Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Social interaction and sensitive phases for song learning: A critical review
- 3 Social interaction and vocal development in birds
- 4 Building a social agenda for the study of bird song
- 5 Field observations, experimental design, and the time and place of learning bird songs
- 6 Vocal learning in wild and domesticated zebra finches: Signature cues for kin recognition or epiphenomena?
- 7 What birds with complex social relationships can tell us about vocal learning: Vocal sharing in avian groups
- 8 Social influences on song acquisition and sharing in the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
- 9 Social influences on the acquisition of human-based codes in parrots and nonhuman primates
- 10 Vocal learning in captive bottlenose dolphins: A comparison with humans and nonhuman animals
- 11 Vocal learning in cetaceans
- 12 Social influences on vocal development in New World primates
- 13 Some general features of vocal development in nonhuman primates
- 14 Social influences on vocal learning in human and nonhuman primates
- 15 The resilience of language in humans
- 16 Reciprocal interactions and the development of communication and language between parents and children
- 17 Crafting activities: Building social organization through language in girls' and boys' groups
- Index
17 - Crafting activities: Building social organization through language in girls' and boys' groups
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Social interaction and sensitive phases for song learning: A critical review
- 3 Social interaction and vocal development in birds
- 4 Building a social agenda for the study of bird song
- 5 Field observations, experimental design, and the time and place of learning bird songs
- 6 Vocal learning in wild and domesticated zebra finches: Signature cues for kin recognition or epiphenomena?
- 7 What birds with complex social relationships can tell us about vocal learning: Vocal sharing in avian groups
- 8 Social influences on song acquisition and sharing in the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
- 9 Social influences on the acquisition of human-based codes in parrots and nonhuman primates
- 10 Vocal learning in captive bottlenose dolphins: A comparison with humans and nonhuman animals
- 11 Vocal learning in cetaceans
- 12 Social influences on vocal development in New World primates
- 13 Some general features of vocal development in nonhuman primates
- 14 Social influences on vocal learning in human and nonhuman primates
- 15 The resilience of language in humans
- 16 Reciprocal interactions and the development of communication and language between parents and children
- 17 Crafting activities: Building social organization through language in girls' and boys' groups
- Index
Summary
THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE
This chapter analyzes alternative types of conversational action used to build social organization among girls and boys in an African-American working class neighborhood in Philadelphia. Participants work together to generate distinctive definitions of the situation appropriate to the task at hand, and the same individuals articulate talk and gender differently as they move from one activity to another. Making use of the same language system, children select alternative ways of putting these forms to use, constructing a range of diverse activites and social arrangements that can highlight either affiliation or competition.
From the perspective of ethology, Cullen (1972, p. 101) has argued that “all social life in animals depends on the coordination of interactions between them.” To achieve collaborative activity humans need to display to one another culturally meaningful behavior – articulating for their recipients what they are up to and how they expect others to respond. Sociologist Georg Simmel (1950, pp. 21–2) has stated that “if society is concerned as interaction among individuals, the description of the forms of this interaction is the task of the science of society in its strictest and most essential sense.” In that language provides the tool through which humans coordinate their behavior, then what is required for an adequate understanding of social organization is close attention to talk itself.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Influences on Vocal Development , pp. 328 - 341Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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