Thesis (MEducation)--University of South Australia, 2002

If an individual speaks more than one language, there are always at least two ways of verbalising any thought to be expressed. The bilingual speaker must then have a means of ensuring that their utterances are produced in the desired language. However, prominent models of speech production are based almost exclusively on monolingual considerations and require substantial modification to account for bilingual production. A particularly important feature to be explained is the way bilinguals control the language of speech production: for instance, preventing interference from the unintended language, and switching from one language to another. One recent model draws a parallel between bilinguals??? control of their linguistic system and the control of cognitive tasks more generally. The first two experiments reported in this thesis explore the validity of this model by comparing bilingual language switching with a monolingual switching task, as well as to the broader task-switching literature. Switch costs did not conform to the predictions of the task-set inhibition hypothesis in either experiment, as the ???paradoxical??? asymmetry of switch costs was not replicated and some conditions showed benefits, rather than costs, for switching between languages or tasks. Further experiments combined picture naming with negative priming and semantic competitor priming paradigms to examine the role of inhibitory and competitive processes in bilingual lexical selection. Each experiment was also conducted in a parallel monolingual version. Very little negative priming was evident when speaking the second language, but the effects of interlingual cognate status were pronounced. There were some indications of cross-language competition at the level of lexical selection: participants appeared unable to suppress the irrelevant language, even when doing so would make the task easier. Across all the experiments, there was no evidence for global inhibition of the language-not-in-use during speech production. Overall results were characterised by a remarkable flexibility in the mechanisms of bilingual control. A striking dissociation emerged between the patterns of results for cognate and non-cognate items, which was reflected throughout the series of experiments and implicates qualitative differences in the way these lexical items are represented and interconnected.

Typescript (Photocopy) / Bibliography: leaves 239-260 / ix, 260 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dept. of Psychology, University of Adelaide, 1990

This is a qualitative sociolinguistic study that investigates the parental experiences of bilingual child-rearing for linguistically intermarried couples in Japan. In particular, it focuses on the role of native English-speaking fathers. Through the incorporation of questionnaire, logbook, and in-depth interview data, the study presents eight unique and richly-nuanced cases of language contact in the family domain. The thesis builds on influential works that have both questioned the ease with which children acquire two languages (Yamamoto, 2001b) and highlighted bilingual child-rearing as an emotionally draining and labour-intensive pursuit (Okita, 2002). In accordance with recent suggestions to more readily acknowledge the socio-political dimensions of bilingualism (e.g. Heller, 2007, p. 1; Myers-Scotton, 2006; Li Wei, 2008, p. 17), this study shows bilingual child-rearing to be an innately political phenomenon. The study supports the supposition that the individual circumstances of linguistically intermarried couples rarely align neatly with the prescriptive advice found in much of the popular literature on how to raise children in two (or more) languages (Piller, 2001b). In particular, abstractions of power and discursively constructed identities are shown to structure both the specific language choices and the broader parental practices of the couples in this study. For linguistically intermarried couples, bilingual child-rearing is shown to be a fluid process of negotiation, whereby language choices and decisions about transmission strategies are tied to social positioning of both self and other. Drawing from a broader literature pertaining to the social psychology of parenting, this thesis also proposes a model to analyse the ecological context of bilingual child-rearing. The linguistic behaviours of the parents, as well as their decisions concerning family language planning are shown to emerge from each family’s unique and fluctuating set of social circumstances. These include, but are not limited to, the quality of the spousal relationship, the family’s economic resources, (shifting) cultural affiliations of all family members, future plans, minority language contact opportunities, the medium of instruction at the child’s school, the needs and wishes of extended family members, as well as the agency of the child.

The purpose of this study is to investigate family factors in relation to young Chinese immigrants' code-switching and language maintenance. Specific attention is given to children's code-switching behaviour and how parents respond and the effect of parental response upon children's language choice in any subsequent utterance. Attempts are also made to identify the family factors that might have an effect on making language choice. Data were collected monthly through naturalistic tape-recording of families' conversations for one calendar year. Recordings of every other month were transcribed and coded for analysis. A questionnaire was used with the children's parents to obtain general family background information as well as to compare the parents' language beliefs and their actual language behaviour in real life.Results indicated that within an average of 28.1 months of stay in New Zealand, the use of Mandarin Chinese, their ethnic language, was dramatically reduced. In typical family conversations, the parents were using Mandarin Chinese in only 75.6% of their conversational turns and that figure for the children was 65.1%. If the amount of mother tongue use at home is an indicator, then the speed of shift in these families investigated appears to be relatively fast. Few parents, however, felt that their children were using too much English or ever attempted to stop them doing this, despite the fact that all the parents claimed that they very much wanted their children to maintain the ethnic language and were fully aware of the importance of their role as the main input source of their ethnic language. This seems to suggest that the marketplace value of the mainstream language is overtaking the core value of their ethnic language.Results also showed that parental use of English caused a substantially increased use of English from their children. There tended to be an "upgrading" towards English in the children's language choice suggesting that code-switching could be a temporary stage for the children along the gradual process of language shift. On the other hand, the parents were also found using more English after their children's code-switching. One of the reasons for this might be that the parents want to improve their English and regard their children as an ideal person to practise English with.With regard to daily communication functions, results showed that children often resorted to English for daily speech acts indicating that language function replacement has occurred for many daily communicative functions resulting from a gradually reduced use of the ethnic language.Many family factors were found to be affecting language use in the families: the presence of grandparents and the decision to return to their birth country for residence in the future were clearly correlated with increased use of the ethnic language; the parents' level of English language, on the other hand, was found to be related to the amount of English used, though with exceptions.These results strongly suggest that English is taking over the family domains that used to belong to the ethnic language. Parents who want their children to maintain their ethnic language need to put daily effort into action. Without painstaking daily effort, language shift will and probably is happening no matter how strong their theoretical beliefs might be.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Directeur: Normand Labrie.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Janet W. Astington.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Psychology, University of Adelaide, 1990. / Typescript (Photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-260).

Thesis--Doctoral--University of Western Sydney, (Faculty of Education), 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, p. 124-134).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto (Canada), 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.