SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME SO • NUMBER S • SEPTEMBER 1976 605 THIRD AVENUE· NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

Postchildhood Modifications of Linguistic and Social Competence

A CHILD'S ACQUISITION of and increasing control over rules for the production and interpretation of speech and other social behavior is a truly remarkable phenom­enon. It is even more remarkable since the greatest part of this control seems to be achieved at a tender age. The focus on the extremely compacted processes of language acquisition and socialization and of the learning of inter­personal skills in the early years has led to the relative neglect of the continuing acquisition and refinement of linguistic and social skills.

The fact that learning of language and of interper­sonal skills continues throughout life has become increas­ingly recognized in recent years, and research is now under way by scholars representing several disciplines and a variety of theoretical and methodological perspec­tives. Under the auspices of the Council's Committee on Sociolinguistics, a small conference of linguists and social scientists was held in Brown 'County, Indiana, N ovem­ber 14-16, 1975, to explore this emerging interest and att~mpt to identify critically relevant research issues. l

• Allen Grimshaw is professor of sociology, Indiana University; Leah Holden is a graduate student in the same department. A member of the Council's Committee on Sociolinguistics, Mr. Grimshaw was re­sponSible for organizing the conference reported; Leah Holden acted as rapporteur. The authors wish to thank William Corsaro, Charles Fill­more, Marilyn Lester, and several conference participants for- extensive critical comments on a draft of this report and several other scholars for providing unpublished papers for use at the conference. This report (which has been much condensed for reasons of space) cannot be consid­ered a complete record of the meeting, a definitive statement of the problems and prospects of an area of SCholarly activity, or even as rep­resentative of a joint position statement or a reflection of consensus. It does represent a preliminary, if often inadequate, formulation ot some important issues seen by the participants as central in the dis­cussion. For the most part, no attempt has been made to assign credit to individuals for specific ideas.

1 Conference participants included anthropologists, linguists, psycho­linguists, sociolinguists, sociologists, and an English professor interested

by Allen D. Grimshaw and Leah Holden •

A number of things are "known" about the continu­ing elaboration and extension of .grammatical rules learned in early childhood. Linguists have reported on continuing incorporation of lexical items into vocabu­lary, on the appearance of more complicated syntactic embedding, and on the learning "Of second. and ad­ditional languages. Sociologists have told us ~ that be­havioral patterns change in response to membership in different peer and reference groups (a shift from de­pendence on parents, to dependence on peers, to auton­omy in middle life, itself replaced by dependence on a variety of caretakers in the later years). But linguists

in language. Committee members in attendance included Allen Grim­shaw, Rolf Kjolseth, and Gillian Sankoff. Other participants were David Bleich, Indiana University; Charles Bird, Indiana University; Ursula Bellugi, Salk Institute (La Jolla, C~.lifornia); Courtney Cazden, Harvard University; Jean Berko Gleason, Boston University; Erving Goffman, University of Pennsylvania; Leah Holden, Indiana Univer­sity; Keith Kernan, University of California, Los Angeles; Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, University of California, Los Angeles; and Eugene Weinstein, State University of New York, Stony Brook.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

55 Post childhood Modifications of Linguistic and Social Competence-Allen D. Grimshaw and Leah Holden

42 Japanese Studies-Robert J. Smith and Susan J. Pharr

44 A New Committee on Gifted Children­Alvia Y. Branch

48 Current Activities at the Council -The impact of television viewing -Longitudinal methodology in the social

sciences -New subcommittee on education indi­

cators 50 Fellowships and Grants 52 Recent Council Publications

have not told us much about (1) in what areas of com­petence are changes most likely to occur; (2) what are motivations for those changes; (3) how they are learned; (4) what are the cognitive and grammatical constraints on changes (and perhaps physiological constraints); (5) what social contexts facilitate or inhibit change. Sociolo­gists have not provided answers either to the analogous questions about acquisition of social interactional rules or to those having to do with the functions of skills added as individuals progress through the life cycle (e.g., adolesecent speech and occupational jargons as bouridary maintaining and solidarity enhancing mechanisms). All of these topics were discussed during the conference. For purposes of our necessarily truncated report, we present a sampling of the range of subjects and ideas covered in the course of the conference.

SOME BASIC ISSUES IN ACQUISITION

Readers will note that the bulk of the illustrative mate­rial in this section is drawn from examples of continuing learning of sociolinguistic and/or social interactional rules rather than of changes in individual grammars (on the difference between learning linguistic and sociolin­guistic rules, see Cazden 1973). This apparent imbalance reflects topics discussed at the conference and an emer­gent realization that concentrated learning of the several types of rules may occur at different stages in the life cycle. While productive and interpretive speech capacity changes throughout life, there appears to be evidence that such learning is far more compacted into the very earliest years than is true of that of social and sociolin­guistic skills. Payne (1975) has shown that major changes in the grammar become increasingly difficult with matu­ration--even though there may be great pressures for change on older children and adults.

In contrast, some participants believe there is sugges­tive evidence that important learning of social interac­tional and sociolinguistic (selectional) rules also begins at a very early age, but that the pace and scheduling of this learning varies considerably. This variation is a consequence of what data are available for a child for the construction of social interactional and sociolinguis­tic grammars. Speech data for construction of grammars of languages are available for virtually all children. However, exposure to analogous social interactional data (e.g., interaction with significant others of widely varying social characteristics in situations with widely varying goals) or sociolinguistic data (e.g., interaction with significant others using different dialects and/or registers) varies considerably by location in the social structure in terms of such characteristics as family orga-

34

nization, class status, and area of residence. It thus hap­pens that some persons will learn some social interac­tional or sociolinguistic skills much later than others (or perhaps never). This variation occurs within as well as across societies.

Most studies have viewed the acquisition process as one in which language learners construct grammars on the basis of data in the world around them; little atten­tion has been paid to reasons why some things seem to be learned more easily than others--the assumption seems to have been that differences in development re­flect differences in ability and in complexity of new grammatical structures. Participants in the conference discussed several questions about social relational and psychological (noncognitive) influences on the process.

