Development in Children’s Comprehension of Linguistic Register

Abstract

For socially appropriate communication, speakers must command a variety of linguistic styles, or registers, that vary according to social context and social relationships. This study examined preschool children's ability to use a speaker's register choice to infer the identity of their addressee. Four-year-olds could draw correct inferences based on Spanish and formal speech, and had limited success with infant-directed and casual styles. Five-year-olds drew appropriate inferences with all 4 styles; moreover, these children demonstrated strong explicit understanding of register, as measured through response justifications. These results demonstrate that children can use language for social judgments that extend beyond evaluating the speaker, and can interpret social implications of language even when not directly engaged in the particular social interaction.

The maintenance of regional dialects: a matter of gender? Boys, but not girls, use local varieties in relation to their friends' nativeness and local identity

“…In early infancy, children are already able to process environmental regularities, both in linguistic input (Tomasello, 2003) and social roles including gender-typed roles (Eichstedt et al, 2002; Poulin-Dubois et al, 2002; Serbin et al, 2002; Martin and Ruble, 2004; Hill and Flom, 2007). During their preschool years, children become increasingly aware that language variation predicts variation in a range of social groups and can map linguistic information onto social categories (Hirschfeld and Gelman, 1997) including regional dialects (Wagner et al, 2014) and speech styles (Wagner et al, 2010); namely, they become capable of relating different ways of speaking with different categories of speakers and contexts of speech with increasing accuracy. They are also able to adjust their linguistic behavior to social situations (Patterson, 1992; Roberts, 1997; Díaz-Campos, 2005; Smith et al, 2007) and to the social roles they enact in pretend play for instance (Corsaro, 1979; Andersen, 1990; Ervin-Tripp, 2002).…”

Language-based Social Preferences among Children in South Africa

“…Nonetheless, other research suggests that young children confound “national group” with “linguistic group” and see language as a basis by which national groups are formed (Carrington & Short, 1995; Jahoda, 1964). Related to this possibility, preschool-aged children match voices in their native language with pictures of individual speakers who are of a familiar race, wear familiar clothes, and live in familiar dwellings (Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1997; Wagner, Greene-Havas, & Gillespie, 2010). Finally, language exposure influences children’s national group identification.…”

Children's Use of Social Cues When Learning Conventions

“…For example, children associate speech in a language they do not know with unfamiliar clothing and housing styles, suggesting that speakers of such a language are in the child's out-group (Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1997). Moreover, recent work has shown that children can draw appropriate social inferences about the identity of a speaker's addressee as a function of the speech style being spoken (formal, casual, infant-directed;Wagner, Greene-Havas, & Gillespie, 2010). Beyond this general knowledge that language marks social information, children also show a strong social preference for speakers of their native language from very early in development.…”