Children’s drawings as part of School Language Profiles: Heteroglossic realities in families and schools

Abstract

Child language development occurs in a given environment, complete with explicit and implicit regulations, intervening actors with their coherent or contradictory intentions, and specific resources for speakers. The main research question of this contribution is: What can drawings as parts of School Language Profiles tell us about the multilingual environments of bilingual families and schools? The analytical framework of spatial and language practices provides a means to talk about how and why certain expressions are chosen and which influences are mentioned in relation to school and family. In particular, the focus is on how heteroglossic spaces are constructed through local/spatial/language practices and how these constructions are represented in the drawings of children. The drawings were collected in a bilingual school in Austria, with Slovene and German as languages of instruction. Children’s drawings present a fine-grained perception of their multilingual surroundings and we see how children refer to home/school in their drawings and distinguish language realities. Findings indicate that language regimes and goals of families and school are in close relation to each other, have influence on each other but do not necessarily always complement each other. This means that in analyzing heteroglossic realities, both cannot be regarded as separate (or separable) spaces.