Talking to and around children: Socio-communicative continuities and discontinuities in a Zapotec community

An increasingly large number of children in the world are being born into communities undergoing cultural and linguistic changes and, as a result, are becoming speakers of a language that is different from their caregivers' preferred language of communication.

It is usually believed that this kind of linguistic discontinuity is mostly the result of caregivers' language choices. However, in reality children in these communities are becoming speakers and participants in complex socio-communicative environments in which it is not at all clear what linguistic and cultural knowledge is available to them in each case.

In this paper, I examine the case of an urban Zapotec community in southeastern Mexico to argue that when we focus exclusively on caregivers' language choices and we assume that the only relevant linguistic input is the speech directly addressed to children, the picture that emerges is one of discontinuity in the process of intergenerational transmission of knowledge. However, an ethnographically informed microanalysis of everyday interactions reveals that there are also significant continuities in the socio-communicative environment of these children.

This analysis draws from three case studies of children growing up within bilingual families. These case studies are part of a larger 17-month ethnographic investigation.