Lek som handling i nexus för ett tvåspråkigt barn, interaktion och diskurser

In this article I examine how pretend play is constructed in a nexus of a bilingual child’s historical body; the interaction order in three different preschool play situations; and multiple discourses relating to bilingualism. Pretend play is a frequently occurring social activity in preschools and offers fruitful ground for studying how a bilingual child handles her languages in different group constellations. The study makes use of ethnographic data methods, more precisely nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004). The Finnish-Swedish bilingual child was enrolled in a monolingual Swedish medium preschool in Finland and deployed both of her languages in play situations. The analysis shows that the monolingual language policy turned into bilingual practice in the children’s play. The bilingual practices were not only a result of situated language choices between the children, but it was also a reproduction of wider discourses surrounding the play situations.