Elephants are Gray: Linguistic Sensitivity and the Use of Generic Utterances in Pedagogical and Nonpedagogical Contexts

• Published in: Cognitive science Vol. 46; no. 7; pp. e13173 - n/a
• Main Authors: Markwalder, Ursina, Saalbach, Henrik, Schalk, Lennart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley 01.07.2022; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Cross Cultural Studies; Dialects; Diglossia; Educational Environment; Effect Size; Foreign Countries; Generics; German; Language; Language Usage; Language Variation; Metalinguistics; Natural pedagogy; Regular; Sensitivity analysis; Speech Communication; Teaching Methods; Universality; Switzerland; Germany
• ISSN: 0364-0213; 1551-6709; 1551-6709
• DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13173

Prior research indicates that humans adapt their language depending on context. This linguistic sensitivity has been suggested to indicate a natural pedagogy shared by all humans. This sensitivity has, however, only been demonstrated with English‐speaking samples thus far. In two studies, we followe...