We were reminded, for example, of the ease with which children everywhere learn their mother tongue and certain social amenities (such as "Thank you" in our society) as contrasted to the difficulty in assimilating second and higher order language instruction or explicit training in specialized social behaviors in the years be­yond childhood. The former are learned fairly "easily" (from a child's point of view even mother-tongue acqui­sition can be marked by chagrin, great effort, embarrass­ment, frustration, etc.); the latter are taught but fre­quently not learned. One explanation offered was that the first language is learned in conditions of emotional need, and teaching of second and higher order lan­guages is frequently imposed on potential learners in periods of rebellion and in contexts of coercion. Another interpretation suggests that there is a functional econ­omy in the learning of langauge and of the rules of social behavior; that once enough has been learned to permit speakers to communicate and to manage social relations, energies are then expended on other activities. Related to this notion is one that suggests that there are simply more attractive things to do as people "grow up" and that continuing learning of some sorts simply loses out in the competition for time resources.

Learning versus being taught: A related question, which participants agreed deserves more attention than it has hitherto received, is that of explicit instruction versus implicit acquisition (see Cazden 1973). There are some things which, as adults, we can remember having learned. While different theories of learning focus on varying dimensions of the process, we all believe that we can identify instances of learning by imitation, by trial and error, and through explicit instruction. Some fairly explicit instruction both in language and for other social behaviors continues through life. Small children get more of this than more mature individuals do, the exhortations of Captain Kangaroo on "Please" and

VOLUME SO, NUMBER S

"Thank you," the warnings of adults that "nice" boys or girls don't talk in certain ways, the instruction of teachers about number agreement, verb forms, and the like. Military personnel are instructed in how to produce and when to use "command voice"; presidents are in­structed in how to address the Congress; and so on. In each of these and countless other instances corrections are offered for mistakes and positive sanctions are given for successful performances. Moreover, although being able to do something often precedes learning a scheme of interpretation for it (or at least being able to articu­late the latter), we sometimes know how things are to be done before we know why-and that knowing, even about saying "Thank you," can be very complicated. There are other politeness formulae or social amenities that people do not remember learning, and there are many instances in which some are never learned.

In addition to instruction in classroom settings, there is also a great deal of explicit instruction which takes place routinely in casual settings, and which may be offered either by peers or by older persons who "have been there." This kind of activity ranges from general advice ("Go right in there and tell what you think­don't leave anything out") to specific coaching ("Now when he asks Y, you reply Z"). Retrospective coaching allows for rehashing of interaction-gone-wrong, where errors in strategy and possible alternative approaches can be pointed out.

Rote "learning" is associated with explicit pedagogical techniques which in recent years have come to be se­verely criticized. Nonetheless, "rehearsal" is a useful concept in understanding how language and other skills continue to be acquired in different life periods and settings. There are several types of rehearsals in which speakers engage, including at least (I) practice for ritual or dramatic performances, e.g., rehearsals for weddings or for performances of King Lear; (2) premonitored talk, or joint practice, prior to entering a social setting, or in preparation for a general type of social setting; (3) re­hearsal in a speaker's head during ongoing talk-the kind of thing that happens in some conversational "contests"; (4) isolated practice, silent or spoken (e.g., the type that is done by individuals anticipating crises in interpersonal relations).

As with coaching, there are two time orientations; prospective (rehearsals) or retrospective (redoings); in actual conversation they are often intermingled (as in the distinction between future-oriented, "When I see him ... " and past-oriented, "When I saw him ... ").

When children are together in our society (just as when conference participants gather) they do rehearsals -of accents heard on television, of varieties of direc-

SEPTEMBER 1976

tives, of conversational openers. Adolescents engage in same-sex rehearsals of cross-sex conversations. The very old may practice strategies for establishing and main­taining social relations. Much of this rehearsal is fairly open, and auditors are frequently asked to evaluate per­formances. We know little, however, about the social norms which encourage or prohibit practice of certain kinds of verbal performances.

Critical ages or periods for learning: There is no evi­dence that the ability to acquire language is lost at any age_ There is some evidence that lexicon, for exam­ple, continues to expand throughout an individual's life (D. Sankoff and Lessard 1975). There is evidence, too, that some "missed" learning can be picked up at later ages. Genie, the physically abused and socially and linguistically isolated child studied by Curtiss et al. (1974), has learned much but by no means all of what she had missed during her traumatic isolation. The fact that she has not filled in some parts of her grammar does not mean, of course, that such learning is impossible. Although some learning is clearly cumulative, we know little about what constraints there may be on delayed learning, or what, if anything, can only be learned after particular levels of physiological, psychological, or social maturation are reached. Similarly, the mastery of many sociolinguistic skills (e.g., things as different as the ac­complishment of condolences or the "civilized" termina­tion of relationshi ps and more specific skills such as irony or euphemism) requires a prior understanding of sub­tleties of social relationships as well as competence with linguistic forms. Current research provides no satisfac­tory answers to either the question of the existence of critical periods or, if they exist, what their bases are.

LANGUAGE CHANGE AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Universal rules of linguistic and social behavior (whether metatheoretical or substantive) should not, by definition, change. System-specific rules, including cate­gorical rules, do change (Labov 1972a); this raises the interesting question as to how violations come to be accepted and in some instances to represent new rules.2

Scholars from each of the social sciences have pro­pounded theories of societal change, but there is nothing approaching consensus on a theory (see, e.g., Moore 1963; Ponsioen 196q). Linguists have long been inter­ested in questions about change (see, recently, Wein­reich, Labov, and Herzog 1968; Labov, Yaeger, and

Z Some participants were skeptical of the utility of Labov's distinction. seeing the rules of a grammar as falling along a continuum from highly variable to ("for all intents and purposes') invariant rules. To them. the measurement of location on the continuum is interesting-as is the question of how the "categorical" rules come to be changed.

35

Steiner 1972; Stockwell and Macaulay 1972); there is no consensually accepted theory within linguistics.

Some changes, like the lexical reduction discussed by Friedrich (1966) and those in Tok Pisin discussed be­low, occur within historically demarcated periods (some­times within single generations) and may be experienced by individuals; other changes, like the Great Vowel Shift, extend over periods of centuries and are not con­sciously experienced by naive participants. The same differences in rapidity and awareness of change hold, of course, for other social change. Most adults now living can identify major social changes (including many of revolutionary magnitude) which have happened in their own lifetimes. There are also more gradual, though no less pervasive, changes which have taken place, e.g., in the organization of family life in response to the indus­trial revolution; in shifts in the status of women and chil­dren; and so on. In this section we will talk primarily about language change; it will be realized that analogous changes occur in the structuring of social relations and processes, and that similar questions must be asked about each, viz.: (1) what or who changes; (2) what or who introduces and carries through the changes; (3) how does change occur; (4) what is the order of change.

