household,
interrupt adult activities (such as cleaning the house or preparing
meals), and generally make too much “noise.” The home and
yard are clearly demarcated from the surrounding areas, and, like the
school, are under the control of adults. Groups of children
consequently tend to play outside in the yard, road, or nearby bush
with minimal or no adult supervision. Although children are socialized
to monitor their speech and behavior around adults, this unsupervised
peer play creates a critical space for them to explore the range of
their linguistic repertoires without being told “no Patwa”
by adults (see
Garrett 1999 for a similar
situation in St. Lucia).
13 However,
children sometimes monitor one another's language use in ways that
are similar to adult caregivers and teachers (see Paugh 2001, chap. 7).
They learn to
negotiate and navigate through the spatial (home, yard, school) and
temporal (when adults are present, during school) restrictions placed
on their language use. Thus, while my attention to adult-child
socialization activities anchors my understanding of local language
ideologies and practices, I found it extremely productive to observe
and video-record children of ages 2 to 13 as they engaged in group
(social) as well as solitary play.
DOING “BEING ADULT”14 This phrase is adapted from Sacks 1984, “On doing ‘being
ordinary.”’
Role-playing is a common activity when village children play in
groups. They pretend to engage in a number of activities that they
observe adults do regularly, but from which children are normally
excluded or allowed to participate in only marginally, such as cooking,
farming, teaching, or driving a bus.15
Children are exposed to the work activities of adults from
birth. Babies are brought along to the garden, river, and elsewhere as
adults do their work (as well as when visiting family and friends, or
attending village events and meetings). Thus, children are exposed to
adult activities and language use (including a great deal of
code-switching) long before they begin to participate verbally in
social interaction or to enact adult roles themselves.
Older
children often direct younger children in what to do or say, and
narrate the activity or event. Small children are rarely purposely
excluded from imaginary play frames by older children, and they often
become lead characters. Talk is very important in creating and
sustaining such play frames, since children do not usually have
elaborate imported toys to act as props.
16 Children often employ household furniture or materials
outside (such as garbage from behind the house) to construct imaginary
places and props for their play. Girls sometimes have dolls and small
children have stuffed animals, particularly when they have relatives
living abroad who can send them. Boys often drive “trucks”
they fashion themselves. A truck consists of a long stick as the body,
with two small boards (or sticks) attached horizontally across the top
(for steering) and bottom (for attaching two wheels, usually carved
from the soles of old shoes). Strings run from the top board to the
bottom board to allow for steering.
Critically, children tend
to use proportionately more Patwa in role-playing than in other
activities, employing their verbal resources as well as physically
embodied social action (like pretending to weed crops) to create
imaginary play spaces both organized by and appropriate for Patwa, a
language they are otherwise restricted from speaking. Their
code-switching practices demonstrate their emerging sensitivity to how
the languages index particular social identities, places, and
activities, and code-switching plays a key role in creating and
sustaining play frames.
There are differences between children's negotiations about role play and their language use within role play frames.
Children generally use English for interactions about the play, such as
negotiating the play frame and directing one another's actions
(similar to findings by Halmari & Smith
1994 and Kwan-Terry 1992). Children
also occasionally use Patwa for local interactional functions in the
negotiation of role play, such as for affective marking and issuing
intensified directives, in ways similar to how they use it in their
everyday peer interaction (as described above). However, within the
play frame itself, children regularly alternate languages according to
the roles and activities they are depicting and narrating. In other
words, children use both languages in their role play but tend to
employ much more Patwa than they typically do in any other kind of
social interaction. In this way, their enactment of adult roles matches
both the activities undertaken and languages used by adults in everyday
life. Children's understandings of the interrelations between
language and place, and the meanings and appropriateness of using
particular linguistic varieties in particular places, become especially
evident (also see Schieffelin 2003).
