Teachers’ use of sign-supported speech in interaction with multilingual children in Swedish preschools

Many preschoolers in Sweden have other family languages than Swedish. Sign-supported speech (SSS) is often used to support children's second language development and participation in interaction. The aim of the present paper is to study how preschool teachers use SSS in interaction with multilingual children, and children's way of participation in such interaction. The study was conducted in three preschool units situated in a multilingual area. The design is video-ethnographic, and the analyses build on Conversation Analysis. The findings show that teachers’ focus on sign-support sometimes limits their responsivity, which negatively affects children's participation in interaction. Furthermore, SSS is often used regardless of children's communicative needs, and has an agenda of its own. Since children's language learning is both interactive and contextual, it is not a question of using sign-support or not in preschool, but more a question of how it is used, why, with whom and in which situations.