Two levels of language change were discussed: (I) changes in the grammars- (and productive speech pat­terns) of individauls in new settings, whether those new settings are social (e.g., through class mobility), develop­mental (resulting from chronological movement through the life cycle) or geographical (movement across dialect or language boundaries); (2) changes in "languages" themselves (using language here as a surrogate for statis­tical norms of rule distribution). There are differences, of course, in the rate and characteristics of changes in languages which are "isloated" (e.g., the Great Vowel Change in English) and in languages in contact (e.g., pidginization or the standardization of creoles such as that described by Sankoff; see below).

One interesting question is that of who introduces change into speech patterns. Labov (1972b) examined this question, if somewhat indirectly, in his Martha's Vineyard study; Sankoff, one of the participants in the conference, has specifically asked about adolescents ver­sus adults in the contribution of innovations in Tok Pisin (TP), an English-based pidgin-creole spoken in Papuan New Guinea.

As an illustration of a change for which adolescents appear to have been principally responsible, Sankoff briefly reviewed the findings reported in G. Sankoff and Laberge (1973) on the introduction of tense markers into TP. As late as perhaps 20 years ago, future time was indicated in TP by a series of optional adverbs, usually

36

in sentence-initial position. One of these, baimbai (de­rived from "by and by"), has been reduced to bai or btl, which is now an obligatory verbal prefix used as an auxiliary by creole speakers (the oldest of whom were teenagers in 1971 when the study was carried out). It is used less consistently by adults (second-language speak­ers of TP), and its status for them as an auxiliary is equivocal. A lexical item has been encapsulated into a grammatical morpheme and has undergone a major change in its syntactic role-apparently in one genera­tion. While it is impossible to determine whether the reduced form was originally introduced by the younger generation, it is clear that the wholesale adoption and generalization of the future marker has been their doing. In this case, then, children and particularly adolescents are the leading edge of change.

In contrast to this change is an innovation in syntax that does not show noticeable differences between pidgin and creole speakers (see G. Sankoff and Brown 1976). A marker (ia) for bracketing off relative clauses ap­peared quite recently and apparently has as its source the demonstrative ia. Many Austronesian languages (some of which are the native languages of pidgin speakers) have been described as having similar sys­tems. In this case, the younger generation does not seem to be ahead of its elders, which tends to suggest that this change has been generalized by pidgin speak­ers, possibly under the influence of their native lan­guages.

While these data suggest that both younger (creole) speakers and older (pidgin) speakers are capable of generalizing syntactic change, there are nevertheless gen­erational differences in speech which are attended to by TP speakers. Sankoff reports that adults admire the children's effectiveness in language use-they say the kids "speak straight" (in contrast to their own periphras­tic usages).

The (unanswered) question about the greater success of the young in introducing certain language changes is related to another interesting question-that of dis­tinguishing cognitive as contrasted to social bases for changes in the production of individual speakers. Sev­eral sorts of changes have been identified, e.g.: (1) change by analogy (e.g., the regularization of English verbs); (2) change through learning errors (e.g., sound changes where the source is failure to reproduce a target model); (3) change through the addition of rules (e.g., the case of TP reported above). These essentially cogni­tively-based changes must be theoretically' integrated with changes consequent from speakers' attempts to "talk like" positively-valued social others.

At some point, students of language in use will have

VOLUME 110, NUMBER 11

to address the knotty problem of integrating facts and theoretical perspectives about continuing language (and other social) acquisition and socialization with those about language (and other social) change. Linguists will have to provide convincing descriptions of both the re­structuring of individual grammars through the course of the life cycle and of the grammars of languages over time and under different conditions of language con­tact and social change. Psychologists will have to provide information on the cognitive processes involved in indi­vidual acquisition and continued learning. Neurolin­guists will have to identify neural constraints on the ordering of initial acquisition (and possibly on later re­learning). Anthropologists and sociologists will be called upon to identify the social supports and constraints which operate to facilitate or inhibit both initial and continued acquisition and the occurrence or nonoccur­rence of change. The outlines of a !esearch agenda are beginning to emerge.

LANGUAGE VARIATION

There are at least three ways in which vanation in language is of critical interest to students of language in use. The first of these, which has a long history in linguistics, involves the description of variations in regis­ter (style), code, and dialect within languages or the dis­tribution of languages themselves and the relations of that differentiation and distribution to the speakers' geographical and social location, including in the latter socioeconomic attributes such as class, ethnicity, age, and sex. A second concern has to do with the command over variants by individual speakers and the relationship of presumed differences in repertoire to social variables. A third interest, associated with variation in the speech production of individual speakers across situations (e.g., with different ends, topics, settings, and interlocutors) will be discussed in the following section on language functions and the development of communicative com­petence, broadly conceived.

Each of us lives in a world in which there are relevant others who speak differently from ourselves. For many people, in many situations, the differences are seldom remarked, and there is probably only modest resocializa­tion in speaking behaviors as the years pass (there are social accompaniments to the aging process so that there will always be sollie resocialization in social interactional patterns). For many other people, however, important changes continue through life. The identification of these changes, their sources, and their linguistic, socio­linguistic, and social implications, raises a number of theoretically interesting questions, several of which came

SEPTEMBER 1976

under discussion at the conference. Among these ques­tions we have selected two for brief discussion in this report: (1) what social and/or linguistic bases can be identified for the acquisition of productive as contrasted to passive or interpretive competence in new variants; and (2) what is the relationship between adding new sounds, words, phrases, etc., on an item-by-item basis and adding rules or strategies for producing new sounds, words, phrases; under what conditions does the former lead to the latter?

(1) Productive versus passive competence: Native speakers of American English can understand Standard versions of the language anywhere in the country; how­ever, only some of those who move across dialect bound­aries after childhood become productively competent in the new variant to which they are exposed (Payne 1975). Weinreich (1953) identifies cognitive, emotional, and so­cial sources for interference; the same kinds of influ­ences doubtless constrain the acquisition of interpretive and/or productive competence. There are situations, moreover, where passive competence never leads to pro­ductive competence but may, itself, be acquired in early adulthood and subsequently improved. G. Sankoff (1970) has described such an instance in a discussion of New Guinea dialects. Intelligibility tests showed that adolescents (age 12-20) understood a related dialect rather poorly, young adults (age 20-30) did much better, but were themselves surpassed by those in the 30-40 group, demonstrating that ability to comprehend an­other dialect of one's language is related to increased exposure to it, and can occur well after childhood.

