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Language Socialization of Indigenous Children

The acquisition of language is a universal and fascinating aspect of human development. Language socialization research shows that when acquiring a first language, children are simultaneously acquiring the cultural and social knowledge necessary for becoming competent members of their respective families and communities. From an indigenous perspective, the mother language serves as a basic and fundamental source of identity, sacredness, and strength of an individual, family, and community. This entry begins with a general overview of indigenous peoples, their languages and their cultures, and outlines some of the ways that indigenous children of the United States, Native Americans (also known as American Indians), Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians are socialized into their homes and cultures.

Indigenous Peoples, Languages, and Cultures

Indigenous peoples around the world and in the United States differ in a number of striking ways, such as governance, culture (i.e., dress, art, and ceremony), genesis theories, acculturation, and languages. Presently indigenous peoples constitute 4% of the world's population; they also speak an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 of the 6,000 world's languages (as reported by Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine). In the United States, indigenous peoples equal 4.3 million or 1.5% of the total population and represent more than 560 autonomous indigenous nations, including Chippewa, Lakota, Jemez Pueblo (Walatowa), Diñé (Navajo Nation), Inuit, Eastern and Western Cherokee, Tohono O'odham, Caddo, Eastern Pequot, Seminóle, and Oneida. There are 175 U.S. indigenous languages, which range in various degrees of vitality from a handful of elderly speakers of Pii Paash, a Yuman language, also known as Maricopa (Arizona), to more than 178,000 speakers of Navajo, an Athabaskan language, whose use stretches from the sub-Arctic to the U.S. border with Mexico.

Equally important to understand about indigenous languages is that most of them predominately remain oral languages with cultural knowledge and traditions being orally transmitted among generations; however, language vitality in each community (and family) varies. For most communities that have a written language, mother-tongue literacy is reserved primarily for schools. For example, Zuni is a language isolated in New Mexico, which is spoken by 90% of the 10,000 Zuni members; however, only an estimated 5% of the population is able to read and write the language. Similarly, mother-tongue literacy has existed for nearly 100 years among the Navajo and is currently taught in model language education programs reservation-wide, yet their distinct child socialization practices and patterns remain primarily oral. This is not to say that mother-tongue literacy is not important but, rather, that the socialization of children essentially remains an oral process in indigenous cultures.

Language Socialization Research

Language socialization research is, in general, influenced by the fields of anthropology, sociolinguistics, psychology, and sociology—all of which critically examine human development and human nature, including language acquisition and language and cognitive development. This entry takes a sociolinguistic perspective, strongly influenced by the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. In this theoretical view, through various interactions with adults and other cultural experts, young children tacitly, yet actively, absorb social knowledge; they internalize what they acquire from these external activities to make it their own. Vygotsky referred to this sociocog-nitive process as internalization, where an external interaction is transformed into internal mental functioning. In his view, through their verbal and nonverbal sociolinguistic interactions with experts (adults), children come to know who they are in relation to others in their world. In other words, they are acquiring a self-identity in a world of social meaning.

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