Kindergarten as a place for languaging

This paper presentation is based on an exploration of children’s language practices in peer talk as it occurs throughout the day in the kindergarten section of an integrated daycare institution in Denmark. During their institutional everyday life, children in kindergarten participate in different types of speech events (Hymes 1974). This presentation sheds light on children’s speech events in the cloakroom of the kindergarten section of an integrated daycare institution. The cloakroom is a practical ‘passing through’ setting, where children’s outdoor clothes, objects from their homes, children groups and communication between home and institution are organized.By combing relocalization (Pennycook 2010) with speech events as theoretical framing, the presentation unfolds how a kindergarten can be analyzed as a social and linguistic place where children creatively relocate ways of ‘doing’ kindergarten language. For example, peer-talk in a kindergarten cloakroom can differ from peer-talk on the kindergarten’s outdoor swing. The analysis shows that linguistic competence among kindergarteners can been sees as (re)localization processes integrated in social and spatial practice (Laursen & Mogensen 2015).The paper draws on empirical material from an ongoing PhD project where I through a linguistic ethnographic approach study children’s peer talk adopting a children-orientated practice perspective. The participating children are aged 3 to 6 years. The fieldwork’s duration is 4,5 months in total conducted over a year, and the empirical material consists of fieldnotes, video recordings, photos, video-stimulated accounts with children and semi-structured interview with professionals.