(2) "True" competence versus "routines": Many peo­ple know a few words or phrases in a foreign language; many children and adults can "do" bits of foreign ac­cents; people may "dress up" their speech in dealing with those from whom they seek services, particularly in telephone conversations or other brief encounters. There are special registers associated with communication across ethnic or age categories (viz., foreigner talk and baby talk; see, e.g., Ferguson 1971). Aside from these special cases, people frequently attempt to adjust to inter­locutors who speak (or who the speaker believes speak) different variants. The motives for such attempts vary widely, from condescension, to attempted solidarity, to deceit.

There is a continuum from command over items in a language or dialect without the ability to generate new forms to productive competence. People seem to have remarkable capacity for learning long and involved lists on an item-by-item basis. Some lists may come to provide the basis for more abstract and productive rules; others may continue to be stored as itemized lists. Deriving a

57

productive rule from lists of items is presumably a way to move toward competence in a language, dialect, or register. We do not know what constraints, social or cog­nitive, there are on such a process, what conditions facili­tate it, or to what extent speakers can achieve real com­petence in a new system in this fashion.s

LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Children's rapid acquisition of a wide range of gram­matical (phonological, syntactic) skills has been widely documented and discussed. A developmental problem less frequently mentioned has to do with the (presum­ably) parallel development of skills children acquire which allow them to use their developing linguistic skills effectively in social interaction. A central question now becomes: how do children and adolescents (and adults) come to use the linguistic resources at their com­mand to manage increasingly complex interaction in diverse social settings? An adequate answer to this ques­tion requires both a theory of the development of lin­guistic abilities and a theory of the development of social knowledge.· Consider one example. Adolescence in our culture is often characterized as a time of trying on new identities--indeed a time of "identity crisis." When a person moves into new social spheres, new ways of speak­ing-one facet of new ways of presenting oneself-must be acquired. The ability to function linguistically and socially in bureaucratic settings, or in dating relation­ships, for instance, must be acquired in order for one to become a fully competent member of a differentiated social world.

Young children use role play for (among other things) experimenting with various roles, some of which they may eventually occupy (parent, teacher, doctor, etc.), some of which they will likely not (puppy, princess, witch, etc.). Older children, adolescents, and adults con­tinue to practice the kinds of talk associated with various roles and situations, but the form of the rehearsal prob­ably changes. As noted above, little is known about re­hearsals, particularly in older age groups, but they would

3 Bolinger (1976) argues that the most important process in language acquisition is a constant cognitive processing of basically memorized material, some of which leads to the construction of rules, but much of which does not.

4 A number of studies underscore the importance of studying chil­dren's speech in its natural loci-the settings that have most salience for the speakers, especially the peer group. As reported by, for exam­ple, Cook-Gumperz and Corsaro (in press) and Ward (1971), linguistic patterns look very different when children talk to adults than when they interact with peers.

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seem to be an important resource in the development of adult identity.

Closely related to the management of identity is the notion of the management of status, especially within peer groups. Several verbal strategies are available for producing a sense of status differentiation. One of these, the use of directives, appears in nursery school-age chil­dren:s role play (Corsaro 1976; Sachs and Devin 1976), and m the talk of older children (reports by Kernan and Mitchell-Kernan at the conference on their research). A~ot~er strategy for enhancing status in some groups is skIll m verbal dueling or in ritual insults (Abrahams 1972; Labov 1972c; Mitchell-Kernan 1972), which re­quire mastering both a linguistic form and a stock of social knowledge which prescribes the content of the insults.

This approach to the study of language acquisition, focusing as it does on language use, leads nicely into the study of how individuals acquire a range of registers or dialects in which they can function competently. That people practice the kinds of talk appropriate to roles they will never occupy in their "real" adult lives seems not to be merely wasted effort when we consider that, in addition to the dialects and styles they can function quite well in, they also command a number of "voices" they can get along in for very short periods of time; they may use these for play, for limited service contacts, etc. The fact that a speaker's linguistic socialization in­volves practice with a variety of registers allows us to view adult speakers' ability to switch styles and codes not as an isolated or peripheral skill; rather, it must be accounted for by any fruitful general theory of language acquisition.

Very young children tell jokes and stories and play with poetic features of language such as rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration, but we usually think of adult-like skill with stories, jokes, and poetry as developing in later childhood and adolescence. Genuine creative use of lan­guage requires productive ability within a form. We do not know how persons move from the ability to memo­rize and recite stories and poems to the ability to create them. Moverover, there may be differences between the ability to report an actual event and the capability to create a fictional account. The latter would seem to re­quire a generative social competence not necessarily needed to do retellings of experience. Finally, people recognize that some individuals are better than others at composing stories and poems. Again, we do not know what processes are involved in acquiring these skills or why so~e persons excel in them.

We do, of course, have many examples of individuals who develop aesthetic skills in adolescence and adult-

VOLUME lIO, NUMBER II

hood. Bellugi told us· about a truly remarkable case of the development of an aesthetic genre within a language community. She has been studying the development of a poetic tradition within our own time, in the sign lan­guage used by deaf people in America-American Sign Language. She has studied not only folk art, such as lullabies and children's games, but also the emergence of a poetic tradition in the hands of some talented deaf poets. She studies translations from written English to American Sign Language, and the subsequent molding of poetic form from "straight" styles of signing; poems created in American Sign Language and written English simultaneously; and finally, poems which were created in American Sign Language only. Her work shows how individuals are able to add a stylistic genre and create poetic devices, and how a whole language community is able to develop rather quickly a whole new body of stylistic principles and strategies.

