Getting Across : a trilingual five-year-old's language socialisation through repair

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of language socialisation in the language acquisition of a five-year-old boy who is trilingual in French, Danish and Norwegian. Taking a conversation analytic approach to the issue, this thesis analyses instances of repair in three recordings of conversations of the trilingual boy and interlocutors from different speech communities. Through the analysis, it is argued that ability to utter and understand repair cues is a metalinguistic faculty, which underscores the importance of taking a holistic view at bilinguals, trilinguals and multilinguals. It is also argued that repair is an appropriate parameter for the evaluation of communicative competence, and that conversation analysis, as a qualitative approach, is a highly suited method for the investigation of this child's language socialisation through repair.