Language Discourses and Ideologies at the Heart of Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This paper identifies: (a) discourses that shape immigrant parents' and early childhood educators' views of young children's bilingual development, and (b) ways in which these discourses are manifested in the everyday lives of immigrant parents as well as in the practices of early childhood educators. The findings of a study in a mid-size Canadian city are reported and interpreted from the perspective of the role of power relations in language and using critical discourse analysis. The paper explains how dominant language discourses manifest themselves in parents' views of their children's language development and in the practices of early childhood educators. In addition, it explains how those discourses become ideological. The following issues are discussed: how is the importance of dominant and minority languages shaped? How do monolingual discourses shape parental and institutional language responsibilities? How do parents confront language domina-tion? How do early childhood educators make sense of their work with bilingual families? The paper concludes that dominant ideologies of language need to be challenged to ensure the maintenance of home languages among immigrant families with young children.

Keywords:

• early childhood education
• immigrant families
• language ideologies
• monolingual discourses
• young children's bilingual development