Children begin quite early to tell stories (Sacks 1972), including narratives of personal experience; that is, stories which tell in sequential order some series of events that happened to the teller (Labov and Waletzky 1967). The work of Kernan and Mitchell-Kernan pre­sented at the conference suggests that older children increasingly use organizing devices to render their nar­ratives gestalt-like and coherent. They are finding that second and third graders use an orientation section to set the scene for their narratives less often than do fifth grade and older children. Similarly, while the older chil­dren set the scene in the orientation by using para­phrases, repetitions, and elaborations--all of which func­tion to straighten out the semantics of the narrative-the younger ones use those same devices more often to get themselves back on the track in the course of tell­ing the narrative. In short, the older group has de­veloped strategies for explicating the sense that is to be made of their narratives. Since a great deal of casual, everyday talk consists of speakers recounting personal experiences, many opportunities exist for studying changing strategies of recounting through childhood into adulthood and on into old age.

Another thing people do with talk is to invoke social rules, express intent, give reasons--in short, to convey a sense of their perceptions of the order in the world and of their position in it. Weinstein reported differ­ences among children in three age groups in their abil­ity to articulate rules of exchange. He characterized the world of the three- and four-year-oIds studied as one of "affect, need, and supplication," in which possibilities of negotiation and compromise are blocked by the abo sence of articulated rules that might provide a basis for them; the world of the seven- and eight-year-olds as one

SEPTEMBER 1976

of "strict ruledness," where the expectation is that the articulated rules will be followed in a quite literal way; the world of the eleven- and twelve-year-oIds as one of "free negotiation," in which cooperative activity is facili­tated by the spontaneous introduction of articulated rules of exchange to resolve ambiguities in the experi­mental game. (Many readers will see a parallel to Piaget.) Clearly, changes in the ability to articulate rules of conduct have important consequences for what actu­ally becomes possible in conduct.

Many children are not, by adult standards, tactful II; moreover, there is considerable variation among adoles­cents and adults in their management of directness and tact or, as one participant put it, in the creation of more inferential space between what is meant and what is actually said. For example, there are some very interest­ing, and some very complex, dimensions of literality and abstractness in the giving and acceptance--or rejection --of directives. Children fairly early learn the impor­tance of power relations in deciding whether to disagree. The subtleties of disagreement and polite demurrer as replacements for "You're crazy" or "I won't do it" seem to appear later. A somewhat specialized but interesting response to adult directives is exemplified in exchanges such as the--following:

Parent: "This is absolutely the last time I'm going to tell you ... "

Twelve-year-old: "Good!" Children usually respond in desired ways to such adult utterances as, "Shall we clean up now?" Adults, while they may refuse the implied suggestion or order will ordinarily justify the refusal (although responses of the type above may be used humorously if properly marked). Yet, some quite young children make what can be inter­preted as intended violations, as when a five-year-old is told, "Your floor is just covered with junk," responds "I know" or "Here's a clean spot." Adults, then, would like to see children temper disagreement through move­ment into abstraction, preferably using some kind of fudge ("I'll do it later") rather than a direct refusal (Holden 1976). There are questions here having to do with, e.g., (I) the learning of moral rules, including possibly an initial rejection of insincerity followed by

B We don't know whether children operate according to different sets of politeness considerations from adults or whether they have sim· ply not developed tact. For example, Cook·Gumperz and Corsaro (in press) report that nursery school children may terminate interaction by walking away, which to an adult would be an affront. They may, on the other hand, orient to other markers of politeness and tact which adults are not able to recognize. Without some notion of chilo dren's oriented· to features of politeness and rudeness, we can't claim that they aren't tactful, only that they don't follow adult politeness rules.

39

the learning of tact, or; (2) the relation of such be­haviors to the adult conflict mode of "taking things literally." e

Tact is also a consideration in correcting or not cor­recting real or imagined errors made by others. It is possible that tact about errors may be related not only to individual learning but also to language change. So­cial interactional violations (particularly those that may be seen as injurious and necessitating "repair" [vide Goffman 1971]) seem to be more noticeable, more re­portable, and more likely to be corrected than, e.g., mis­pronunciations or many syntactic lapses occurring in ongoing conversation.7 Even when speech errors are noticed, they are frequently unchallenged; if such errors become systematic, they are a potential source of lin­guistic change. We know very little about either errors or sanctioning behavior. Questions such as (1) whether there is differential tolerance at different life periods; (2) who or what can be corrected and/or ridiculed, and (3) who can do it-may turn out to be important for an understanding both of ongoing acquisition and so­cialization and a number of interesting issues in social control.

One final example. A variety of appropriateness con­straint which seems to be associated with late adoles­cence and early adulthood in the specific context of the academic world is "depersonalization" of speech. In the course of four years of undergraduate school, some young people learn to switch from examples of personal ex­perience to invocation of experts, as in "Piaget says .... " In the academic subculture there may even be a ten-

• Another class of skills has to do with the development of inferential abilities. Participants in social interaction must be able to draw infer· ences from what is literally said. While. as Garfinkel (1967) has shown. the potential range of "meanings" for any utterance is infinite. the range of what will pass as interpretations for all practical purposes is actually limited by the nature of the situation. the relationship of the in teractants: etc. The ability to read appropriate meaning from a statement. to determine how seriously and how literally a statement should be taken. is expected of competent adults. How these skills are acquired. indeed whether they are acquired. remains an open question. At some point and by some means, children learn not to respond to statements literally ("Is your mommy there?" "Yes" or "Do you know what time it is?" "Yes') but to hear what is entailed or implied in what is literally said and to respond appropriately (by adult standards). (On literality and directives in U.S. English. see Ervin.Tripp 1976.)

7 This very tentative observation only hints at some profound and complicated questions. It seems likely that social violations are corrected when injurious or potentially so to in·group members. Linguistic viola· tions are probably corrected when seen as injurious or potentially so to the self.image of the linguistic in·group (including the case in which individual variation is seen as preliminary to changing membership) . This problem is very much complicated by the fact that linguistic and social interactional rules are different in as yet unspecified ways. We don't know. for example. which social interactional rules may be uni· versals. A further complexity is that social norms have a moral dimen· sion which even prescriptive grammars do DO~.

