ABSTRACT
This chapter reports the findings concerning allocation in relation to speech partner's language dominance and activity, two elements of the bilingual classroom context. The two teachers in the participants' classroom were both bilingual: the head teacher was a native English speaker who spoke Spanish; her assistant was Dominican, a native Spanish speaker who spoke English. Both the Spanish and English allocators they used to signal the beginning of their own turns and to obligate others to respond reflected immediate aspects of the situation and the broader context too. Although these children were only four years old, they were already competent allocators and active conversationalists in a complex bilingual classroom context. Other researchers have described the same "communicative tactic" of last resort among Spanish-speaking second graders in attempts to communicate with English-speaking peers. With bilinguals, English and Spanish dominant, the children used the nondominant language as another allocating resource: the nonmatch itself could convey a message.
