The Role of the Social Agent in Language Acquisition: Implications for Language Intervention

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the role of the social agent in language acquisition. Language intervention programs for mentally retarded children may be classified according to whether they: (1) attempt to promote the development of cognitive processes that seem essential for the acquisition of language; (2) remediate social processes that are involved in language development; or (3) both develop cognitive processes and remediate social processes. The crucial issue in an analysis of the social processes associated with language development concerns whether language is innate or learned. The role that the social agent is perceived to play in language development depends partially upon what language is considered to be. The semantic approach is a radical departure from syntactic models of language acquisition with regard to the perceived role of nonlinguistic factors. A semantic-based grammar implies that cognitive development or the development of meaning systems is a prerequisite to linguistic development. Furthermore, to the extent that social agents are crucial to cognitive development, semantic-based theories of language development provide a rationale for expecting that social agents also play a significant role in language development.