Language development and the integrationist

Despite the growing body of integrationist literature on the study of language and on a wide range of language-related fields of inquiry, there is as yet no integrationist investigation of the field of language acquisition. This paper argues for the need of an integrationist study of what children learn about language and of how they learn it. What children come to know of language—its forms, content, and properties, its powers and its uses—is largely a culturally defined product of commonplace metadiscursive practices, in much the same way as what children come to know about other sociocultural, moral, and psychological domains is an outcome of their increasingly competent participation within the discursive practices of their developmental environment.

► Integrationist linguistics needs to address the question of how children acquire language.
► What the child comes to know about language is a product of his or her increasing competence in metadiscursive practices.
► Language developmental research should focus attention on the circumstantial contexts within children acquire and integrate their communicational, cognitive, and interactional skills.