ABSTRACT

This article critically interrogates the model of language that underpins early years policy and pedagogy. Our arguments emerge from an ethnographic study involving 2-year-olds attending a day care centre that had begun to hold a substantial proportion of its sessions outdoors. The resultant shift in pedagogy coincided with changes in the children’s speaking and listening practices. We take these changes as a starting point for a reconceptualisation of early language and the conditions under which it develops. Drawing on posthuman and Deleuzian theory, we propose a relational- material model of early language, which situates language within a wider, multi-sensory and more-than-human milieu, in which children are immersed from their earliest days. We end by asking whether early language development might be better supported by paying less attention to words, grammar and meaning, in favour of fostering participation in dynamic, multisensory, collective events.

摘要

本文批判性地质疑了支持早期政策和教学法的语言模型。我们的论点来自一项人种学研究，该研究涉及参加日托中心的 2 岁儿童，该中心已开始在户外举行大部分课程。由此产生的教学法转变与儿童口语和听力练习的变化相吻合。我们将这些变化作为重新定义早期语言及其发展条件的起点。借鉴后人类和德勒兹理论，我们提出了早期语言的关系材料模型，该模型将语言置于更广泛、多感官和超越人类的环境中，儿童从早期就沉浸在其中。我们最后询问是否可以通过付费来更好地支持早期语言发展较少注意文字、语法和意义，有利于促进参与动态的、多感官的、集体活动。