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Investig­ative case study of an individu­al`s bilingua­lism

3.257 / ~13 sternsternsternsternstern Lea H. . 2017
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Seminararbeit
Linguistik

Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz - KFU

1, Mennen, 2015

Lea H. ©
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Investigative Case Study of an Individual’s Bilingualism

Proseminar paper

Linguistics Proseminar: Bilingualism



1. INTRODUCTION

The work presented here is an investigative case study describing an individual’s multilingualism in terms of the five main descriptors defined by Ng and Wigglesworth as 1. Age of Acquisiton; 2. Context of bilingual language acquisition; 3. Degree of bilingualism; 4. Domain of use; and 5. Social orientation (2007: 3). In the first part of this paper the participant of this case study as well as the methodology are introduced.

Secondly, the results of the study are presented and lastly a conclusion is drawn as well as some shortcomings of this study pointed out.

2. PARTICIPANT


The participant I have selected for this investigative case report is Dessa, a 66 year old female born in Rijeka, Croatia. Dessa’s mother was Croatian whereas her father was originally from Italy. Her parents raised Dessa and her two siblings in Rijeka where Dessa also went to primary and secondary school.

Dessa spent the first part of her life in Croatia but at the age of 21 Dessa decided to move to Trento, Italy for personal reasons. With her first husband, who was of Italian origin, she had two daughters who they brought up together in Italy. After the death of her first husband Dessa remarried when she was 40 years old, this time an Austrian man. Her second husband and her lived together in Northern Italy.

After 20 years of marriage they moved to their current place of residence in Austria where they have been living for 6 years now. Over the course of her life Dessa had jobs in several different fields, such as finance and publishing, and while living in Italy even worked as a freelance interpreter for Italian and Croatian. Dessa has been retired for 8 years now.
The participant is an acquaintance of mine and I consider her to be an interesting subject for this study due to her language background.

Not only did Dessa grow up in a family were two languages were spoken in an approximately equal amount, but she also acquired an additional third language later in life that she has to use on a daily basis now. Her status as a multilingual inspired me to investigate her language background and her current situation further in order to be able to compare my findings to the information about bilingualism I have acquired during the course of the semester.
The participant agreed to have the information she provided used in this study.


3. METHODOLOGY
3. 1 Materials
The participant was asked twenty-seven questions from a questionnaire (see appendix) that was based on the one that can be found in the course handout (2015: 3) but to which I have added several more to achieve more informative and detailed findings in this case study. The questions were mostly open-ended (e.g.
Why did you acquire the language?) but also featured a number of yes or no questions (e.g. Do you codeswitch?) as well as one question were a rating scale was used (see page 1 of appendix).

The questions were grouped into five categories according the four key variables of bilingualism denominated by Wei (2000: 5), namely a) age and manner of acquisition; b) proficiency level in specific languages; c) domains of language use; and d) self-identification and attitude.
3. 2 Procedure
The questionnaire was originally compiled in English. Because the participant is not proficient enough to understand the questions fully and to answer accordingly, the interview was conducted in German with me as the interviewer translating the questions for the participant.

The answers were noted down by me during the interview. The interview took place at the participant’s home in a casual atmosphere with no other persons present. There was no time limit set for the interview, however, it took about 30 minutes to answer the questions and gather the information I needed.


4. RESULTS
4. 1 Descriptors which refer to the context of blingual language acquisition; and
4. 2 Descriptors which refer to age of acquisition

The descriptor of context of bilingual acquisition refers to the setting in which a language is acquired.

Ng and Wigglesworth (2007: 10) make the distinction between primary and secondary context. Primary context refers to language acquisition in a naturalistic setting through immersion whereas secondary context involves structured instruction such as language learning in school.
Age as a descriptor of bilingualism is also a key issue. Most research suggests that the age of acquisition of a language can strongly affect which level of proficiency a speaker can reach (Singleton 1995: 30-50).

Because age and context of acquisition are factors that clearly correlate in the participant’s case, these factors will be discussed concurrently.
Dessa stated that her first languages (L1s) are Croatian and Italian. Since her mother is Croatian and her father Italian, those are the two languages she first encountered during her childhood. The participant claimed that both languages were spoken in an equal amount in her home and that therefore she was exposed to both of them from birth.

It was possible for her to acquire Croatian and Italian simultaneously during this time of her life in a primary context.
At the age of six Dessa enrolled in school in her hometown Rijeka. The teachers and pupils in this school were predominantly speakers of Croatian, with all of the classes being held in Croatian as well. There Dessa was taught how to read and write in Croatian in a classroom environment.

