Barbara F. Kelly and the study of children’s multimodal language socialization

Abstract

Our contribution to the special issue in honour of Barb Kelly is a combination of personal reflections on her extraordinary life and work, discussion of her contributions to the study of gesture and other actions during young children’s early language learning, and exemplification of how that work is being built upon in a current research project in which Barb was to have been a Chief Investigator. The article draws on Eve’s experience as a member of the supervisory committee for Barb’s (2003) PhD at UC Santa Barbara, her hosting of Barb’s subsequent postdoc at Stanford University, and collaborative discussions between them over the rest of Barb’s life. It also draws on Alan’s experience with Barb during the planning of their new project on “Body, Language and Socialization across Cultures” (BLS). Not long before that, Barb’s interest in gestures developed into a broader interest in communicative multimodality: the whole range of bodily actions that play a part in human communication, especially in interactions involving children. She also developed an interest in the “language socialization” approach, which treats children’s language learning as part of a larger process in which they are inducted into particular cultures and communities. Those twin foci have been central to the BLS project. They are exemplified by Alan’s contribution to the article, which examines the interplay of speech, pointing, gaze, and bodily movements in interactions between a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and her caregivers in the Ku Waru region of the Highland of Papua New Guinea, and shows how they contribute to her learning of both the complex Ku Waru demonstrative system and the clan-based system of land ownership and social identity in the region.