In the Marshall Islands, the idea that children belong to the kinship group as a whole exists in tension with an understanding of children as closely tied to their birth family. This tension is simultaneously created and overcome by linguistic and strategic practices in which adoptive and birth parents alike attempt to gain and keep children. Their efforts to "hold on" challenge recent trends in the anthropological study of kinship, specifically deconstructions of the importance of things-such as pregnancy-that appear biological. I argue that both criticisms and defenses of kinship as biology have overlooked how the physical process of reproduction creates interactional constraints on negotiations for children. These negotiations also create multiple potential parents as legitimate, thus producing the ambivalence and tensions that underlie Marshallese experiences of adoption. Rather than simply destructive, however, these tensions and ambivalences are also constructive-it is through their struggle to hold on that parents bind children to themselves. [adoption, kinship, possession, pregnancy, interaction, Marshall Islands] L .Ō MN . AK EO IN BEBA IN Ilo M .ā aer kajjioñ in dāpijir bwe er wōt ren bok kun . aer ajiri jiddik ro. Jet ien, m . akūtkūt in lale ajiri ak ajej ajiri emaroñ bar kōm . m . an bok ikōtaan baam . le ko, einwōt ilo aer leto-letak kōn won eo lukkuun m . oolin nejin ajiri eo, ro m . oolin jinen ak jemen ke ak ro rekar kokaajiriri im karūttolok ajiri eo. Bok im inepata ko ikōtaan baam . le ko kake kokaajiriri im karūttolok ajiri eo ej juon katak eo ekāāl an Anthropology ro -ke biology im bōro . ro reaurōk im rejjab maroñ bar aurōk. Rebōd ilo aer jab mel . el . e ke ilo tōre eo juon ajiri ej l . otak, rej bar kwal . o . k kakien im mālimñan kōnono ko.Ñe armej ro rekōn . aan bōk ajiri jiddik ro rej aikuj ba naan ko me rejim . we. Akō jet ien rūtto ro me rekōn . aan kokaajiririki rejjab maroñ ba naan kein. Pepe ko l .ō mn . aki bwe emaroñ jabrewōt emaroñ kokaajiririki ajiri eo ekōm . m . an bwe en bar einwōt wōr bok im kota kōn won eo enaj kokaajiriri ajiri eo. Bōtaab bok kein rejjab nana wōt bwe rej kajjioñ in dāpij ajiri eo bwe bok in ej bwe rūtto ro rej kōm . m . an bwe ren lukkuun einwōt nejier. [Kaajiriri, nukwi, m . weiuk, bōro . ro, bwebwenato, M .ā jel] RESUMEN En las Islas Marshall, la idea que los niños pertenecen al grupo de parentesco en su conjunto existe en tensión con un entendimiento que los niños están estrechamente unidos a su familia de nacimiento. Esta tensión es simultáneamente creada y superada a través de prácticas lingüísticas y estratégicas en las cuales padres adoptivos y biológicos por igual intentan ganar y retener los hijos. Sus esfuerzos de "retener" retan recientes tendencias en el estudio antropológico del parentesco, especialmente deconstrucciones de la importancia de las cosas-tales como embarazo-que parecen biológicas. Argumento que tanto criticismos como defensas del parentesco como

Children in the Republic of the Marshall Islands regularly do a number of things that are inappropriate or even taboo among adults: they walk with food that they do not offer to share; they refuse to give; they directly demand things; and they directly criticize and insult each other. One explanation for their behavior is that they are too developmentally immature to speak in the indirect and polite manner of adults. But I show that, while Marshallese children's apparently direct forms of speech are indeed linked to immaturity, they are linked to immaturity not as a developmental stage but as a social status. Hence, this article reveals, discusses, and challenges two different ideologies of childhood and language: (1) a Western ideology that associates directness with developmental immaturity; and (2) a Marshallese ideology that associates "not hiding"-either words or goods-with being a child. Through their apparently direct forms of speech, children negotiate their relative age and power relationships with each other while simultaneously constructing each other as peers and indexing participants as immature relative to adults. This analysis reveals how age and childhood are produced through speech and considers the implications of this production for understandings of language variation and socialization.

