Amy L. Paugh

Multilingual play: Children's code-switching, role play, and agency in Dominica, West Indies

In Dominica, rural adults forbid children from speaking Patwa (a Frenchlexicon creole) in favor of acquiring English (the official language), contributing to a rapid language shift in most villages. However, adults value Patwa for a range of expressive functions and frequently code-switch around and to children. Children increasingly use English but employ Patwa for some functions during peer play when away from adults. This study examines how, despite possible sanctions, children use Patwa to enact particular adult roles during peer play, and what this signifies about their knowledge of role- and place-appropriate language use. Critically, they draw on their verbal resources and physically embodied social action to create imaginary play spaces both organized by and appropriate for Patwa. The examination of children’s social worlds provides a more nuanced picture of language shift ‐ and potential maintenance ‐ than observing only adult-adult or adultchild interaction. (Language socialization, language shift, code-switching, children, role play, creole, Dominica, Caribbean.)*

Learning about work at dinnertime: language socialization in dual-earner American families

The relation between work and family is a topic of considerable research and analysis across disciplines. Yet, few studies have examined how children are socialized into working family life through routine social interactions with family members. This study integrates the lives of children more fully into the literature through a language socialization approach. It analyzes video-recorded dinnertime conversations among 16 middle class working families in Los Angeles to illuminate how children are apprenticed into discourses and ideologies of work. Children acquire work-related values and expectations, as well as related narrative and analytical skills, through taking part in and overhearing their parents’ conversations about work.

UTA M. QUASTHOFF & TABEA BECKER (eds.), Narrative interaction

Uta M. Quasthoff & Tabea Becker (eds.), Narrative interaction . (Studies in Narrative, 5.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. v, 305. Hb

Everyday Moments: Finding `quality time' in American working families

126. This edited volume, the fifth in the Studies in Narrative series published by John Benjamins, brings together international studies conducted on spoken narratives in everyday and institutional settings, and in several languages (English, German, Greek, Italian, and Hungarian). The collection is united by a focus on the interactive nature of narrative in context. Following an introduction by the co-editors, there are eleven chapters organized into three parts concentrating on (I) narrative development, (II) the co-construction of narrative, and (III) narrative retellings.