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    Bilingual interview

    Uploaded by

    Felipe Lima

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Bilingual interview

    Uploaded by

    Felipe Lima
    1 views2 pages

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

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    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    1 views2 pages

    Bilingual interview

    Uploaded by

    Felipe Lima

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    Write-Up: Linguistic and Cultural Background of the Interviewee

    The interviewee is my wife who is 28-year-old trilingual and from Chile who
    has been living in the United States for the past six years. Her first language
    is Spanish, which she learned as a child and still uses frequently. She is fluent
    in Portuguese and English and actively uses all these three languages.

    Language Use and Interlocutors

    Her choice of language varies depending on her interlocutors. With her


    parents, she speaks Spanish with her mother but alternates between Spanish
    and English (especially for texting) with her father. She uses Spanish with
    extended family. With friends in the U.S. who share her first language. She
    adapts to English or Portuguese depending on the interlocutor’s first
    language. With university lecturers, professors and other people who do not
    speak Spanish, she uses English. Her use of Spanish and Portuguese depends
    on the person she is speaking to. With me, she code-switches to Portuñol.

    Situational Language Use

    My wife’s language use also depends on situational context. At home, in the


    United States, she often uses Portuñol. In shops in Chile, she speaks Spanish.
    In U.S. shops, her language choice depends on the type of shop and whether
    the interlocutor speaks Spanish. Religious services are another domain
    where her linguistic flexibility is evident; she uses Portuguese in the U.S.
    because she goes to a Portuguese speaking Church, but Spanish in Chile. In
    academic settings, English is the dominant language for lectures, discussions
    with professors, and studies. However, when discussing coursework with
    other students, her language choice is influenced by the first language of her
    peers.

    My wife adapts her language use based on the people she interacts with, in
    the case of social settings such as cafes or ethnic community centers present
    a more variable linguistic landscape, switching between Spanish, Portuguese,
    or English as needed. In organized groups, such as clubs or sports teams,
    English is the default language, given that most people in these groups most
    likely don’t know Spanish or Portuguese. An exception where she uses
    Spanish in formal situation, due to her voice being very high pitched, which
    makes it hard for the phone to pick it up, she prefers to speak in Spanish
    when dealing with bureaucratic procedures such as insurance since people
    struggle to understand her English over the phone.

    Observations on Methodology
    I took the questions from the textbook Exercise 2.9. The structure of the
    questions made some answers be unclear, such as if she uses her languages
    in ethnic events, or if in shops where there are English speakers. The format
    of the questions encouraged systematic responses but occasionally led to
    generalized answers where there could have been more detail, for example
    in places, she would often answer “What language I’d speak in a shop,
    depends on whom I am with”. This shows that in her case place has less of
    an effect on her language choice, than who she is with and if they are
    bilingual too.

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