English-speaking roles and activities17 Transcription conventions:
Soon after they begin to talk, children are able to identify which
language varieties to employ and what activities are entailed in
enacting specific roles. When enacting certain kinds of adult roles,
like parents or teachers, children tend to employ English with little
or no use of Patwa. When role-playing mommies and daddies, for example,
children carry out such routine tasks as cooking, cleaning, washing
clothes, and bathing and feeding their offspring (typically younger
siblings, pets, or dolls, if they have them). Children enacting these
roles tell their pretend charges in English to come and bathe,
eat your food, and sleep, baby, sleep. However, they
also frequently employ Patwa lexicon and terms of endearment that
characterize the community-wide babytalk register used by adults and
older children with babies and young children. These appear in their
otherwise English speech and are frequently spoken in a higher-pitched
voice. When I began recording Alisia (1;11),18
The ages of the focal children in the study are provided
in years and months. Thus, “1;11” means that a child is 1
year and 11 months old. The ages of other, nonfocal children over 1
year old are given in years only (e.g., 6 years). The names of all
children and other participants were changed to preserve their
anonymity.
she played “mommy” with her baby
brother. She lifted her shirt, pulled her brother toward her, and said,
Baby, look tété ‘baby, look
breast’ (i.e., to breast-feed). Even Jonah (2;9) once
called to his puppy and then repeatedly asked it,
You want
tété?” His mother playfully
questioned him,
Where you taking tété
to give it? Jonah pointed to his chest and responded,
There. And there. Such expressions are commonly used by
mothers when nursing their infants.
When playing school, the structuring of the play frame, roles (both
teacher and student), and activities are carried out almost entirely in
English. As teachers, children strive to speak a more standard variety
of English, with careful articulation and an authoritative tone of
voice. Occasionally, however, they switch to Patwa to issue an
intensified command or negative evaluation within the play frame, as
teachers themselves admit to doing when schoolchildren are particularly
unruly (e.g., Sizé! ‘sit down’;
You mal élivé ‘You are badly
brought up/badly behaved’). This again points to
children's understandings of Patwa as part of an adult register
linked to authority and control (Paugh 2001,
in press). But more typically, children employ
English, the language of the school, when enacting the roles of teachers
and students. Children pretending to be teachers instruct their students
to “spell” their names or other words, to tell about
themselves in English, and to sing English songs commonly learned at
school. Often they use physical props from around the house or yard,
such as old lesson books or pretend chalkboards made from sheets of
galvanized metal. They also demonstrate an understanding of the
differential power dynamics and unequal positions of authority involved
in the teacher-student relationship, particularly ways in which
teachers control their students if they do not meet their expectations.
For example, children portraying teachers frequently find a
“whip” (such as a branch from a bush) and walk around their
pretend students, threatening to “give them licks” if they
disobey or don't answer questions correctly.
Such themes are illustrated in the following example. Sonia (6 years)
initiates a game of playing school with a group of six other children:
her sister Marissa (age 3;8), brothers Nicholas (11 years) and Oscar (7
months), friend Henrietta (7 years), and neighbors, twin brothers Aaron
and Albert (9 years). Sonia's mother is cleaning inside the house
and has put three chairs on the veranda while she mops the kitchen
floor. The children have arranged the chairs in a line facing out from
the veranda. The girls sit on the chairs, and the three boys sit on the
veranda wall (Henrietta is holding Oscar). Sonia begins the play frame
by retrieving a school workbook entitled Practice reading from
inside the house, and then standing in front of the other children.
Though speaking softly at first, she commands them to stand up, which
is how teachers obtain children's attention to begin the school
day: All stand. The children stand up and face her, indicating
their agreement to take part in the play frame. Sonia then begins to
take on a deeper, more authoritative tone of voice as she leads them
through an array of activities common to a school day: morning prayer
and songs, stretching exercises, picture book study, tell about
yourself, days of the week, months of the year, ABCs, counting, and
reading exercises. Though maintaining a degree of seriousness
throughout, Sonia occasionally seems to mock how teachers carry out
these activities. For example, soon after starting, she repeatedly
tells the children to sit and then stand, directives commonly issued by
teachers. However, she speaks so fast that the children have trouble
keeping up, particularly the boys, who must climb up and down from the
veranda wall, and all begin laughing:
In a similar vein, Sonia employs the disciplinary tactic of hitting
the children with a “whip” when they disobey. She finds a
branch from a bush in the yard to punish an uncooperative student,
Nicholas, who has left a small radio on despite her previous directives
to turn it off:
When her rhetorical question (line 1) and directives (lines 4, 11) do
not work, Sonia disciplines a disobedient pupil with corporal
punishment (line 13). She regains control of her class and continues
with the lesson (lines 15–16), but throughout the rest of the
play session, she repeatedly hits all the children (except Oscar) with
the whip whenever they laugh, fail to answer a question, or otherwise
“disobey.” She does it so frequently as to seem to poke fun
at it, commenting on the teacher-student relationship. Despite
Sonia's seeming impatience with her students, which could possibly
provoke a switch to Patwa, all roles and activities in this play frame
(which lasted for 16 minutes) are constructed in English.