40

dency to judge character on the basis of the amount of self-reference, with too much being negatively valued. For some groups, the citation of proverbs or folk say­ings may be functionally equivalent to the citation of experts. Small children, of course, continually invoke powerful others, as in, "Mommy says. , ." or "Teacher says .. ,"; the latter are still personal referents. Other children cite an abstract "generalized other" in, e.g., "Everybody gets a higher allowance." Yet, while it is acceptable for college students or scholars to say, "Freud says ... ," the same citation from children is likely to be interpreted as smart-alecky (and youth are likewise denied legitimate use of proverbs in some societies).8

There are several dimensions to this differentiation in reference and some interesting implications for both the study of continuing language development and that of social control. Shifts occur, in the production of some but not all speakers, from the concretely self-referential to the' abstract, and from person-related to impersonal authority figures (e.g., from Mommy, or my teacher, or my boss "said," to Weber or Bloomfield "said"). Invoca­tion of reference may be used both for explaining one's own behavior and for supporting one's claims of fact or interpretations, Thus, there appears to be in American society a period in life when "reifications" come to be taken seriously and a rhetoric einerges in which defects in life and inexplicable constraints both come to be in­creasingly attributed to what one participant called "sys­tem, program, and bureaucracy." There are, moreover, additional implications of this differentiation and change for wider questions of social control. Readers familiar with the work of Bernstein (see especially Bern­stein 1971, pages 143-169) will recognize both the paral­lel between the distinctions suggested in referential modes to his distinctions among imperative, positional, and person-oriented social control systems, and the rele­vance here of his claim of associations between these modes and the acquisition of restricted and elaborated codes.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Here is a listing of some issues raised in this discus­sion and some directions for research they seem to imply.

l. What kinds of rules change? We tend to talk rather loosely about linguistic and interactional "rules," a term which actually glosses a wide variety of skills, strategies,

8 Old people start doing self·referencing again. Two interpretations are made: (1) they're getting childish; (2) they are wise and their experience has some special weight that legitimates their referencing. An alternative explanation of the shift. at least in the middle class world of North American society, is that greater power permits greater self·reference among mature adults.

VOLUME lJO, NUMBER lJ

prescriptions, constraints, etc. Various kinds of rules may be acquired, maintained, and changed quite differ­ently throughout life, possibly reflecting vari'ations in the place of different kinds of rules in the organization of linguistic and social grammars. Studies of continuing language socialization should reflect in important ways on theories of what rules are and how they are organized.

2. What gets acquired? The outlines and much of the detail of the grammar of a speaker's mother tongue clearly are learned at a very young age. Speakers of all ages sometimes learn second (and higher-order) lan­guages; speakers of all ages (but particularly younger ones) acquire new phonological systems (or parts of new systems) within languages. The bulk of postchildhood learning, however, appears to be in the enrichment of repertoires and the acquisition of appropriateness sys­tems. There may be a shift over time from an emphasis upon the acquisition of linguistic competence to an emphasis upon a broader communicative competence. With regard to the acquisition of strictly linguistic rules, we can ask whether adolescent and later modifications affect central or peripheral components of grammar. We can say with some confidence that later developments in pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and social interactional rules go on at the core of a speaker-actor's grammar.

3. When does learning and relearning take place? Some of the inspiration for the conference reported on in these pages resulted from a fruitless attempt to find a satisfactory literature on postchildhood language ac­q uisition and / or the con tin uing socialization of adoles­cents in this society. Adolescence is a period of consid­erable expansion of linguistic and social competence in this society; "adolescence," however, may be a culturally bound (North American) conceptual category. There are less sharp age breaks elsewhere-and less insulation of very small children from a full range of influences and situations. If, as claimed above, continuing social­ization is responsive to linguistic and social environ­ments, it may be that the answer to the "when" question means identifying the chronological age at which mem­bers of a society enter into particular social relationships and roles. The life cycle can be looked upon as expand­ing and contracting access to life domains and social space. Continuing socialization then becomes largely a consequence of opportunities and exposure rather than of any inherent maturational process.

4. How does learning and relearning take place? Here we are thinking of learning and relearning of linguistic and social interactional skills generally. Do old rules ever disappear completely? Do speakers sometimes main­tain multiple rules for doing the same thing? Can dupli­cate rules be contradictory and, if so, how are the con-

SEPTEMBER 1976

tradictions resolved in behavior? It seems likely that the addition, replacement, modification, and duplication of rules may all operate at various times and on various kinds of linguistic and interactional rules, but this is again an empirical question, and a particularly tricky one. At this stage of the game, it is hard to say even how to pose such questions as research problems, or to say with confidence what kinds of evidence are needed.

5. What is the relationship between individual and aggregate change? A central issue addressed at the con­ference is the relationship between an individual's gram­mar-a psychological entity-and the grammar of a language-a social entity. Some participants maintained that constraints on both are the same, while others claimed that some things a language can do (e.g., radical reanalysis) an individual's grammar cannot. Whatever that relationship turns out to be, it is clear that the answer to this question awaits, among other things, in­formation on how an individual's grammar changes throughout life. We simply do not have enough infor­mation about the ongoing acquisition of language func­tions and sociolinguistic strategies, for which there is probably no critical age. Although the analogy was not drawn, the same kinds of issues can be raised regarding social change on both the individual and the aggregate level.

The lack of longitudinal and comparative data is a principal obstacle to needed work on the relationship between continuing language socialization and aspects of language variation. As noted, there are a number of excellent studies of variation by social location. There are very few developmental studies of individuals or cohorts of individuals as they move through any exten­sive part of the life cycle (although some children have been followed for short periods). Until such studies have been undertaken, many of the questions we have dis­cussed here will remain moot.

References

Abrahams, Roger D. 1972 "Joking: The Training of the Men of Words in Talking Broad." Pages 215-240 in T. Kochman (editor). Rappin' and Stylin' Out. Urbana: University of Illi­nois Press.

Bernstein, Basil. 1971 "A Sociolinguistic Approach to Socializa­tion: With Some Reference to Educability." In Volume I of Class, Codes and Control. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1976 "Meaning and Memory." Forum Linguis­ticum I, 1 (August).

Cazden, Courtney B. 19711 "Problems for Education: Language as Curriculum Content and Learning Environment." Pages 1!15-148 in Daedalus, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 102, No. 11, Summer.

Cook-Gumperz, Jenny and William A. Corsaro. In press. "Social

41

Ecological Constraints on Children's Communicative Strategies." In J. Gumperz (editor). Social Action in Language. New York: Academic Press.

Corsaro. William. 1976 "Young...(;hildren's Conception of Status and Role." Paper presented at lhe-7lst Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August.

Curtiss. Susan. Victoria Fromkin. Stephen Krashen. David Rigler. and Marilyn Rigler. 1974 "The Linguistic Development of Genie." Language 50:528-554.

