Sociolinguistic Competence of a Trilingual at Age Five

Abstract

Being Trilingual is no longer a strange phenomenon as it may have been sometime back. In fact, in urban settings in Kenya, children are learning English as a third language (L3) rather than a second language (L2). Canale and Swain (1980) propose that communicative competence comprises four language competencies, namely:

• Linguistic,
• Sociolinguistic,
• Strategic, and
• Discourse competencies

Of concern in this study is the sociolinguistic competence of trilingual children at age five. Purposive sampling and snowballing were used to select six children:  three boys and three girls. Data were collected through a conversational technique where the children were prompted to express themselves in three languages: English, Kiswahili, and their Mother Tongue. It was found that the children exhibited three main sociolinguistic competencies: code-mixing, use of colloquial Kiswahili, and use of politeness forms. Lexical code-mixing was the commonest and the children code-mixed two languages in their utterances. The findings of this study reveal that Kenyan children are on the path of trilingualism at age five, and it affirms the current language in education policy, which encourages the use of three languages at different levels of education. These findings are relevant to language policymakers today and in the future.