Language and Place in Children's Worlds

Voices remembered from childhood, & retrieved by diasporic & exiled writers attest to the profound connections between language, place, memory & identity. Research on children's language socialization provides a complementary perspective for understanding the ways in which young children are socialized into existing social worlds, as well as seeing how they create their own. Ethnographic & sociolinguistic data from two societies. Dominica (West Indies) & Kaluli (Papua New Guinea) illustrates the importance of place & the role of language(2) in mediating social relationships & remembering them, as well as providing symbolic resources for narrative, language choice & play. As speech activities are always located in particular places, & are often about particular places, even in their earliest use of language, children are sensitive to & learn culturally specific meanings of & ways of talking about place. References. Adapted from the source document.