Young children’s language socialisation to baby talk and ontology of infancy in a small rural Indo-Fijian community

Abstract

This qualitative ethnographic research explores baby talk (BT) and ontology of infancy in a small, rural Indo-Fijian community via semistructured interviews with mothers about their children’s language learning, mothers’ narratives about their photographs of their young children engaged in everyday language, and audio- and video-recordings of naturalistic communication with and around 11 young children in their home environments. Analyses draw on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Ochs and Schieffelin’s child-centred and situation-centred categorisations, and de León’s approach to understanding language socialisation in multiparty participation frameworks. The findings describe: i) features of local BT, ii) local beliefs about babies, language acquisition and BT, iii) how local speakers’ communications with babies fit Ochs and Schieffelin’s categories, and iv) how young children draw on their elders’ BT to continue their community’s ways of interacting with and thinking about babies. The conclusion provides implications for pedagogy in early childhood education and care settings.