What young children think about the relationship between language variation and social difference
What young children think about the relationship between language variation and social difference
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DOI：
10.1016/s0885-2014(97)90014-9
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发表时间：
1997-04-01
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Gelman, SA
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hirschfeld, LA;Gelman, SA
先前的研究表明，学龄前儿童理解某些社会群体的成员（例如，基于职业或性别）以不同的方式说话，但不理解其他社会群体的成员（例如，基于种族、文化或国籍）说不同的语言。在这四项研究中，我们探讨了学龄前儿童对语言和社会群体成员的推断。在第一项研究中，我们发现学龄前儿童认为，少数民族、穿着不熟悉服装的人或居住在不熟悉住所的人更有可能说不熟悉的外语，而不是说英语。研究2A和2B表明，儿童不会将社会群体差异映射到所有社会类别的语言。具体来说，孩子们更有可能将语言差异归因于种族而不是年龄差异，并且更有可能将音乐偏好的差异归因于年龄而不是种族差异。研究三的结果表明，儿童对语言和社会群体差异的推断不是来自可懂度的差异。研究4提供了深入了解为什么儿童容易使这些语言的社会类映射，通过确定一个共同的属性，这两个广泛的社会类和不同的语言被认为是共享的。这些研究提供的证据表明，即使是学龄前儿童也可能以一种连贯和有意义的方式协调内容领域的知识，从而将现有知识投射到未知的实例中。
Previous work suggests that preschoolers understand that members of some social groups (e.g., based on occupation or gender) speak in distinct ways, but do not understand that members of other social groups (e.g., based on race, culture, or nationality) speak different languages. In these four studies we explored preschool children's inferences about language and social group membership. In Study 1 we found that preschoolers believed that minority race individuals, people wearing unfamiliar clothing, or people living in unfamiliar dwellings were more likely to speak an unfamiliar foreign language than to speak English. Studies 2A and 2B showed that children do not map social group differences to language for all social categories. Specifically, children were more likely to attribute language differences to racial rather than age differences and were more likely to map differences in music preference onto age than racial differences. Results of Study 3 showed children's inferences about language and social group differences were not derived from differences in intelligibility. Study 4 provides insight into why children readily make these language to social kind mappings by identifying a common property that both broad social kinds and distinct languages are thought to share. Together these studies provide evidence that even preschoolers may be coordinating knowledge across content domains in a coherent and meaningful way that underwrites the projection of existing knowledge to unknown instances.