Doctoral Dissertation Research: Child Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation

美国的公立学校比以往任何时候都要负责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组成部分是英语方言的多样性，因为不同的英语方言表征了不同的社会经济，民族和种族社区和网络。在公立学校第一年入学的儿童将展示他们从照顾者和家庭周围社区听到的语言形式和模式。在许多情况下，在家里学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。这种输入的变化可能会促使儿童改变他们的语言，要么通过发展代码转换或风格转换的能力，要么通过他们从照顾者那里学到的形式和模式的交易，以支持他们的同龄人使用的形式和模式。研究不同年龄组同伴语言学习的机制和结果，将有助于我们更好地理解这个年龄段的母语发展和社会发展。这项研究，通过专注于一个小的大波士顿都会区城市的民族，种族，语言和社会经济多样性的程度在该地区的类似大都市区的代表，解决了该地区的多方言和多文化的公共早期教育社区的代表性不足。它不仅旨在记录儿童语言、社交和社会语言学的发展，而且还提供一个数据点，为未来的美国早期教育语言学习政策和实践提供信息。这项研究调查了通过适应幼儿园课堂上的同龄人来习得新的方言形式和可变语言模式。在这项研究中的参与者（n=30），在他们的第一年的公立学校的儿童，已经在一个社会经济，民族，种族，语言多样的幼儿园类在大波士顿都会区的一个小工业城市注册。语言的多样性不仅包括英语以外的语言（如西班牙语和葡萄牙语）在同龄人中的存在，还包括与各种方言、民族语言和英语变体相关的特征，如东部新英格兰英语、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。参与者将在整个2017-2018学年的10个时间点上自然和自发地在一周的课程中进行录音。这些记录将被分析为跨（9）相关社会语言学变量的同行之间的收敛。一个组件跟踪同行的物理接近和相互的亲和力将摆脱自动过程的语言调节的社会因素的作用，已假设调解它在以前的研究。如果社会因素，如社会群体和网络的形成被发现影响的速度，程度，或在任何变化的上下文中的同龄人之间的调节方向，这将是社会语言能力的发展的具体证据。

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.