Child Language and Literacy

Angharad John, 2nd year

How children view differences in dialects

What this study was about and why it is important

Many child development researchers wonder whether young children notice differences between dialects – that is, how a person speaks a particular language based on where they are from - and if so, whether that affects the child’s opinion of that person. Two studies examined a group of 5–6-year-old children and how they viewed dialects. The children were asked to sort dialects of English into categories. They were given their own home dialect –the type of English they heard at home, a regional variation –spoken by a first language English speaker, but from a different area, and a second language variation – English spoken by a first language speaker of another language. Results showed that the children were able to tell the difference between their own dialect and the second language variation, but not between the second language and regional variation or the home and regional variation.

What the researchers did

• The researchers carried out two experiments on separate groups of 5–6-year-old children from Ohio. One asked the children to consciously sort dialects into categories, while the other asked them to link each dialect to cultural items, such as houses or clothing.

• The three dialects used in the experiments were a home dialect; in this case Midland American English, a regional variant (meaning different dialect); Northern British English, and a second language variant; Maharashtran Indian English.

• In Experiment 1, 36 children were split into three groups. Each group was tested on two of the three dialects, for example: Group 1 was tested on the home versus regional dialect, Group 2 on the regional versus second language dialect and Group 3 on the home versus second language dialect.

• The experiment started with a training phase, where each group heard recorded sentences in their two dialects and were simultaneously shown green and purple puppets, which would move when they were supposedly speaking. A sentence would play, and the child would be told, for example, green puppets sound like this.

• The next step was a test phase, in which new sentences were played, and the children were asked to match them to the puppet.

• In Experiment 2, 36 children who had not taken part in Experiment 1 were split into three groups by the same categories as Experiment 1, and each group was played the same training sentences as in the previous experiment.

• This time, the children were asked to link the dialects to cultural items, such as houses.

• The children would be shown two pictures, one showing something that was familiar to them, for example, a house that was common where they lived, and one that was unfamiliar, for example, a mud hut. The children were then played a sentence in a dialect and asked which picture the dialect belonged to. What the researchers found

• Experiment 1 showed that most of the children matched the puppet to the correct dialect in the home versus second language dialect contrast, but in the other two conditions (home versus regional dialect and regional versus second language dialect), the number of children who answered correctly was no higher than would be expected by chance.

• This suggests that, overall, the children were not able to pick out anything specific in the home versus regional and regional versus second language dialects that helped to differentiate between them, and may just have been choosing an answer at random.

Things to consider

• It is important to remember that each experiment was done on a completely different set of children, meaning that the results would not have been affected by the children having picked up information from a previous experiment.

• The overall findings of this study show that, at this age, while the children are not always able to knowingly sort dialects into categories, they can make judgments on how similar or familiar someone is to them based on their speech.

• The results imply that as children start school, they are still in the process of learning what makes accents and dialects similar or different to their own. This could be useful for teachers who want to understand more about how young children interact with new peers and how they communicate as a result of information they pick up from each other’s accents. More research is needed to determine at which point children start to acknowledge these differences in peoples’ speech.

Reference Wagner, L., Clopper, C.G., & Pate, J.K. (2013). Children’s perception of dialect variation. Journal of child language, 41(5), 1062-1084.

https://doi:10.1017/S0305000913000330