A case study of a Hungarian-English bilingual girl’s language development in English from birth to the age of eleven

Abstract

The thesis investigates my Hungarian-English bilingual child’s, Sarah’s second language acquisition (SLA) with a special focus on how she integrated English (L2) into her speech to convey the intended meaning and negotiate the multiple identities she developed in her bilingualism in various social contexts from birth to the age of eleven. Sarah is 24 years old in 2023, immersed in a Hungarian and English-speaking environment, has been exposed to these two languages from birth. Regarding English she had limited community support for the simple reason that her family is Hungarian and lives in Hungary. English is mediated by her parents, primarily by me, her mother, and other native and non-native speakers of English who belong to the family’s extended social network. An ethnographic single-case study research seemed to be a relevant method of giving an exploratory, interpretive, and in-depth description of my single participant’s language development. The applied qualitative data collection comprised the participant’s everyday interactions, semi-structured retrospective interviews and her own spontaneous reflections. The findings indicate that Sarah used L2 as a complementary set of linguistic forms to differentiate meaning and as a social site for negotiating and gauging her own and her interlocutor’s conduct and language use. Use of L2 expanded the child’s linguistic repertoire, conveyed communicative intentions, and shed light on her transitory bilingual roles. The various feedback she received from her social environment shaped her self-concept and called for discussing and revisiting her own language competence. What she thought about peer-feedback exerted a powerful impact on her self-image. The study might provide incentive for teaching English to young learners in home settings and might underpin the relevance of investigating single-case scenarios.