#language socialization

So does this prove a language gap? The answer is no. What it proves is that high SES parents reported that their children knew more words on a list of decontextualized and arbitrary vocabulary words and that high SES children looked at the right picture more quickly than low SES students. However, actual language use is not a series of decontextualized words but rather a series of social interactions that are inherently contextualized. When have you ever needed to move your eyeballs quicker than another person in real life? And how exactly does knowing eyeball rate movement across SES help educators working with real students engage in actual language practices. Language socialization research provides a alternative approach to comparing language practices across SES. A seminal study in language socialization was conducted several decades ago by Shirley Brice Heath. Heath studied the language practices of three communities: Roadville (a low SES White community), Trackton (a low SES African American community), and Maintown (a racially diverse high SES communuity). Through many years of rigorous ethnographic work what she found was not a language gap but rather a language difference.