Amy, Wendy, and Beth : learning language in South Baltimore / by Peggy J. Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Peggy J., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language acquisition.

Speech and social status--Maryland--Baltimore.

Speech and social status.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Austin, Texas : University of Texas Press, 2011.

Summary:

Amy, Wendy, and Beth, the 1980 recipient of the New York Academy of Sciences Edward Sapir Award, is a lively in-depth study of how three young children from an urban working-class community learned language under everyday conditions. It is a sensitive portrayal of the children and their families and offers an innovative approach to the study of language development and social class. A major conclusion of the study is that the linguistic abilities of working-class children are consistent with previous cross-cultural accounts of the development of communicational skills and, as such, lend no support to past claims that children from the lower classes are linguistically deprived. Instead, Amy, Wendy, and Beth emerge as able and enthusiastic language learners; their families, as caring and competent partners in the language socialization process. Sound scholarship and original findings about a hitherto neglected population of children lend special value to this work not only for scholars in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, but for educators and policymakers as well.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Background

2. Procedures

3. The Children and Their Families

4. Direct Instruction in Language and Speaking

5. Combining Words to Express Meanings

6. Summaries, Conclusions, Questions

Appendices

References

Name Index

Subject Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (EBC, viewed February 24, 2018).

ISBN:

0-292-75914-2

OCLC:

1280945538