Patwa-speaking roles and activities
In contrast to English roles and activities, which typically take
place within the home, school, and other formal settings, like church,
children tend to employ Patwa to enact roles and activities that occur
in places outside the human-built environment. These include
predominantly male, uneducated occupations, such as farmers, bus
drivers, and pig hunters, which take place in the garden, banana field,
road, or bush, where adults most regularly speak Patwa with one
another. Strikingly, this often entails both verbally and physically
creating such an imaginary place where it is in theory safe, or at
least more appropriate, to use Patwa. Children's language choice
helps both to establish the context (Goodwin &
Duranti 1992) and to create the role and activity they are
enacting, and their language choice is just as important as the use of
physical props, such as tools to play garden or a couch serving as a
pretend bus.19
This brings to mind
Gumperz's description of “situational switching” (as
distinct from “metaphorical switching”):
In situational switching, where a code or speech style is
regularly associated with a certain class of activities, it comes to
signify or connote them, so that its very use can signal the enactment
of these activities even in the absence of other clear contextual cues.
Component messages are then interpreted in terms of the norms and
symbolic associations that apply to the signaled activity. (Gumperz 1982:98).
For Dominican children, Patwa appears to be so strongly associated with
particular kinds of adult activities that the switch into Patwa can
signal the enactment of a particular role.
Children as young as 2 to 4 years old use Patwa in role play
sequences that are brief but telling. Often they employ nonsense words
in their play that sound like Patwa and are interpreted as such by
adult transcribers. For example, Reiston and Sherona (both 3 years) are
playing in a small field of bananas maintained by Sherona's father
near her home. Sherona's older sister Hannah (12 years) is walking
near the edge of the banana field, looking for ripe papayas. Sherona
and Reiston begin stomping around the field, shouting rapidly in what
appears to be both English and Patwa for several minutes. Aside from
the Patwa personal pronouns mwen ‘I’ and
ou ‘you’, and present tense verb marker
ka, very little was intelligible to me or their grandmother
and cousin, Marcel (11 years), during transcription. At one point,
however, Reiston stops and bends over, pulling on weeds as if clearing
the field:
The children engage in an imaginary play frame by stomping around
like farmers in a field. Reiston's grandmother and cousin
interpreted their pretend play as depicting somewhat agitated farmers
who have apparently been angered by something (perhaps the poor
condition of their banana field). Though their speech is difficult to
comprehend as they tromp through the field, Reiston speaks a clear
Patwa utterance when he bends down and pretends to weed crops,
expressing a common adult activity, working (Mwen ka twavay,
line 1). Sherona, however, apparently becomes concerned about her
sister and steps out of the play frame on line 2 to warn her in English
that a “jumby” might come and take her away for getting too
close to the bush. Reiston appears to become unsettled about this
warning – perhaps not realizing it was directed at Hannah –
and similarly speaks English in his related directive to leave,
Shero let's go (line 3). His use of English can be viewed
as affiliative with Sherona's language choice in line 2, as well
as representing an utterance that is out of the play frame. Sherona
then recommences the play frame, looking away from her sister and back
to the banana field, and once again embodying the role of farmer by
stomping around and speaking Patwa. She employs a common leave-taking
expression heard among adults, Mwen ka alé (line 4).
Though “going” is not specifically an adult activity, when
children take leave, they are only heard to say its English vernacular
equivalent, I going (in fact, I never heard Sherona use the
Patwa phrase outside of imaginary play). This further suggests that
Sherona is continuing her role as an adult farmer. Reiston similarly
uses the Patwa version as he begins stomping and waving his arms (line
5). Both children continue shouting in fragmented Patwa as they stomp
around the field for the next few minutes.
Bus driver and passengers
While example (2) takes place in a banana field, the actual place
where such (predominantly male) farming activity and Patwa language use
occur, the following two examples illustrate how children verbally and
physically create places both associated with and appropriate
for Patwa as they perform adult roles. In example (3), three cousins,
Henry (3 years), Tamika (2;7), and Kenrick (2;1), negotiate and
co-produce a shared imaginative frame that enacts Patwa-speaking adult
roles, a bus driver and two passengers, in appropriate social spaces
– the bus and bus stop on the road – within the living room
of Tamika's house. The children are alone while Tamika's
mother cooks lunch in her outdoor kitchen, located about five feet from
the house. First, Kenrick and Tamika close the front door and windows
of the house, making it almost impossible for anyone to see inside.20
The “closing up” of the house
is significant in itself. The home is considered by villagers to be
more private than the yard, but one is expected to leave the front door
and windows open when home during the day or risk being considered
antisocial. Additionally, it is considered particularly rude for
children to shut out an adult, which implies that they are doing
something they should not be doing. In this case, it seems to have
facilitated the children's private display of competence.
