Measuring pragmatic language in children from diverse linguistic backgrounds

The extent of one’s bilingualism affects various aspects of language development, however, little research has investigated how a child’s language exposure impacts their pragmatic awareness. Chapter 2 of this thesis involved truncating the CELF-4 UK and developing two questionnaires. One enables researchers to quantify a child’s language experience whilst mitigating the need for parental report, a factor which cannot always be relied upon in school settings. The second questionnaire gathers detailed information regarding a child’s classroom-based language competencies from the child’s teacher. All three measures enable quicker measurement of both language skills and language experience in the classroom. Chapter 3 collected decomposition scores for 121 idiomatic expressions as well as meaning-specific AoA norms for homonyms, metaphors, metonyms and idioms from an adult British-English sample. This allowed for stimuli selection in subsequent chapters. Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 concentrate on homonyms, metaphors, metonyms and idioms, respectively. These chapters explore the relationship between these specific aspects of pragmatic competence and language exposure and the degree in which this relationship may be moderated by factors associated with bilingualism, such as academic attainment, general language development, age and working memory. This involved the administration of a novel battery to 127 children in Years 3 (7-8 years) and 6 (10-11 years) of primary school. Results show age to be the most consistent predictor of pragmatic understanding but this effect to be highly moderated by socio-economic status. Finally, Chapter 8 compared children’s knowledge of the four studied pragmatic tropes (homonyms, metaphors, metonyms and idioms), finding metonyms to be the most easily understood of the four tropes in both age groups. Taken together, this thesis adds to the limited information of how children from diverse language backgrounds understand different tropes of pragmatic language and the factors that mediate the relationship between language experience and pragmatic understanding.