Maltese-speaking children in an unusual communicative situation

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the interaction of six Maltese speaking children aged 4 to 6 with an Italian speaker who does not usually use any English or Maltese. The purpose of this study is to investigate what the children resort to when they need to communicate whilst interacting with the Italian speaker. The study looks at both the verbal and non-verbal communication with particular reference to gesture production. A comparison of the children’s utterances and gesture productions is made and discussed. The findings reveal that the children prefer visual gestures such as iconic, deictic and pantomimic over symbolic gestures. Facial cues such as eye-gazing for verbal feedback were also investigated. Other findings revealed that children used simple utterances in their interactions with the Italian speaker. Contrary to what might have been hypothesised, the findings also revealed that the vast majority preferred Maltese in the picture labelling task and English in the object labelling task. Despite these language preferences in these two tasks, most of the children preferred Maltese over English throughout the whole conversation. This reveals how Maltese still continues to dominate notwithstanding Malta’s official bilingual status even where the children were aware that the Italian speaker rarely used any Maltese or English. This study is a first step to try and provide insight into how Maltese children produce gestures in diverse and rich linguistic contexts.