Without any prompts from the other two children, Henry immediately
initiates a pretend play session in which the couch is transformed into
a bus going along the road. He assumes the role of bus driver,
positioning himself at one end of the couch with his feet dangling
through the railing, and pretending to hold a steering wheel. Kenrick
and Tamika become the passengers getting on and off along the road. The
bus is a prime context for the use of Patwa for gossip among adults,
and bus drivers typically speak Patwa rather than English to their
passengers. Imitating real-life drivers, Henry advises his passengers
when to get on and off in Patwa, as one so often hears on a ride to
town:
Henry physically positions himself on the end of the couch as if at
the head of a bus and calls out two commands in Patwa,
batjé and atè (line 1). Though Henry
does not provide any metacommunicative framing (e.g., ‘we are
playing bus’), Tamika and Kenrick immediately take his cue and
join in, climbing on the pretend bus like passengers (lines 2–4
and 6). Henry continues making driving noises until he announces that
they have reached their destination: All you reach (line 8).
Though Henry is clearly still playing bus, he speaks English here
despite his previous directives in Patwa. As this code-switch does not
appear to serve a local interactional function, it appears that Henry
may not know how to say it in Patwa, or that he has heard all you
reach more often than a Patwa equivalent such as zò
wivé ‘you (plural) have arrived’. Regardless,
Tamika appropriately climbs off (line 9). She climbs on again after
Henry resumes making driving noises, further adding to the joint
construction of the play by exclaiming in Patwa, Nou
alé! (lines 11 and 14), a common expression one hears among
adults who have been waiting for a ride at a bus stop. Kenrick
excitedly repeats it on lines 13 and 15.
The children continue getting on and off for several minutes as Henry
exclaims, Batjé!, until Tamika decides to move the
couch for better access. The negotiation of moving the furniture takes
place entirely in English, predominantly consisting of Tamika
issuing directives to the other children:
After Tamika's numerous English directives, Henry goes along
with the moving of the couch, though appearing unsure about it. When
they finish, he happily resumes the play frame in Patwa (line 14). Soon
after this segment, however, he again becomes concerned and tries to
persuade Tamika to return the couch because of the potential negative
consequences of reorganizing her mother's furniture. He repeatedly
tells her, Lorna hit us ‘Lorna will hit us’. When
out of the imaginary play frame and back to being children – who
might get in trouble for their actions – they speak English. When
Tamika's mother eventually returns, she does in fact scold the
children in both English and Patwa for moving the couch. She reopens
the door and windows and guides the ensuing talk, with Henry and
Kenrick remaining practically silent (and only speaking English when
they do talk) for as long as she is in the house. Later, during
transcription, Lorna said she was shocked at how much Henry spoke,
claiming that she never hears him talk as he is “too
afraid” of people. But as soon as she was gone and there was no
adult presence (besides me) to monitor their speech or behavior, he and
the other children talked extensively, creatively employing their
linguistic resources to construct a vivid imaginary play sequence.
This example illustrates the awareness of children as young as 2 and
3 years old of role-appropriate language and how to use it creatively
and pragmatically in their imaginary play. But where did such young
children learn about riding buses and the use of Patwa by bus drivers
and passengers? Their primary caregivers rarely take the bus into town
because of the cost of a round-trip fare and the bumpy two-hour ride
each way. When adults do go, they typically leave the children home
with relatives or friends because they have many errands to accomplish
in the short time before the once-daily bus returns to the village.
However, children are frequently present in the village as people wait
for the bus and other rides, and they may overhear such interactions as
adults get on board. As small children silently follow behind their
adult caregivers, they observe what is going on around them and are
socialized as to the ways speech indexes people, practices, and places.
But importantly, older children also expose young children to such ways
of playing and portraying adult activities during their peer play.
