Presenter: Sean Nonnenmacher 

Respondents: Tyler Bickford, Tomas Matza

In sociolinguistics, research about “childhood” and “children’s language” typically proceeds in a developmentally-informed way: seeing young speakers as little adults-in-progress who acquire linguistic competence, communicative competence, and other forms of sociolinguistic competence in stages. This colloquium will explore the consequences of viewing childhood as an ideological order in addition to a developmental one, informed by thinking from the fields of queer/trans childhood studies and linguistic anthropology. Responses will be provided by Tyler Bickford from the Department of English and Tomas Matza from the Department of Anthropology. In preparation, attendees will be asked to review a dissertation chapter draft, to be made available two weeks in advance of the meeting on the Humanities Center's shared folder.