Bilingual interaction by young children in public play areas

Abstract

This research focuses on the bilingual interaction among Maltese young children while playing in public play areas across Malta and Gozo. A record of the spoken interaction among young children was taken in play areas as these are places where children play freely and use verbal communication naturally. The transcribing was done concurrently while the observations were taking place in seven different geographical areas in Malta and four in Gozo. The analysis of these natural conversations shed light on the current use of Maltese, English and code-switching by very young Maltese children. The results show that in Malta 54.8% of all the recorded words were in English while 45.2% were in Maltese. In Gozo, 62.8% of the words were in Maltese, while only 37.2% of the words were in English. When whole sentences and phrases uttered by the children were analysed it was found that Maltese and Gozitan children use whole Maltese sentences, whole English sentences and sentences made up of different types of code-switching, mainly tag-switching and phrase-switching. Borrowed and integrated words were also used in the children’s conversations. Results show that 52% of all the data collected consists of whole Maltese sentences, while 34% of the sentences are in English. Code-switching occurred in only 14% of the total conversations recorded. In general, these results show that bilingual interaction is significantly present in the lives of young Maltese children.