Internal State Words: Cultural and Situational Variation in Vocabulary Usage 1

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Cultural variation in the function and uses of language has important consequences for speakers of variants, particularly with respect to educational performance. The social consequences of a variant way of using language can affect teacher-pupil as well as peer relationships. The consequences of a teacher’s attitude towards a given dialect—including vocabulary differences—are profound. “Internal state” words can be shown to map onto the domain of “meta” cognitive processes. Vocabulary differences clearly reflect differences in public access to one’s ideas. These differences lead to different opportunities to talk about a given meaning or aspect of meaning, and as a result different speech communities have different access to their members’ and others’ ideas. Variation in language socialization may also differentially facilitate or support the child’s growing ability to analyze and make analytical statements about certain kinds of behavior which are not always reflected upon in everyday life.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: