When codes that hold for all of a given society govern how a repertory of several languages is managed, we can talk about multilingual socialization: children thus learn to use different languages from the repertory in different situations. Multilingualism does not cause a rupture in the person's life, nor is it the sign of one. Contrary to this homogeneous language socialization is the experience of migrants especially those coming from multilingual countries in the South (herein, from Mali) toward countries in the North where the dominant social model is "monolingual" (even though all the country's population seldom speaks a single language). Owing to this "heterogeneous" language socialization, they have internalized several cultural models, and choose to activate one or the other depending on the situation.

Language socialization Speech act analysis (Bambara French) Malian immigrants

language France African immigrant Malia immigrant population