The kindergarten’s cloakroom as a dynamic multilingual place

An ethno­graphic study of lived space

Abstract

The study examines how children, parents and staff in a kindergarten create a social space in the kindergarten’s cloakroom through (linguistic) actions and language choices. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, which includes participant observation, documentation of the kindergarten’s semiotic landscape, field conversations and interviews with staff, the study shows how the cloakroom becomes a site for multilingual practices, while the kindergarten otherwise is dominated by a Norwegian language norm. The study demonstrates how children and adults take ownership of this space and create a multilingual environment through their actions. The analysis is grounded in Lefebvre’s theory of the produc­tion of social space – through spatial practice, representations of space and lived space – Gadamer’s perspectives on play and Pascual-de-Sans’ concept of idiotopy. The findings reveal that language choices and the construction of the cloakroom as a social space are influenced by complex processes related to place, time and agency. When the cloakroom is less in focus for the staff, it can become an important site for children’s play, where they negotiate both linguistic norms and other rules. The study argues for the significance of such social spaces as part of the kindergarten’s linguistic environment, where children can take ownership and make language choices that deviate from established majority language norms. At the same time, the study highlights the importance of time in research on language and place, both theoretically and methodologically, as well as the roles of researchers in gaining access to such spaces through invitations from the children.