Dessa reported that her family nevertheless put great value on her being proficient in both languages which is why she was taught reading and writing in Italian at home. However, it is to be assumed that through this environment of mostly Croatian speakers during large parts of her day she experienced mainly exposure to the Croatian language.
At the age of ten Dessa started learning English at school.

The media she consumed and the people to whom she had contact during her free time all spoke Italian. However, Dessa still used Croatian on a daily basis because firstly, she held regular contact with her family in Croatia and secondly, she was working as an interpreter for Italian and Croatian.
At the age of 40 Dessa then came into contact with another language.

While living in Italy she met her second husband, who is a native speaker of Austrian German. Through living in Italy he is able to understand some Italian but he never learnt how to speak it. Because of her husband Dessa started acquiring German by speaking to her husband and through short visits to his family in Austria. Their only language of communication is German.

In 2009 they moved to Wartberg an der Krems together, a village in Upper Austria. There Dessa started to take lessons with a local German teacher, who usually teaches German as an L1, to improve her grammar but abandoned her efforts again after about 3 months. Dessa therefore also acquired German in a primary context, same as her L1s, apart from this very short period of learning the language in a secondary context.


4.3 Descriptors which refer to the degree of bilingualism
The participant was asked to rate her profiency in the four macro skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening (Ng and Wigglesworth 2007: 4) in Croatian and Italian as well as German (How competent do you feel in your languages?). For this a Likert scale from 1 to 10 was used, with 1 meaning very low proficiency and 10 meaning excellent proficiency (see appendix).

It has to be taken account that this is the participant’s own assessment. The results might have differed if the profiency had been evaluated through a language test.
As illustrated in Graph 1 below, in her L1s Croatian and Italian Dessa rated her ability in each skill equally which corresponds to her statement that she does not prefer one of her L1s over the other.

She only rated her writing ability with 5, which might be due to the fact that she rarely uses this skill in her daily life and has very little practice. Dessa also remarked that what she struggles the most with is the German grammar, especially articles and irregular flection of verb.


Even though Dessa has been speaking German for 26 years now and was constantly exposed to the language she has not require native speaker-like ability. According to many scholars this would be evidence of the Critical Period Hypothesis first popularised by Lenneberg (1967: 180) for first language acquisition, and later extended to L2 acquisition by scholars such as Singleton (1995: 30-50).

This hypothesis states that there are certain critical periods for language acquisition during childhood in which language has to be acquired by a speaker in order to be able reach full proficiency. For second language learning this means critical periods in which a language learner has to be exposed to a second language to be able to acquire native like proficiency on various levels.
The participant was also asked about her accent (
Do you think you have a foreign accent in your languages?). A foreign accent is described by Flege 1999:108) as the inaccurate production of certain L2 vowel and consonant sounds.



4.4. Descriptors which refer to the domain of use

Dessa reported that during her childhood she used Italian and Croatian simultaneously at home. Because she lived in Croatia and went to a Croatian school we can assume that she had to speak Croatian in these public settings in order to communicate with the individuals around her.
This situation shifted when Dessa moved to Italy.

She still used both of her languages in a family setting but in public she spoke Italian. One difference to her situation before is that during her work as an interpreter for Croatian and Italian she also had to use Croatian in a vocational setting.
Because of the marriage with her Austrian husband Dessa’s circumstances changed again. At home she started using German in order to communicate with her husband, and whilst living in Italy she used the Italian language in public.

She then only used Croatian when speaking to her family in Croatia in the phone or visiting them in her home country.
In her current living situation Dessa has to use German as her main mode of communication. When asked to estimate how much she uses her languages during her daily life she reported to use German nearly 100%. She speaks German at home with her husband and since she lives in Austria now where the majority of the people are German speakers she also uses it in public.

Because these monolinguals can only speak one of her languages she has to adjust to them. Location is the second factor that determines which language Dessa uses, and in her case it mostly affects which one she uses in public, depending on which country Dessa currently lives in or visits. Of course both of these factors overlap because the language of her interlocutors often times correlate with their location.

Dessa has reported that the only situation where these factors do not come into play is when she speaks to members of her family who are also bilinguals. They use both of their L1s regardless of their current location and often codeswitch. According to research this codeswitiching, the alternation between different languages during a single conversation, is regarded as a common phenomen of bilingual language use (Brice at al: 2006, online).

