Talking Like Children
Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands
Elise Berman
Reviews and Awards
Finalist for 2020 AAAL Book Award
"Recommended." -- P. Passariello, CHOICE
"We usually think of age, like race and gender, as biological but Elise Berman shows through this beautifully written book that age is actually produced by the ways elders interact with them. It knocked my theoretical socks off. It will do that to you too as you get to know these vivid individuals inhabiting a sliver of land on an atoll in the endangered Marshall Islands." --Susan D. Blum, Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame
"Berman has written one of the most compelling ethnographies of children's lives since Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin defined the study of language socialization for anthropology. Not only is Berman's ethnography a rich and poignant analysis of Marshallese social life, it is a monumental rethinking of age and its significance for practice and theory in the social sciences."--Barbra Meek, Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Michigan
"This is a remarkable book with a challenging thesis: that children are socialized to be different from adults. In other words, they learn to behave differently from adults through social interaction rather than being 'naturally' more naive. Beautifully written and clearly explained, this is both a neat theoretical intervention and a great book for the classroom."--Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Howard H. and Jessie T. Watkins University Professor of Anthropology and Professor, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University