The preschool entrance hall: A bilingual transit zone for preschoolers

Abstract

This chapter explores everyday talk among parents, children and preschool teachers that takes place in Swedish preschool entrance halls. The data is drawn from a project that studies the daily talk and interaction between parents and teachers in Swedish preschools where most families have a language background other than Swedish, while most teachers are monolingual Swedish speakers. The participants’ talk and social interaction has been video recorded in two preschools during the drop-off and pick-up time, and transcribed using conversation analytic methods. The theoretical framework of the study is influenced by theories on language socialization and by ethnomethodological work on social actions; focusing on the participants’ methods of accomplishing and making sense of social activities. The chapter highlights the children’s commuting between home and the preschool where the preschool entrance hall works as a ‘transit zone’ for the children’s talk to be interactively transformed from their mother tongue(s) into Swedish and vice versa. Besides the parents code-switching and physically handing over the child, the analyses show how ‘transformation objects’ like indoor shoes and mittens work as concrete signals for the child to handle the transit and to develop pragmatic skills about language use.