A comparative study of child-directed language across five cultures
This week, we’re featuring a comparative study of child-directed language across five cultures published in the Australian Journal of Linguistics by a research team, including Visiting Professor Rowena Garcia.
One truism of acquisition is that children are socialized into language and culture (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984). This means that children are treated differently to competent speakers of the linguistic community because they are still learning its linguistic and cultural conventions. How this notion of difference plays out in universal and culturally specific terms is less clear. We...