Soundscapes of infant care and infant-directed communication in two hunter-gatherer societies

Abstract

This study contributes an ethnographic perspective to the study of infant-directed (ID) communicative activities. We compare soundscapes of infant care and ID vocal communication in two egalitarian, forest-dwelling, mobile hunter-gatherer groups: Mbendjele BaYaka/Aka in Northern Congo-Brazzaville and the Maniq of Southern Thailand. Across the unique patterns of speech and song specific to these different cultures, common threads emerged in infants’ soundscapes that suggest the centrality of musically enriched ID-speech for communication with infants. A conspicuous under-elaboration of music among Maniq people suggests that while musical activity in a culture may vary greatly, ID-speech does not. The ID-speech register thus emerges as more central to childhood socialisation and development in these hunter-gatherer societies than does the ID-song register. Although the use of lullabies (ID-song) by mothers has been claimed to be a human universal ( Trehub 2001 ; Mehr et al 2019 ) the ethnography from these hunter-gatherer societies supports Takada’s (2020:139–142) conclusion that ID-speech and song demonstrate important cultural diversity. This paper contributes to ethnographic accounts of the diversity of ways that cultures organise communicative exchanges with children.