This book combines research and perspectives from anthropology,
sociology, applied linguistics, developmental psychology and
neurobiology to argue for a theory of language acquisition via
enculturation.
The first part of the book examines the practices by which we are
enculturated. Indeed, members of a society are socialized into their
culture, and more specifically to use language through language via
processes that include eavesdropping, observation, participation,
imitation, and language socialization. However, ethnographic accounts
also overwhelmingly show that children become enculturated in large part
on their own initiative. The second part of the book argues for a
motivation to attune to, seek out, and become like others--or an
'interactional instinct', which facilitates enculturation and the
biology that subserves it. The closing chapters explore more of our
biological readiness and the neurological structures and systems that
may have evolved to respond to the input provided by society to
facilitate the learning of cultural practices and traditions by its
youth. The picture that emerges indicates that biology is nature and
culture is nurture, but there is no nurture without nature, and it is
nurture that provides for the phylogenetic development of our biological
nature. The ontogenesis of language behavior, i.e. its acquisition,
cannot occur without its evolved biology or without its evolved cultural
practices for socialization.
