Language and the Human Lifespan Series - Böcker

This book pioneers the study of bilingualism across the lifespan and in all its diverse forms. The study of bilingualism unfolds against a varied backdrop of sociocultural and sociopolitical factors. While the nature of bilingualism and multilingualism has often been misunderstood, the bilingual community is a dynamic and ever-growing part of the global population.In framing the newest research within a lifespan perspective, the editors highlight the importance of considering an individual's age - from infancy to late adulthood - when researching how bilingualism affects language acquisition and cognitive development. Four major topics are explored: early bilingualism factors affecting bilingualism across the lifespan academic achievement and literacy in bilinguals cognitive effects of bilingualism A key theme is the variability among bilinguals, which may be due to a host of individual and sociocultural factors, including the degree to which bilingualism is or is not valued in each country and context. This book is a call for language researchers, psychologists, and educators to pursue and promote a better understanding of bilingualism in our increasingly multicultural society.

When do human beings begin producing gestures, and how do they evolve throughout our cognitive and social development?This book investigates the rich and complex ways in which gesture precedes language development and then is used in conjunction with language across the lifespan.Some experts argue that gesture is a part of language, while others argue it is a partner to language. But all agree that gesture plays a major role in language development and practices, and therefore must be captured by scientific analyses.This volume explores gesture's many functions--communicative, restorative, cognitive--across cultures and ages, in monolingual and multilingual populations, in students and in teachers.Gestures, verbal productions, signs, gazes, facial expressions, and postures are all part of our socially learned, intersubjective communicative systems that we combine for the purpose of sharing meaning, referring to present and absent entities and events,  expressing projects, desires, and feelings, and so much more. Collectively, the chapters demonstrate how gestures contribute to the cognitive and social development of humans within their lifespan, and may also indicate the efficacy of interactional practices and cognitive processes.This book is thought-provoking reading for psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, and all who study language development.

This volume enlists more than two dozen experts in the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurology, and cognitive psychology to investigate the concept of entrenchment—the ongoing reorganization and adaptation of communicative knowledge. Entrenchment posits that our linguistic knowledge is continuously refreshed and reorganized under the influence of social interactions. Contributors examine the psychological foundations of linguistic entrenchment processes, and the role of entrenchment in first-language acquisition, second language learning, and language attrition. Critical views of entrenchment and some of its premises and implications are discussed from the perspective of dynamic complexity theory and radical embodied cognitive science.