Ervin.Tripp. Susan. 1976 "Is Sybil There? The Structure of Some American English Directives." Language in Society 5:25-66.

Ferguson, Charles A. 1971 "Absence of Copula and the Notion of Simplicity: A Study of Normal Speech. Baby Talk. Foreigner Talk. and Pidgins." Pages 141-150 in D. Hymes (editor). Pid· ginization and Creolization of Language. London: Cambridge University Press.

Friedrich. Paul. 1966 "The Linguistic Reflex of Social Change: From Tsarist to Soviet Russian Kinship." Sociological Inquiry (Spring) 116: 111-57.

Garfinkel. Harold. 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice·Hall.

Goffman. Erving. 1971 Relations in Public. New York: Basic Books.

Holden. Leah. 1976 "Producing Reasonableness in Conversation." Unpublished manuscript.

Labov. William. 1972a \"The Internal Evolution of Linguistic Rules." Pages 101-171 in Robert R. Stockwell and R.K.S. Ma· cauley (editors). Linguistic Change and Generative Theory. Bloomington. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Labov. William. 1972b "The Sod.al Motivation of a Sound Change." Pages 1-42 in Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Labov, William. 1972c "Rules for Ritual Insults." Pages 120-169 in D. Sud now (editor). Studies in Social Interaction. New York: Free Press.

Labov, William and Joshua Waletzky. 1967 "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience." Pages 12-44 in June Helm (editor). Proceedings of the American Ethnological So· ciety Annual Meeting. Spring 1966.

Labov. William. M. Yaeger. and R . Steiner. 1972 A Quantitative Study of a Sound Change in Progress. Report on National Sci· ence Foundation Contract 9S-1I287.

Mitchell-Kernan. Claudia. 1972 "Signifiying and Marking: Two Afro·American Speech Acts." Pages 161-179 in John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (editors). Directions in Sociolinguistics: The

Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Moore, William E. 19611 Social Change. Englewood Cliffs: Pren· tice-Hall.

Payne. Arvilla. 1975 "The Reorganization of Linguistic Rules: A Preliminary Report." Pennsylvania Working Papers on Lin· guistic Change and Variation 1 :6.

Ponsioen.J. A. 1965 The Analysis of Social Change Reconsidered. The Hague: Mouton.

Sachs. Jacqueline and Judith Devin. 1976 "Young Children's Use of Age-appropriate Speech Styles in Social Interaction and Role-playing." Journal Of Child Language 3:81-98.

Sacks. Harvey. 1972 "On the Analyzability of Stories by Children." Pages 325-345 in John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (editors). Di­rections in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communica· tion. New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston.

Sankoff. David and Rejean Lessard. 1975 "Vocabulary Richness: A Sociolinguistic Analysis." Science 190:689-690.

Sankoff. Gillian. 1970 "Mutual Intelligibility. Bilingualism and Linguistic Boundaries." Pages 839-848 in International Days of Sociolinguistics. Rome: Institut Luigi Sturzo.

Sankoff. Gillian and Penelope Brown. 1976 "The Origins of Syntax in Discourse: A Case Study of Tok Pisin Relatives." Language 52.3 (September).

Sankoff. Gillian. and Suzanne Laberge. 1973 "On the Acquisition of Native Speakers by a Language." Kivung 6:32-47. Re­printed in abridged version in D. DeCamp and I. Hancock (editors). Pidgins and Creoles: Current Trends and Prospects. Washington. D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 1974. pages 73-84.

Stockwell. Robert P. and R. K. S. Macaulay. 1972 Linguistic Change and Generative Theory. Bloomington. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Ward. M. C. 1971 Them Children: A Study in Language Learn­ing. New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston.

Weinreich. Uriel. 1953 Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York. Reprinted in 1963 by Mouton.

Weinreich. Uriel. 1969 "Problems in the Analysis of Idioms." Pages 23-82 in J. Puhvel (editor). Substance and Structure Of Language. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Weinreich. Uriel. William Labov. and Marvin Herzog. 1968 "Em­pirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change." Pages 97-195 in W. P. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel (editors). Directions for Historical Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Japanese Studies

IN THE FALL OF 1974, the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies (JCJS) began developing a new research agenda for the three to four year period ahead.1 The new initiatives aim at developing a full range of research foci

• Robert J. Smith is cochairman of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. cosponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is Goldwin Smith professor of anthropology at Cornell University. Susan J. Pharr is a political scientist who serves as staff for the Joint Committee.

42

by Robert J. Smith and Susan J. Pharr·

that challenge existing theory and are explicitly com· parative.

1 Members of the committee are Gerald L. Curtis. Columbia Uni­versity (cochairman); Robert J. Smith. Cornell University (cochairman); Karen W. Brazell. Cornell University; Robert E. Cole. University of Michigan; Ellis S. Krauss. Western Washington State College; Misao Miyoshi. University of California. Berkeley; Kinhide Mushakoji. Sophia University; Tetsuo Najita. University of Chicago; Hugh Patrick. Yale University: Seizaburo Sato. University of Tokyo: KolO Yamamura. University of Washington; staO: Susan J. Pharr.

VOLUME 110, NUMBER II

Because of the emphasis on an exploratory approach, many of the topics identified for research will be ex­amined in a series of workshops rather than in a single full-scale conference. Hopefully, the workshop setting will provide a somewhat greater opportunity for devel­oping, refining, and integrating findings on a given problem than is possible at a major conference where completed research is presented.

Much planning of the committee has centered on the theme of conflict in Japan. In most scholarly work to date, Japan has been viewed as a basically consensual society. Social science theories of conflict have been thought to have limited applicability for analyzing Japanese society. Numerous changes taking place in Japan today, however, challenge the appropriateness of this view. The committee over the past year has been concerned with exploring the theme of conflict in Japan through a variety of interrelated activities.

A number of scholars are exploring the topic as it applies to contemporary Japan, focusing on conflict and conflict resolution in interpersonal relationships and in small groups, and conflict within and between groups and organizations in Japan, particularly those in the national political arena.

Another group of scholars is examining the theme of conflict historically, addressing itself to the ten­sions, polarities, and oppositions that affected the course of developments in Japanese society from late Tokugawa to the end of the Taisho period.

Another project explores concepts of time and space in Japanese culture and aesthetics. In three workshops, a small group of humanists is meeting to consider the problem area. A major aim of the series is to draw upon current theories of aesthetics to study the Japanese experience.

