Children’s speech communities and their language use

Language is the medium with which we encounter reality, it reflects and creates our experiences interacting (Holtgraves, 2008). Much of our linguistic capability is built from these experiences with other participants (Clark, 1996). We bring this experience to all areas of our life including the speech communities we are a part of, however very little about children’s speech communities has been considered. Speech communities are organised around groups of people that share their opinions, identities, thoughts and generally communicate with their evolving social world through prolonged interaction (Morgan, 2014). The foundations of how to interact in a group originate from children learning to work together. This research will focus on children’s ability to communicate with one another and how they use their language in these small communities they have formed around tables in the classroom. Using discourse analysis, interactions between children will be analysed from audio recordings taken during a year one’s class time over a week-long period. Gee’s (2014) discourse analysis tools will be used to determine the language use of these children in their established communities. Children starting in primary school will have significantly less experience working together in communities than anyone else and may just be starting to explore what interacting as a group is and what it can do for them. The process of communicating with language contributes to a child’s intellectual development (Mercer, 2000) meaning that every interaction helps them and others grow. Initial findings suggest the need for the exploration of joint actions and projects (Clark, 1996). Community norms are demonstrated by repeating classroom rules to each other, strategies to reinforce learning by replicating how the teacher and others approach the work as well as verifying the answers with their community. The data features significant amounts of on-topic conversation pertaining to the task at hand and the children helping others with work by spelling, counting, suggesting strategies or pointing out errors. This research project highlights the significance of studying the language of children’s speech communities as they are building on the foundations of their entire linguistic futures and there is little research pertaining to this topic. Morgan (2014) says the study of speech communities is central to understanding human language and meaning, so to explore human meaning and language use in young children interacting is worth researching, especially as Taylor (2011) argues that in linguistics we cannot say something exists in adults if we have not explored where it starts with children. Clark, HH. (1996) Using Language. Cambridge, Cambridge university press. Gee, J. (2014) How to do discourse analysis: A toolkit. Oxon, Routledge. Holtgraves, T. (2008) Language as social action: Social psychology and language use. New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers. Mercer, N. (2000) Words and minds: How we use language to think together. London, Routledge. Morgan, M. (2014) Speech communities. Cambridge, Cambridge university press. Taylor, T. (2011) Understanding others and understanding language: how do children do it? Language Sciences, 34, pp. 1 – 12.