Ng and Wigglesworth also describe topic as another factor to affect language choice (2007:16). However, Dessa reported that she generally feels most comfortable speaking either Croatian or Italian but she stated no preference for either of them for any specific topics.

The descriptor referring to social orientation are defined by Ng and Wigglesworth as “how influences within the society can impact on how bilinguals perceive themselves and how bilinguals are perceived“ (Bilingualism 2007: 17). This means the effect the speaker’s attitude as well as the attitude of the community has on the bilingualism of an individual.
In Dessa’s case it has to be said that the she grew up in monolingual country where there was no support for bilinguals in the school system.

Because of that, all efforts of maintaining and developing the first language she did not use at school further had to be made in a family context. Dessa’s family valued both languages greatly and was very motivated to help her sustain her bilingualism. Therefore they taught her reading and writing in Italian at home concurrent to her being taught these skills in Croatian in school.
Dessa reported that even though her bilingualism may not have been supported on an institutional level, people in her L1 countries usually reacted positively towards her ability to speak two languages with high proficiency.


5. CONCLUSION

From the results it appears that Dessa is a simultaneous bilingual with a relatively balanced degree of bilingualism in Croatian and Italian (Wei 2000: 6). Throughout her life she had somewhat equal levels of contact with both of these languages and even when not primarily using them anymore she could maintain high proficiency in her L1s. It can be argued that balanced bilingualism is almost impossible to achieve (Ng and Wigglesworth 2007: 5), but because Dessa did report no preference for either of her two L1s and reported to be equally proficient in both her status of a balanced bilingual has to be assumed.

Because she learnt both languages in a primary context Dessa could also be described as a compound bilingual (Wei 2000: 6).
Because Dessa also acquired the German language later in life she is actually not only a bilingual of Italian and Croatian, but a trilingual of all three of these languages. The acquisition of her third language happened after childhood, therefore Dessa is a late trilingual (Wei 2000: 6).

Dessa learned English as a foreign language in school for a short period of her life, but never acquired it to the same extent as her L1s or L2. This might be due to the fact that she did not have an intense intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to learn this language which, according to Eccles and Wigglesfield’s model of task values, is a vital prerequisite for determining how much effort a learner will put into acquiring a language (2002:112-15).

The data collected provided a good basis for this investigative case study.

However, with the number of questions asked not all of them could be incorporated in this report because it would have gone beyond the scope of this study. There are several questions that yielded interesting answers from the participant but which were not necessarily relevant for this report. In future research this should be taken into account when compiling the accompanying questionnaires for a study.



6. SOURCES



Brice, Alejandro E., et al. (2006). “Code Switching among Bilingual and Limited English Proficient Students: Possible Indicators of Giftedness”. [Online]. University of South Florida St Petersburg. [2015, June 29].

Eccles, Jaquelynne S., and Allan Wigfield (2002). “Motivational Beliefs, Values, and Goals“. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 53:109-32.

Flege, James e. (1999). "Age of Learning and Second Language Speech".

Singleton, David, and Lengyel Zsolt (1995). The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Wei, Li, ed. (2000). The Bilingualism Reader. London: Routledge.



(3111 words)
7. APPENDIX

QUESTIONNAIRE ON BILINGUALISM

Name:
Age:
Profession:


1) The age and context of acquisition of each language;

What are your first languages?

What other languages do you speak?


At which age did you acquire your language(s)?

How long did you live/have you been living in Austria?

Why did you acquire the language?

How did you acquire the language?

Which languages do your family speak/use?


2)    The relative competence in each of the languages;


Do you think you have a foreign accent in your language(s)?

How well do you understand different German accents?

Do your prefer a certain language for specific topics?

How competent do you feel in your languages? (Reading, speaking, writing, listening; on a scale from 1-10, 1: low, 10: high)

Which languages do you speak at home/work/uni/public?

How much do you use your languages (percentage/day; e.g.: 50% English, 50% German)?

In what language do you dream/think?


Which language do you think is harder?

Which languages would you personally like to speak?

In which languages do you
–watch films:

–listen to music:

–read books:

–watch news:



3)The presence or absence of communities speaking the two languages in the environment

Do you have a community of people with the same language where you live?

Do you know any Austrian people who speak or understand your first language(s) that is not German?


4) The relative status of each language in the society

Which languages would you want your children to speak?

Do people have certain expectations because of your name?

How would you describe your language, what are your associations?

What are the reactions of Austrians towards your first language?


5) The bilingual's cultural identity.

What is your citizenship?

Does it correspond with your first language(s)?

How important is your first language to your identity?



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