Bonus 50: Talking to babies and small children

When you talk to a baby, you might find yourself speaking a bit differently from the way you'd talk to someone your own age. You might notice that you're pronouncing words more distinctly, that you're producing them with exaggerated intonation and facial expression, or even that you're using cutesy "babytalk" forms of words. Even kids who are slightly older - a four year old talking to a two year old, for example - often replicate certain ways that older people talked to them when they're addressing a smaller child.  

In this episode, your hosts Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about infant-directed speech! We talk about how the way babies are addressed differs across cultures, how people sometimes alter their speech subtly for babies even when they think they don't, and how infant-directed speech differs from similar genres like pet-directed speech. 

Announcements:

We’re doing a virtual live show! It’s on April 24, 2021 at UTC 22:00 (that's 6:00pm in EDT, and 8:00am April 25th in AEST) and you already have access to it as a patron of Lingthusiasm! We'll be sending you a livestream link shortly before the show, and if you want to use this as an opportunity to bring along a friend or two (perhaps a good gateway into the Extended Lingthusiasm Universe?), you're welcome to share the stream in a limited way with one or two people in private message. (If you have tons of friends who are Lingthusiasm fans, please encourage them to become patrons at any level to join the liveshow!) 

The world is inconveniently round sometimes, so if you can't make it for the live version of the show, you'll also be able to watch it in the private video stream later, and we'll put up an edited audio-only version later for people who prefer to listen via RSS. (You'll just obviously miss out on the "talking with other fans in the chat during the show" and "asking us questions for the Q&A section" parts of the experience - but feel free to go to the Lingthusiasm Discord if you want to chat at other times.)  

The Lingthusiasm liveshow is part of LingFest, a fringe-festival-like programme of independently organized online linguistics events for the week of April 24 to May 2. See the LingFest website for details as more events trickle in.

The week before LingFest is LingComm21, the International Conference on Linguistics Communication. LingComm21 is a small, highly interactive, virtual conference that brings together lingcommers from a variety of levels and backgrounds, including linguists communicating with public audiences and communicators with a “beat” related to language. Find out more about LingComm21.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Kitamura, Christine, & Denis Burnham. (2003). Pitch and communicative intent in mothers’ speech: Adjustments for age and sex in the first year 
• Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea 
• Language Socialisation Wikipedia entry
• Haggan, Madeline. (2002). Self-reports and self-delusion regarding the use of Motherese: implications from Kuwaiti adults 
• Beyond "Mama" and "Dada": Why babies learn certain words via All Things Linguistic
• Kempe, Vera, Patricia J. Brooks, Natalija Mironova, Angelina Pershukova, & Olga Fedorova. (2007). Playing with word endings: Morphological variation in the learning of Russian noun inflections
• Jones, Caroline, & Felicity Meakins. (2013). The phonological forms and perceived functions of janyarrp, the Gurindji ‘baby talk’ register
• What’s New, Pussycat? On Talking to Babies and Animals by Denis Burnham, Christine Kitamura, Ute Vollmer-Conna
• Speaking to babies, pets and language learners via All Things Linguistic  

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

To chat about this episode and other lingthusiastic topics with your fellow linguistics fans, join us on the Lingthusiasm Discord server.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles