Blackwell Reference Online

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Language socialization studies of morality face an ongoing methodological and theoretical challenge: to capture multiple levels of social life and then engage our analyses with social theory on morality, which emerges predominantly from the discipline of philosophy. Such an account requires the integration of three distinct bodies of research data: everyday interactions among children and between children and caregivers; the sociohistorical dynamics that shape local relationships of power; and broader theorizing that engages the politics of modernity, notions of agency, and the formation of subjectivities, among other issues. This chapter develops an approach to language socialization and morality in order to meet this challenge, showing that a language socialization approach and recent work on morality in the anthropology of religion have much to offer each other. Studies of morality and language socialization have provided a rich focus on how micro-level interactions between adults and children prepare children to participate in local social structures, dynamics, and processes. Sterponi (2003 : 80) notes that morality from this perspective can be defined as a situated practice enacted in social interaction (see e.g. Baquedano-López 1997 ; Capps and Ochs 1995 ; Duranti 1993 ; Goodwin 2002 ). This scholarship has less often embedded these local practices within broader sociohistorically ... log in or subscribe to read full text