This inquiry explores six Greek trilingual adults' perceptions about becoming and being trilingual. The six participants are "children of Bill 101", that is, as allophones (speakers of other languages than English and French) they were formally schooled in the French public school system. The participants received English instruction taught as a second language and attended Greek heritage language schools. I adopted a socio-cultural approach to learning, language and literacy and embraced the tenets of activity theory to describe the participants' development of culture and a trilingual identity. To understand how they came to develop cultural and linguistic skills in English, French and Greek, and describe themselves as trilinguals, I conducted 40 hours of in-depth and life-story interviews over three years. I aimed to access the participants' perceptions of their experiences 'growing up Greek' in Montreal, Quebec, their self-identification with the three languages and their perceptions of becoming and being trilingual. I examined their audio-recorded discussions by first transcribing them and searching for relevant vignettes and themes. These vignettes helped determine the larger contextual and personal factors that influenced and affected the participants' perceptions of the process of becoming and being trilingual. Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis's concept of "portraiture" is a useful methodology to illustrate how trilingual adults present and negotiate their life worlds in the three languages and spaces---home, work, social and community events. The results of my inquiry suggest that the six "children of Bill 101" who are now Greek trilingual adults constructed their knowledge and their identities through their interactions with parents, relatives, teachers and peers within home, school, work, and diverse social contexts in both different and similar ways. Their actions are interwoven with issues of access, choice, identity, power and stat
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85178 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Konidaris, Ephie |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Integrated Studies in Education.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002209136, proquestno: AAINR12873, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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