Who's the Boss? How Communicative Competence Is Defined in a Multilingual Preschool Classroom

This article investigates how classroom communicative competence was defined in a multilingual preschool classroom. Sociolinguistic analysis of a conflict event, and the larger classroom context, reveals the norms and values that influenced the behaviors of an English‐speaking teacher, bilingual teaching assistant, and two Chinese‐speaking preschoolers. The article identifies problems that teachers face when they attempt to value the children's home languages at the same time that they socialize them into U.S. English‐speaking classrooms.