Doctoral Dissertation Research: Child Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation

美国的公立学校比以往任何时候都更有责任教育语言和种族多样化的学生。这种语言多样性的一个重要部分是英语方言的多样性，因为不同的英语方言代表了不同的社会经济、民族和种族社区和网络。在公立学校入学的第一年，孩子们会表现出他们从照顾者和家庭环境周围的社区听到的语言形式和模式。在许多情况下，在家里学到的方言可能与老师和同龄人使用的各种英语有很大的不同。这种输入方式的改变可能会促使孩子改变他们的语言，要么是通过发展代码转换或风格转换的能力，要么是通过将从照顾者那里学到的形式和模式转换为同龄人使用的形式和模式。在不同的同伴群体中研究同伴语言学习的机制和结果将有助于理解这个年龄段的第一语言发展和社会发展。本研究以大波士顿大都会地区的一个小城市为研究对象，该城市的民族、种族、语言和社会经济多样性在一定程度上代表了该地区类似的大都会地区，解决了该地区多方言和多文化公共早期教育社区代表性不足的问题。它不仅试图记录儿童语言、社会和社会语言学的发展，而且还提供了一个数据点，将为未来的美国早期教育语言学习政策和实践提供信息。本研究探讨了幼儿在课堂上通过与同伴的适应而习得新的方言形式和可变语言模式。本研究的参与者（n=30）是公立学校一年级的儿童，他们在大波士顿市区的一个小工业城市的一个社会经济、民族、种族和语言多样化的幼儿园班级注册。语言多样性不仅包括英语以外的语言的存在，如西班牙语和葡萄牙语，而且还包括与各种方言、民族语言和英语变体相关的特征，如新英格兰东部英语、拉丁美洲英语、非洲裔美国英语，以及与第二语言英语相关的现象。在2017-2018学年的10个时间点，参与者将在为期一周的课程中自然而自然地说话。这些录音将被分析为跨越(9)相关社会语言学变量的同伴之间的趋同。跟踪同伴物理接近和相互亲和力的成分将使语言适应的自动过程从社会因素的作用中解脱出来，而社会因素在以往的研究中被假设为中介。如果发现社会因素，如社会群体和网络的形成，会影响同伴之间在任何变化背景下的适应速度、程度或方向，这将是社会语言能力发展的具体证据。

Public schools in the United States are responsible for the education of more linguistically- and ethnically-diverse students than ever. A consequential part of this linguistic diversity is diversity in dialect of English spoken, as varying dialects of English characterize different socio-economic, ethnic, and racial communities and networks. Children enrolling in their first year of public schooling will exhibit the linguistic forms and patterns they have heard in input from their caregivers and the community surrounding their home environment. In many cases, the dialect learned at home may differ substantially from the variety of English used by teachers and peers. This change in input may prompt a child to alter their language, either through the development of the ability to code-switch or style-shift, or through a trade of the forms and patterns they learned from caregivers in favor of those used by their peers. A study of the mechanisms and outcomes of peer linguistic learning in a diverse peer group will add much to the understanding of first language development as well as social development at this age. This study, by focusing on a small Greater Boston metropolitan area city with an extent of ethnic, racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity representative of similar metropolitan areas in the region, addresses an under-representation of multi-dialectal and multi-cultural public early education communities in the region. It seeks to not only document child linguistic, social, and sociolinguistic development, but also to provide a datapoint that will inform future American early education language learning policies and practices.This study investigates the acquisition of new dialect forms and patterns of variable language through accommodation to peers in the Kindergarten classroom. Participants in the study (n=30), children in their first year of public schooling, have enrolled in a socioeconomically, ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse Kindergarten class in a small industrial city in the Greater Boston metropolitan area. Linguistic diversity includes, not only the presence of languages other than English--such as Spanish and Portuguese--among peers, but also features associated with various dialects, ethnolects, and varieties of English, such as Eastern New England English, Latino English, African American English, and phenomena associated with second-language English. Participants will be audio-recorded speaking naturally and spontaneously throughout a week of classes at 10 time-points throughout the 2017-2018 school year. These recordings will be analyzed for convergence between peers across (9) relevant sociolinguistic variables. A component tracking peer physical proximity and mutual affinities will extricate automatic processes of linguistic accommodation from the role of the social factors which have been hypothesized to mediate it in previous research. If social elements such as social group and network formation are found to influence the rate, extent, or direction of accommodation among peers across any of the contexts of variation, this will be concrete evidence of the development of sociolinguistic competence.