The Immediate Effect of Parental Language Choice on that of Their Children's Language in Chinese Migrant Families

華人父母語碼選擇對孩子的即刻影響

對於大多數移民來說，家庭是母語保持的最後堡壘，很多研究也證明了父母言行的重要性。但是，諸多學者專著於如何逆轉語言轉換（Fishman 1991），或者著眼於孩子的雙語教育（Barron-Hauwaert 2004）。至於父母的語言為對孩子在家庭中的語言使用和選擇到底有什麼即時影響，卻很少有人研究甚至提及。本文基於八個五到十一歲的中國兒童移民一年的錄音調查，使用對話回合（Conversational Round）作為分析單位，在這方面做出嘗試。結果顯示，父母的語言選擇對孩子的語言選擇影響巨大。一般來說，英語是孩子們的首選語言，如果孩子用中英文混雜與父母交流，而父母用英語回答， 孩子則很難使用中文。所以，在日常生活中，選擇使用語言也許是最簡單的語言保持策略。

For the majority of migrants, family is the last redoubt of mother tongue maintenance. Understandably, there has thus been a large body of literature on the importance of parental influence on the language behaviour of their children. While many of the studies focus on either reversing language shift (Fishman 1991) or bilingual education (Barron-Hauwaert 2004), much less attention has been given to the immediate effect of parental language choice on that of their children in everyday interaction. In the present study, eight Chinese migrant children, aged 5 to 11 years, were monitored for one calendar year using Conversational Round (CR) as the primary unit of analysis. Results show that parental use of English sharply increased the use of English by the children and, if parents responded in English to code-switching by the children, there was only a slight chance of the children switching back to Chinese in the subsequent turn. It is therefore indicated that language choice is a substantially effective parental strategy for the maintenance of the mother tongue in children of this age group.