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Bilingualism as Conceptualized and Bilingualism as Lived: A Critical Examination of the Monolingual Socialization of a Child with Autism in a Bilingual Family

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Abstract

This is an ethnographic and discourse analytic case study of a bilingual, minority-language family of a six-year-old child with autism whose family members were committed to speaking English with him. Drawing on family language policy, the study examines the tensions between the family members’ stated beliefs, management efforts, and their actual practices around language use with their child. The findings show that many assumptions held by family members about language use and bilingualism were inconsistent with their everyday language practices. A practice and discourse-analytic approach to bilingualism offers a theoretical and methodological lens through which to investigate these discrepancies and to recast the interactional achievements between the child and his parents as situated bilingual practices.

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Notes

  1. The term minority-language is used here not only to refer to numerical representation but also to social and sociopolitical status relative to a societally dominant language (Ramaga 1992).

  2. Diagnosis consistent with the criteria of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (American Psychiatric Association 2000).

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the family who participated in this study; research assistants VoonFee Leow, Dorcas Yap, Jennifer Shiao-Chen Chen, and Haiyang Yu for their invaluable assistance; Dr. Susan Holloway at the University of California at Berkeley for her mentorship during the Spencer Foundation Mentored Doctoral Research Fellowship; and Dr. Gloria Soto for her ongoing mentorship.

Author Contributions

As the sole author on this paper, I was responsible for the design of the study reported in this paper; to the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data; to the drafting of the manuscript, and to all revisions made.

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Correspondence to Betty Yu.

Appendix: Transcription Notations

Appendix: Transcription Notations

Italics:

English translation

°:

Quiet compared to surrounding speech

(()):

Gestures, non-speech vocalizations, environmental details

(…):

Skipped or unintelligible speech

[:

Marks the beginning of overlapping speech between speakers

=:

Speakers’ utterances latching on to the utterance of the previous speaker

–:

Abrupt cutoff

__:

Emphasis indicated by underline

//:

Phonetic transcription

PERF:

Perfect tense

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Yu, B. Bilingualism as Conceptualized and Bilingualism as Lived: A Critical Examination of the Monolingual Socialization of a Child with Autism in a Bilingual Family. J Autism Dev Disord 46, 424–435 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2625-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2625-0

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