ERIC Number: EJ1471813
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1542-7587
EISSN: EISSN-1542-7595
Available Date: 0000-00-00
The Entanglement of Language and Place in Early Childhood: A Review of the Literature
Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, v22 n2 p146-169 2025
In this paper, the authors report the findings of a narrative review of extant international research literature to propose a conceptual model for how young children's language is entangled with place. Educational policy, curriculum documents, and speech and language therapy assessments in England tend to frame children as placeless and treat the place where language happens as either irrelevant or a hindrance to the quality of their speech. Conducting a narrative review, with a particular attention to the role of affect in what they read, the authors identify and explore three emerging themes in the extant literature that resist this framing: (1) how children's language emerges through place, (2) how place is re-signified and re-made through children's language, and (3) how place reconfigures how children are heard. Across these themes, we consider how place implicates identity, power, and hierarchies of language and embodiment. The authors argue that educators, researchers, and others need to attend more carefully to how children's language emerges "where" they talk, and to the politics of how language and place reproduce whiteness in relation to what is valued and what counts as language.
Descriptors: Educational Policy, Place Based Education, Child Language, Self Concept, Power Structure, Political Influences, Race, Speech Therapy, Language Variation, Native Language, Speech Communication, Oral Reading, Foreign Countries, Multilingualism, English (Second Language), Language Usage, Language Acquisition, Young Children, Language Attitudes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Information Analyses
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom (England)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1School of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK; 2Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK