The linguistic repertoires of people are dynamic, which makes it difficult to measure and compare them. In the following section, we want to take a closer look at differences in language choice depending on the person spoken to.
Group membership
According to Fishman (1965), one of the factors determining language choice is group membership. This factor must be primarily viewed in terms of reference group membership. Fishman (1965) gives the example of a government functionary in Brussels who speaks standard French at the office, standard Dutch when he goes to the club for a drink and a distinctly local variant of Flemish at home. Blommaert and Backus (2011) state that the language choice depending on group membership can also change over time. The language spoken by a person at the age of eight will be different from the language used at age eighteen, for example. So the language choice of any multilingual individual will depend on the person’s sense of belonging to a certain group. However, even within groups, there are differences to be observed. For example Braunshausen (1928 in Fishman, 1965) has differentiated within the family domain in terms of speakers. Some researchers specify family members such as father, mother, child, etc. Gross (1951 in Fishman, 1965) also specifies what he calls dyads within the family: grandmother to grandfather, grandfather to mother, grandfather to child, mother to father, etc. This approach recognizes the interactions between the family members and makes a distinction between hearers and speakers. In other words, we can distinguish between multilingual comprehension and multilingual production. This approach also recognizes that language choice is more than a matter of individual preference, but also a matter of role-relations (Fishman, 1965).
Language choice and code-switching
In the research on language choice, code alternation and -switching is increasingly becoming a commonplace (Van Avermaet, 2008). In his research on language choice in the Italian community in Flanders, Van Avermaet (2008) found that Italian immigrants mainly shifted to using Dutch only for intra-group communication, but that in communication with parents and grandparents, Italian was predominant. This is a clear example of how language choice depends on the persons spoken to. Code-switching is an “old” theme in sociolinguistic enquiry, but it has gained renewed importance in the context of migration studies (Auer, 1998; Gumperz, 1982).
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Language choice is shaped by the interaction of many factors, not only the domain of the language behavior (language at work, with family, with friends, will differ) will vary, but also the situation in which communication takes place (formal versus informal situations) and other factors (Fishman, 1965). The concept of reference group membership thus gives some of the invariables of language choice, but it also leaves many exceptions (Fishman, 1965).
Parental language use
Common findings also indicate that language use by parents is very important to develop or maintain the child’s ethnic language (De Houwer, 2007). De Houwer (2007) found that the more both parents used the ethnic language at home, the more likely their children were to use the ethnic language. Parental use of ethnic language at home, not only influences its maintenance, but also the language proficiency of their children. Duursma et al. (2007) studied both Spanish and English vocabulary in fifth-grade Spanish-speaking students learning English in the United States. Parents using more Spanish at home resulted in higher scores for Spanish vocabulary in the children but did not have any impact on the English vocabulary of children who were instructed through English at school (Dixon et al., 2012). Hammer, Davison, Lawrence and Miccio (2009 in Dixon et al., 2012) found that mothers’ use of Spanish at home was critical to the growth of their children’s Spanish vocabulary and did not impede their children’s English vocabulary development. Saravanan (2001) found that the more often parents reported preferring to use and actually using English, the lower their children’s ethnic language proficiency tended to be. He also found that the lower Singaporean parents’ self-reported proficiency in their ethnic language, the less likely they were to use it at home. The parents’ proficiency in turn influenced their children’s proficiency: the higher the parents’ ethnic language proficiency, the higher their children’s ethnic language proficiency tended to be. However, the higher the parents’ English proficiency, the lower their children’s ethnic language proficiency was (Dixon et al., 2012). An interesting observation in the study of Duursma et al. (2007) was the fact that only the father’s language preference played a role in language proficiency in the dominant language, not the mother’s. Paternal preference for English was one of the few significant predictors in predicting both English and Spanish vocabulary. It is their hypothesis that fathers who speak the dominant language in society at home rather than their own mother tongue, tend to have higher levels of education and need to speak the societal language on a daily basis for their professions. Families with fathers preferring to speak the societal language might differ in whether both parents were born in the country of residence. Duursma et al. (2007) state that this may also influence educational expectations of parents. Families that recently migrated often lack knowledge of the educational system of their host country. Tabors and Snow (2001 in Duursma et al., 2007) found that parents of multilingual pupils often have conflicting expectations with schools and teachers (Duursma et al., 2007). In one of the following sections, we will go more into depth about these teacher perceptions. Siblings
Duursma et al. (2007) found in their study that the language children prefer to speak with their siblings, affected the proficiency in the dominant language more than the language preferred by the parents. As Gutierrez-Clellen and Kreiter (2003) suggested, there is no direct link between the amount of input and the proficiency in that language. Multilingual children with no input of the
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societal language at home can reach high levels in that societal language while maintenance and support for their mother tongue at home does influence the proficiency in their mother tongue.
De taal die mensen verkiezen om te spreken, is afhankelijk van de groep waarin ze zich bevinden en ook binnen die groep kunnen er verschillen zijn naargelang de personen, de relaties, de rollen en naargelang het om het luisteren of spreken gaat. Die taalkeuze kan ook veranderen met de tijd. Taalgebruik door de ouders is belangrijk voor het ontwikkelen of behouden van de moedertaal van het kind. Uit onderzoek blijkt dat thuiscontexten waar ouders vaker hun moedertaal spreken, geen negatieve impact hebben op de vaardigheden in de instructietaal. Hoe minder vaardig leerlingen vinden dat ze zijn in hun moedertaal, hoe minder ze die thuis gaan gebruiken. Een interessante bevinding was dat enkel de voorkeur van de vader een rol speelde in de taalvaardigheid in de dominante taal en niet die van de moeder. De taal die kinderen zelf verkiezen om te spreken met hun broers en/of zussen, heeft een grotere invloed op de vaardigheden in de dominante taal dan de taal die ouders verkiezen. Meertalige kinderen die thuis geen gebruik maken van de dominante taal, kunnen in die taal toch hoge niveaus bereiken.