Dissertation Research: Learning Variation: Language Acquisition and Socialization in St. Lucia

圣卢西亚儿童面临着一个复杂的社会语言环境，他们收到高度可变的，多语言输入。当他们获得语言时，他们必须学会控制多种变体或代码，包括法语词汇克里奥尔语（Kweyol），英语词汇克里奥尔语的各种新兴形式，以及“标准”英语。在发展交际能力的过程中，以实用和文化上适当的方式使用这些不同的品种，这些孩子获得了语言和社会文化变化的很大程度的详细知识，以及这两个变化的顺序是如何在圣卢西亚社会相互关联的亲密理解。在这个过程中，他们学会利用这些语言变体作为丰富的文化资源，以阐述他们的新兴身份，并协商各种类型的社会互动。这些发展过程将通过语言社会化研究进行调查。语言习得过程将纵向记录在六个不同社会背景的儿童。定期录音将在各种自然的设置与各种对话者的儿童的语音互动。将与当地顾问合作，对这些录音进行详细注释和转录，以便将录音中的话语置于人种学背景中。语言习得的过程将分析在何种程度上不同的品种是在每个孩子的言语环境中使用，这些品种的不同结构特征，在特定的形式和变体之间的语用显着性的差异，以及他们的使用的社会文化规范。这项研究将深入了解儿童如何在多语言环境中获得交际能力，以及语言变异及其索引和编码的社会分化知识如何构成生活在克里奥尔社会的人的整体文化能力的重要组成部分。更广泛地说，这项研究将有助于多语言社区是如何构成和组织的理论理解;它将提供洞察个人如何理解他们的社会世界，以及他们如何使用语言来维护和管理他们在这些异质性（今天，越来越普遍）设置经常变化的身份。

St. Lucian children are confronted with a complex sociolinguistic environment in which they receive highly variable, multilingual input. As they acquire language they must learn to control multiple varieties or codes, including a French-lexicon creole (Kweyol), various emergent forms of English-lexicon creole, and "standard" English(es). In the course of developing the communicative competence to use these different varieties in pragmatically and culturally appropriate ways, these children acquire detailed knowledge of a great degree of both linguistic and sociocultural variation, as well as an intimate understanding of how these two orders of variation are interlinked in St. Lucian society. In the process, they learn to draw on these language varieties as a rich cultural resource for setting forth their emergent identities and negotiating various types of social interactions. These developmental processes will be investigated through a language socialization study. The language acquisition process will be longitudinally documented in six children of differing social backgrounds. Regular periodic audio recordings will be made of the children's speech interactions with various interlocutors in a variety of naturalistic settings. These recordings will be annotated in detail and transcribed in cooperation with local consultants so as to place the recorded utterances in ethnographic context. The course of language acquisition will be analyzed with regard to the extent to which different varieties are used in each child's verbal environment, the differing structural features of those varieties, the differences in pragmatic salience among particular forms and variants, and the sociocultural norms of their use. This research will yield insights into how children acquire communicative competence in multilingual settings, and how knowledge of linguistic variation and the social differentiation it indexes and encodes forms an essential part of the overall cultural competenc e of persons living in creole societies. More broadly, the study will contribute to theoretical understandings of how multilingual communities are constituted and organized; and it will provide insight into how individuals apprehend their social worlds and how they use language in asserting and managing their often shifting identities in these heterogeneous (and today, increasingly prevalent) settings.