Kenrick and Tamika's older siblings and cousins frequently give
each other (and pets, insects, etc.) rides on objects they find around
the house, like old plastic bags and cardboard boxes. On several
occasions I heard them say batjé to their
“passengers,” though not in the exact sequence created by
Henry, Tamika, and Kenrick. During a recording session two months prior
to the above example, Kenrick received an explicit lesson on the
meaning of batjé from his older cousin. He and three
older cousins were taking turns “riding” a box down a small
hill in Tamika's yard, pretending it was a truck. At one point in
the play, Kenrick began whining. His cousin Robert (8 years), who was
in the box, asked him: You want a ride? To
batjé? To go up?”21
Despite Robert's offer, Kenrick became interested in
a flap of the box that had fallen off. He began trying to ride it down
the hill, and Robert continued riding in the box.
Such
questions serve to ascertain if Kenrick wants a turn in the box, but
they also define and socialize the use of the Patwa verb
batjé, offering insights into the activity and multiple
ways to talk about it (e.g., to get “a ride” or “to
go up” into a truck or bus). Children thus learn not only from
their observations of and taking part in the adult world, but also from
how they reconstruct and portray that world in their play and
interactions with other children.
Farmers going to and from the garden
In their role play, children use the language varieties available to
them to create realistic imaginary activities, characters, and scenes.
Furthermore, they seek out real places and actively construct
imaginary ones that are associated with and appropriate for the use of
Patwa by the characters they depict. However, the constraints on
children's Patwa usage become clear when imaginary play enters the
“real” world, as the following example illustrates. Marcel
(11 years) initiates and directs a play frame that is structured around
a routine everyday practice in the village – going to the garden
to tend one's crops. He is playing on the concrete-paved yard
outside his home with his three male cousins: Reiston (3;8), Alex (6
years), and Junior (9 years). His grandmother is sitting on the veranda
of the house but is out of the children's view. Prompted by the
discovery of several pairs of work boots under the house, Marcel begins
an imaginary play session in which the boys are going to the
jaden ‘garden’ to weed potatoes:
Prior to this event, Marcel was speaking English with the children.
However, when he finds the work boots, he begins to enact the role of a
Patwa-speaking farmer. At first he uses English to direct Reiston to
join him, except for framing the place (jaden) in Patwa:
Let's put our boots yeah? We going jaden (line
1). He then further defines the activity, directing Reiston in English,
but framing the activity, weeding a potato patch, in Patwa: We
going sèklé our
patat. Let's go and sèklé
the patat (lines 3 and 5). Then, as he moves from the
yard to just outside its boundaries (and becomes further involved in
his role as farmer examining his garden), his Patwa usage increases.
Once he is off the concrete paved yard and in the garden behind the
house – a place associated with adult male activity and Patwa
– he produces a completely Patwa utterance: Patat sala ka
fè zèb déja wi zò (line 9). In
addition, he draws air through his teeth to make a sharp sucking sound,
employing a common adult gesture (known as “suck teeth”) to
indicate his annoyance that weeds are growing so soon.22
In the Dictionary of Jamaican
English, “suck (one's) teeth” is defined as a
verb phrase meaning “to make a sound of annoyance, displeasure,
ill-nature, or disrespect by sucking air audibly through the teeth and
over the tongue” (Cassidy & LePage 1967:428; cf. Allsopp
1996:538). Rickford & Rickford (1979:365–66) similarly define it as “an
expression of anger, impatience, exasperation or annoyance,”
highlighting that “its use by children in the presence of their
parents or other adults is considered rude and
insubordinate.”
He again switches to English to direct
Reiston,
Reiston go and cut the patat with
me, but he uses Patwa to refer to the object,
patat, and
to provide narrative description,
I ka fè zèb
(line 11).
After 10 minutes of play, Marcel ends the play frame and leads the
boys out of the garden, back into the English-speaking domain of the
yard:
Marcel uses Patwa to issue the imperative Annou ay, and to
define the activity, Nou sòti an jaden (line 1). In
contrast to his earlier English directives to Reiston, these Patwa
utterances include Marcel as one of the farmers. When Reiston falls
(line 5), both Alex and Marcel call attention to it by exclaiming
Ga! (lines 6 and 8), an affective Patwa marker used for
attention getting and expressing surprise, especially by children
(Paugh 2001). Alex then appears to exit the
play frame, referring to Reiston by name (rather than as a farmer) and
speaking in English: Reiston cannot even going up. This could
be interpreted as Alex orienting himself to leaving the garden and
re-entering the adult-controlled yard where children are prohibited
from speaking Patwa. In contrast, Marcel includes the fall as part of
the play action by pretending that Reiston is a farmer having trouble
climbing a hill on his way home from the garden: Nonm la
fèb. I pa sa mouté bik la (line 8). Marcel helps
Reiston up and continues narrating in Patwa: Nonm ou
fèb yeah. Ou ni GWO boot la,
ou la (line 10). At this point, he is within earshot of his
grandmother, who quickly scolds him for his choice of language:
Stop the Patwa in the yard mouché
Marcel.
