Children’s use of English as lingua franca in Swedish preschools

The study addresses a phenomenon reported by Swedish kindergartens in multilingual areas, namely that kindergarten children with different language backgrounds sometimes use English as a common language instead of Swedish during play. The study investigates how children use English during play to create a sense of community, and how they use English to position themselves in social hierarchies. The study also looks at how children show different types of ‘agentic behaviour’ (use of agency and participation) and how they learn English from one another. The main purpose is to investigate how English is used in everyday conversations in kindergarten groups with varying proportions of multilingual children. More specifically, the study aims to analyse and explore the importance of children’s choice of English.

The study shows that children in Swedish kindergartens use English as a common language in a variety of pragmatic contexts, such as to get attention, to signal emotional attitudes and to organise social relationships. The study found that children used English to express belonging and community, signal friendships, but also to distance themselves from teachers and kindergarten norms, take control of play, and assert dominance. In some cases, English was used to exclude others from play and interaction, and the language served as an effective secret language.

The study includes children from five different kindergarten groups, both from multilingual and monolingual areas. The children in the multilingual areas represent a number of different language backgrounds, and they are learning Swedish as a second language in kindergarten. In the monolingual areas, most of the children learn Swedish at home. The study uses a video ethnographic method to study social interaction. Data collection consists of video recordings of everyday activities such as play, meals, teaching and reading aloud. The recordings were analysed using conversational analysis.

Larsson, K., Björk-Willén, P., Haraldsson, K., & Hansson, K. (2023). Children’s use of English as lingua franca in Swedish preschools. Multilingua, 42(4), 527–557.

Online year: 2022

Issue year: 2023

Review year: 2022