DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Language Socialization in a Lanna Thai Bilingual Community

本论文研究兰纳泰语双语社区儿童的语言社会化情况，探讨两种语言代码——锦语和标准泰语的使用情况。在进入学校之前，孩子们在家庭和社区环境中接触到金香语，他们在这些环境中发展出一些适合的语言风格和水平的能力。当他们进入公立学校时，他们第一次接触到各种正式和文学的标准泰语，这是泰国政府和媒体使用的语言。本项目旨在调查儿童是如何在家庭和公立学校的教育环境中适应这两种语言在社会和文化上的恰当使用。通过一项民族志、话语分析研究，对四个Myang儿童在一年的自然主义环境中的语言发展进行研究，该研究将探讨以下问题：(a)儿童如何从母语情境变化的能力转变为他们在学校必须掌握的第二语言多样性的能力？(b)社区成员在促使儿童适当使用这些语言方面采用了什么策略？(c)关于这些不同代码和变体的文化意义以及它们之间的差异，当地语言的意识形态是什么？通过研究儿童参与文化惯例的情况，他们被期望使用敬语语域，包括状态小品、人称指称和称呼以及敬语词汇，这些敬语语域表明他们意识到使用的文化规范以及这些形式在口语话语中的表达潜力，本研究将有助于我们理解儿童是如何被社会化的，以适当地使用这两种语言的情境变化。以及它们是如何融入到围绕它们使用的文化规范、价值观和意识形态中去的。该项目将有助于语言社会化和语言发展的研究、情境变化的社会语言学研究、敬语研究以及儿童道德和社会发展的研究。更广泛地说，这项研究将有助于我们理解多语言社会中的语言发展和语言社会化，以及这种发展如何与文化价值观、社会组织和历史变迁相互联系。

This dissertation project investigates the language socialization of children in a Lanna Thai bilingual community into the use of two codes -- Kam Myang and Standard Thai. Before entering school, children are exposed to Kam Myang in the home and community settings, and they develop some competence in the speech styles and levels appropriate to those settings. When they enter public school, they encounter formal and literary varieties of Standard Thai, the language of the government and media in Thailand, for the first time. This project proposes to investigate how children are socialized into social and culturally appropriate uses of speech styles in these two languages in the educational settings of the family household and the public school. Through an ethnographic, discourse-analytic study of four Myang children's language development in naturalistic settings over the course of one year, the study will explore the following questions: (a) How do children move from competence in the situational varieties of their home language to competence in the varieties of a second language that they must master at school? (b) What strategies are employed by community members in socializing children to use these languages appropriately? (c) What are the local language ideologies regarding the cultural significance of, and the differences between, these various codes and varieties? By studying the children's participation in cultural routines in which they are expected to use honorific registers including status particles, person reference and address, and honorific vocabulary in ways which indicate an awareness of the cultural norms of use as well as the expressive potentiality of these forms in spoken discourse, this study will contribute to our understanding of how children are socialized to use the situational varieties of these two languages appropriately, and how they are socialized into the cultural norms, values and ideologies surrounding their use. This project will contribute to studies of language socialization and language development, sociolinguistic studies of situational variation, the study of honorifics, and studies of children's moral and social development. More broadly, the study will contribute to our understanding of language development and language socialization in multilingual societies, and how this development is interlinked with cultural values, social organization, and historical change.