With very few props, Marcel's use of Patwa helps to create the
adult role he is enacting. Furthermore, he draws on the distinction
between the home area and the garden, which in the village is viewed as
a more Patwa-speaking domain, to create an imaginary play space where
it is more acceptable to use Patwa according to village language
ideologies. However, by incorporating Reiston's fall into the
original play frame, Marcel continues to structure the play in Patwa
even though he is now inside the boundaries of the yard and within
hearing range of his grandmother. This violates the usually unspoken
rule (for children) of no Patwa in the home or yard, and Marcel is
negatively sanctioned for it with a place-related admonishment, in
the yard. Furthermore, the Patwa address term
mouché Marcel” ‘mister
Marcel’ used by his grandmother is often employed by caregivers
when scolding children and implies that a child is acting too
adult-like, highlighting adult-child status differences (see
Paugh, in press). After the scolding, Marcel
returned to speaking mostly English for the rest of the afternoon.
CONCLUSIONS
This study has illustrated that a focus on children's play in
multilingual settings can shed light on their understandings,
explorations, and transformations of the complex linguistic practices
and language ideologies they experience in their daily lives. It
offered insights from Dominica, where children employ Patwa, a language
they are otherwise forbidden to speak at home and at school, to create
vivid imaginary play frames, roles, and places. In this situation where
multiple social and linguistic ideologies are in tension,
children's peer groups provide a “safe” space in which
they can try out other language varieties and social identities without
negative consequences from adults. It allows them to explore roles,
positions of authority, and languages that are otherwise restricted for
them. Children tend to use English (with occasional code-switching into
Patwa) for most social interactions and for negotiating play frames,
but in role play, they actively choose between the linguistic varieties
available to them according to the role, activity, and place they are
depicting. Their use of Patwa in play illustrates that they are active
agents in their socialization, not simply passive recipients of culture
or merely doing what adults tell them to do, despite possible
sanctions. If they were, they would only speak English. Their peer play
affords a glimpse into their ability to acquire Patwa without actively
using it with adults, the presumed experts, as well as their agency in
using Patwa to structure their play, explore multiple voices and
identities, and creatively depict adult roles.
Children's language choice in role play thus has implications
for larger processes of sociocultural and linguistic reproduction and
change. On the one hand, their differential language use when enacting
particular kinds of adults may reproduce more broadly held ideologies
about the languages, the people who use them, and appropriate social
spaces for their use. On the other hand, children do not use Patwa to
portray submissive or unintelligent roles within their play frames.
Rather, their use of Patwa provides access to particular practices,
identities, and positions of autonomy or authority, which in turn
enable them to position themselves as leaders of play activities and
hence to direct and shape the actions and speech of other children (cf.
Cromdal 2004, Jørgensen 1998, Paugh
2001). They draw on current ideologies about language use in
innovative and creative ways (such as creating imaginary play spaces
where Patwa would in theory be allowed), rather than merely submitting
themselves to them. In other words, children explore and comment on
existing power structures, but in a way that does not appear to
belittle the people or activities they are depicting. This may prove
critical to the process of language shift from Patwa to varieties of
English, as children transform the associations with the languages
through using them in their play – creating positive associations
between Patwa and adult authority, status, and autonomy that may
motivate them to use Patwa in their peer interactions as adults.
Furthermore, as older children create and structure play frames that
depend on code-switching between English and Patwa, they socialize
younger children to engage in such play and language use themselves.
Hence, children's language use may contribute to the maintenance
of Patwa – at least for particular stylistic and pragmatic
functions – despite other reasons to shift.
Ultimately, this article highlights the value of observing and
recording children interacting with children, especially in such a
complex, multilingual situation where they are socialized to monitor
their speech and behavior around adults (who consciously strive not to transmit Patwa to children). Peer play is a critical site by
which to gauge how children interpret, understand, negotiate, resist,
transform, reproduce, and socialize one another in these ideologies,
meanings, and practices. If only adult-child interactions had been
observed, children's extensive uses of Patwa with their peers, and
this very critical part of their social worlds, would have been missed
entirely.
