Figueroa Megan
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci. 2024 May-Jun;15(3):e1673. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1673. Epub 2024 Jan 31.
Language development is both remarkable and unremarkable. It is remarkable because children learn the language(s) around them, signed or spoken, without explicit instruction or correction. It is unremarkable because children have done this for thousands of years without worldwide incident or catastrophe. Yet, much research on this organic developmental phenomenon relies on an empirical falsehood: "quality" linguistic input is necessary to facilitate language development. "Quality" is a value judgment, not a structural feature of any human language. I argue selectively legitimizing some linguistic input as "quality" is possible only through mischaracterizing what language is. This falsehood is also linguistic racism because it is based on a deficit perspective of the early linguistic experiences of a subset of children, specifically racialized children. I explore how linguistic racism stalls our collective understanding of language development and promotes an environment of bad science. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Language Neuroscience > Development.
语言发展既非凡又平凡。说它非凡，是因为儿童无需明确的指导或纠正就能学会他们周围的语言，无论是手语还是口语。说它平凡，是因为几千年来孩子们一直都是这样做的，并没有引发全球性的事件或灾难。然而，许多关于这种自然发展现象的研究都依赖于一个经验性的谬误：“高质量”的语言输入对于促进语言发展是必要的。“质量”是一种价值判断，而非任何人类语言的结构特征。我认为，只有通过错误描述语言的本质，才有可能将某些语言输入选择性地合法化并称之为“高质量”。这种谬误也是语言种族主义，因为它基于对一部分儿童，特别是被种族化的儿童早期语言经历的缺陷视角。我探讨了语言种族主义如何阻碍我们对语言发展的集体理解，并助长不良科学的环境。本文分类如下：语言学>语言习得>心理学>语言神经科学>发展。
