Beyond the Pragmatic and the Liminal: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students Code-Switching in Early-Years Classrooms

Abstract

This article examines the code-switching (CS) practices of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) young children in kindergarten and grade 1 classrooms. The author argues that their use of CS went beyond relief of psycholinguistic stress or coping with liminality (sense of living between two languages and cultures). Through several narratives constructed using ethnographic data, the author explores CLD students' use of CS to respond to the sociolinguistic and sociopolitical dynamics that they encountered in their early-years classrooms. CS enabled students to address their language and literacy needs, assert their identities, and defy subtractive and assimilative orientations that they experienced with respect to lack of incorporation of their first languages. Further, data affirm Cummins'(2001) assertion that students do not passively accept dominantgroup attributions of inferiority, but actively resist the process of subordination.