Fundamentalists typically avoid influences from the outside world and form intense social bonds with members of their own group. Yet, active fundamentalists must create relationships with the objects of their missionary action, the Other. In this article I address the connections between the cultural practice of missionary work and the formation and maintenance of social ties among ultra-Orthodox Jewish missionaries belonging to the fundamentalist Hasidic sect Chabad-Lubavitch. These missionaries attempt to bring Jews to the beliefs and practices of Chabad by hosting Jews at Sabbath meals. This missionary act is an utterance that "speaks" with multiple voices, indexing the missionaries as both friendly members of their local Jewish community and ideal Lubavitchers. Through these meals, the missionaries engage not only the local Jews but also other Lubavitchers in dialogue, constructing a community that transcends face-to-face interaction.

This article critiques the concept "novice" in the language socialization paradigm. Although rarely theorized, the concept "novice" has framed what is seen as an event of language socialization: it must include at least one person who has not yet acquired some socially valuable characteristic or skill. Conversely, we propose that novicehood is not a natural category: agents who appear as "novices" only do so relative to ideological worlds in which they are made to appear relatively incapable. We then go on to consider three consequences of this reformulation: agents and objects of socialization do not have to be human, socialization does not necessarily lead "upward" towards expertise, and the linguistic mediation of these processes does not always summon agents towards maturity. This critique leads us to propose a theory that both includes a broader range of socializable agents and connects socialization to questions of power and exclusion. [language socialization, novice, ideology, life course, race] RESUMEN Este artículo critica el concepto de "novicio" en el paradigma de la socialización del lenguaje. Aunque teorizado raramente, el concepto "novicio" ha enmarcado lo que es visto como un evento de la socialización del lenguaje: debe incluir al menos una persona que no ha adquirido aun alguna característica o destreza valiosa socialmente. Por el contrario, proponemos que el noviciado no es una categoría natural: agentes que aparecen como "novicios" lo hacen solamente en relación con mundos ideológicos en los cuales ellos se hacen aparecer relativamente incapaces. Luego vamos a considerar tres consecuencias de esta reformulación: los agentes y los objetos de la socialización no tienen que ser humanos; la socialización no necesariamente conduce "al ascenso" hacia la pericia; y la mediación lingüística de estos procesos no siempre convoca a los agentes hacia la madurez. Esta crítica nos lleva a proponer una teoría que incluye un rango más amplio de agentes socializables y conecta la socialización con cuestiones de poder y exclusión. [socialización del lenguaje, novicio, ideología, curso de vida, raza] A lthough definitions of language socialization vary, many include a view of socialization as something that happens to "novices." 1 For example, language socialization "hinges on the potential of embodied communication to engage novices in apprehending and realizing familiar and novel ways of thinking, feeling, and acting with others across the life span" (Ochs and Schieffelin 2017, 3). It is "the process through which a child or other novice acquires the knowledge, orientations, and practices that enable him or her to

Presented as a series of captivating stories from a village in Oceania, Talking Like Children is an intimate analysis of interaction that shows how age comes to be. Children in the Marshall Islands do many things that adults do not: they walk around half naked, display food in public, and explicitly refuse to give. Although many see these behaviors as natural results of children’s immaturity, the author shows that children are socialized to be different from adults—to be rude and immature. She analyzes a variety of interactions all broadly based around exchange: adoption negotiations, efforts to ask for or avoid giving food, debates about supposed child abuse. In these dramas both large and small, age differences emerge through the decisions people make, the emotions they feel, and the asymmetries they produce. Age and the life course often appear less interesting, less important, or more biologically determined than gender, race, or class. But Berman shows that, like gender and race, age differences are culturally produced and socially influential. Age differences give Marshallese children and adults “aged agency,” or the ability to manipulate social life in distinct but complementary ways. These differences are also a central mechanism of language socialization. Talking Like Children reestablishes age as a foundational concern of anthropological and linguistic research and as a variable that transforms our views of socialization, cultural reproduction, agency, giving, and culture.