The Linguistic Behavior of Third Culture Kids

Third culture kids (TCKs) grow up as temporary migrants in a host country with an expectation of repatriation to the home country. Ideologies of being international and interstitial, rather than part of the home or host country cultures, lead to complex identity formation. The continual mobility of community members in expatriate communities results in a superdiverse linguistic feature pool for young TCKs to draw from in their own speech development. Studies have shown TCKs are agentive in their individualized combinations of these features, and they have an advantage over non-TCKs in their perceptual skills across multiple linguistic varieties. During repatriation, TCKs typically acquire the dialect of their home country more quickly and completely than second dialect acquisition studies predict, due to their perceptual exposure to the home country variety from their parents, or due to their previous use of the variety prior to moving to the host country.