The Acquisition of English in a Diverse Social World

Children acquiring language face the monumental task of learning the sounds, words, syntactic structure, and pragmatics of their language. Throughout this process, children encounter and interact with speakers from different social and linguistic backgrounds. How do they cope with the differences in how different people communicate? When can they perceive differences in the speech of different speakers? How does exposure to multiple accents affect language processing? What kinds of information do they infer about different speakers from the way that they communicate? What attitudes do children develop towards different language varieties? How do children vary their own language when interacting with others? This course will address these questions and more, exploring how English-learning children learn how to use language to navigate and make sense of their social world.