Resumen de The Effect of Majority Language Exposure on Minority Language Skills: The Case of Inuktitut
Shanley Allen, Martha Crago, Diane Pesco
Children who are native speakers of minority languages often experience stagnation or decline in that language when exposed to a majority language in a school or community situation. This paper examines such a situation among the Inuit of arctic Quebec. All 18 participants in the study were native speakers of Inuktitut, living in home environments that were functionally monolingual in Inuktitut. Half lived in communities with relatively high exposure to the majority language (English), while the other half lived in communities with low exposure. One third of each group were in Grade 3 (first year of school exposure to majority language), one third in Grade 8/9 (sixth year of school exposure) and one third were adults. Each participant narrated a 24-page wordless picture book (Frog Story) in Inuktitut. Narrations were analysed for story length, lexical diversity, grammatical complexity and narrative structure – all measures that are expected to increase or show improvement with increased language ability. Results are inconclusive; some suggest that higher exposure to English leads to stagnation in Inuktitut, while others do not. Methodological issues are discussed, and suggestions for further research are provided.
