Two anthropologists treat mealtimes as cultural sites for socializing children into commensality, communicative expectations, and the symbolic, moral, and sentimental meanings of food and eating. Using ethnographic evidence, they indicate how mealtime comportment is embedded in practices and ideologies relevant to children's competent membership…

It is proposed that there are cultural universals in the use of language and that these universals have implications for language acquisition. The model rests on three hypotheses: (1) there are culturally universal tendencies in the linguistic marking of four dimensions of language (epistemic and affective stances, social acts, social activities,…

Presents study which examines relation between cultural beliefs and values and organization of communication between caregivers and young children in a community in western Samoa and in Anglo middle class. Illustrates ways in which organization of turn-taking and procedures for clarification and interpretation are linked to beliefs and…