The Occurrence and Analysis of a Repertoire of Situational Language in Grade Six Children

Sixth-grade students were subjects in a study to determine whether they possessed a repertoire of situational language in which registers or speech styles were differentiated by language use. A methodology was developed to elicit and describe children's language in different social settings tha...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author Gambell, Trevor J
Format Report
LanguageEnglish
Published 1976
Subjects
Child Language
Code Switching (Language)
Elementary Education
Grade 6
Intermediate Grades
Language Research
Language Styles
Research Methodology
Sociolinguistics
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Sixth-grade students were subjects in a study to determine whether they possessed a repertoire of situational language in which registers or speech styles were differentiated by language use. A methodology was developed to elicit and describe children's language in different social settings that require different situational uses of language. Four task situations were designed to create situational contexts and to elicit situational language of either an intimate, casual, consultative, or formal nature. Findings were analyzed in several categories: subject matter maintenance and switching; nonlinguistic features of communication; lexical diversity; contractions, compactions and truncations; colloquial and standard forms of "yes"; lexical density; lexical content words; grammatical features; and extraneous linguistic material. The results of many of the analyses suggest that they are useful measures that differentiate language use in different sociolinguistic situations and that the interlinking of sociolinguistics and child language development can bring a new focus to the study of children's language. (HOD)