Beyond transparency: more-than-human insights into the emergence of young children’s language

Hackett, Abigail (2022) Beyond transparency: more-than-human insights into the emergence of young children’s language. Literacy, 56 (3). pp. 244-252. ISSN 1741-4350

Preview

Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (185kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper draws on three years of ethnographic research with young children and their families in a northern English town, employing a more-than-human lens to pay attention to what, beyond humans, might be involved in the emergence of children’s literacies. The paper focuses on the role of the body and place in the emergence of young children’s vocalisations and talk. In particular, the paper rethinks the dominant assumption that children’s language is primarily for the purpose of transparently conveying meaning. It does this by drawing on posthuman and decolonial scholarship on childhood and language, and particularly on the work of Glissant on opacity and difference, in order to interrogate the relationship between expression, understanding and power. Thus, the paper outlines how an understanding of the relationship between body, place and talk might inform pedagogy by highlighting the need for space to embrace divergent, complicated, irrational, playful and nonfunctional language practices in early childhood, rather than looking for rapid, straight line development.