Two workshops will look at innovation and tech­nology transfers in Japan, focusing on the process by which technologies from abroad are adapted to Japanese needs.

Several additional projects are in various stages of planning. One will deal with japan's early moderniza­tion in the sixteenth century. Organized by John W. Hall, Yale University, and Kozo Yamamura, it will bring together U.S. and Japanese scholars to consider develop­ments in this controversial period of Japanese history. Another, a workshop on the city in Japan, was com­pleted in April. Papers presented at the workshop dealt with such topics as historical migration patterns and demographic change, social stratification, crime and so­cial control, deviance and social pathology in cities, and attitudes of the urban labor force.

Virtually all the activities described above involve

SEPTEMBER. 1976

both American and Japanese scholars. In addition, how­ever, the JC JS has developed a number of research projects that foster even more extensive interaction between members of the American and Japanese scholarly communities. The JCJS has a long-standing collaborative relationship with a Japanese counterpart organization, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (see Items, March 1975). In cooperation with JSPS, a number of collaborative projects are under way. A binational conference on U.S.-Japan rela­tions from World War I to the Manchurian Incident was held in January 1976, on Kauai, Hawaii. James B. Crowley, Yale University, and Hosoya Chihiro, Hi­totsubashi University, were cochairmen for the confer­ence. A collaborative project on the Occupation of Japan, organized by Robert E. Ward, Stanford Univer­sity, and Yoshikazu Sakamoto, University of Tokyo, is currently being developed. A binational planning meet­ing was held in the fall of 1975, with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

A long-term binational project on the influence of socializing agents on cognitive functioning, communica­tion styles, and educability of children in the United States and Japan was completed in June. Robert D. Hess and W. Patrick Dickson, Stanford University, and Hiro­shi Azuma, University of Tokyo, cooperated in the project.

This article has focused on new research initiatives of the committee. Through its subcommittees and other programs, the JCJS is involved in a number of addi­tional areas. A Subcommittee on Japanese Language Training Study has completed a report on Japanese language training in the U.S. A new task force on research and development in Japanese language training will carry forward the work of that subcom­mittee. A Subcommittee on Grants for Research makes awards for postdoctoral research relating to Japan. Fif­teen such awards were made in 1975-76. Screening and Selection Committees for the International Doctoral Research Fellowship Program for Asia (formerly, the Foreign Area Fellowship Program) determine awards for dissertation research in Asia. In 1975-76, the pro­gram supported seven students conducting research on Japan. A regional seminar program provides scholars located outside major area centers with opportunities for regular scholarly contact. Through its research plan­ning activities as well as through these programs, the committee works to meet the needs of the Japanese studies field and to advance research in the social sciences and humanities.

43

A New Committee on Gifted Children

DURING THE PAST YEAR and a half there has been con­siderable discussion within the Council of the major issues and trends in research on gifted and talented in­dividuals-discussions that have led to the establishment of a new Council committee, the Committee on Gifted Children.

Giftedness is a complex phenomenon, one involving not only the extraordinary ability of a single individual but also the interaction between that individual and cultural, social, and educational influences. Thus, as might be expected, academic fascination with the study of the gifted has had a long and interesting history, one culminating recently and notably in the first World Conference on Gifted Children which was held in Lon­don in September 1975.1 At this conference, representa­tives of 51 nations, coming from all points on the globe, convened in order to discuss the status of provisions for the gifted within their own countries and to listen to research reports presented by invited speakers. Many of the questions raised in this forum were political, in the senSe that they involved the allocation of scarce human and financial resources. Because measures designed to enhance the educational experiences of the gifted stu­dent may result in a loss of resources available to im­prove the quality of the education of the average stu­dent, educational planners are often faced with difficult choices. Obviously, these issues were of greatest concern to those representatives of nations which had not (or had only recently) attained near-universal literacy. Neverthe­less, the tension between support for the gifted student and support for the average student was reflected in the reports of representatives of all nations. The most crucial questions to emerge from the addresses of the invited speakers, however, were ones which involved the defini­tion of giftedness, and the need for new approaches to its conceptualization. In large part, it is with this latter set of issues that the new Council committee will be involved.

Many of the early 20th century scientific studies of giftedness, following Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius (1869) and greatly influenced by the political climate of the times, examined ethnic and national differences in

• The author is a social psychologist who serves as staff for the Committee on Gifted Children.

1 See Joy Gibson and Prue Chennells (editors), Gifted Children: I_ookillg to Their Future. London: Latimer New Dimensions, Ltd., 1976.

44

by A lvia Y. Branch •

intellectual ability. A second major line of inquiry for early work in this area stemmed from Freudian think­ing on artistic, creative genius, according to which simi­lar imaginative processes are involved in both genius and insanity. However, the systematic study of gifted­ness can be said to have come of age in the 1920s with the inception of the monumental study by Lewis M. Terman (1877-1956) of the characteristics of 1,528 Cali­fornia schoolchildren who scored 140 or above on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. This measure was de­veloped originally by French psychologists to be used in the identification of those children unlikely to bene­fit from schooling, but it was revised several times by Terman in order to make it a more appropriate instru­ment for use with a native, white, American population. Beginning with sample selection in 1921, Terman and his associates mounted a virtually unequalled program of longitudinal research in which the development of these individuals was monitored from adolescence through childhood and into middle age.

In addition to measures of intellectual functioning, extensive data on the psychological, social, and physical characteristics of these individuals, as well as on their career choices and achievements, have been examined at regular intervals. While the findings from this work, presented in the five-volume Genetic Studies of Genius (1925-1959),2 are far too numerous to be summarized here, some of the most valuable of them confront highly resistant notions of the gifted individual as a curiosity, greatly advanced in intellectual development but often socially inept, physically underdeveloped, and emotion­ally unbalanced. Rather, quite the opposite is the case in the Terman sample: Writing in 1954, Terman said:

" ... children of IQ of 140 or better are appreciably superior to unselected children in physique, health, and social adjust­ment; markedly superior in moral attitudes ... Follow-up of these subjects . . . show that the incidence of mortality, ill health, insanity, and alcoholism is in each case below that for the generality of corresponding age .... " S

Z These volumes were all published by the Stanford University Press. They are: L. M. Terman, et ai., Mental and Physical Traits of a Thousand Gifted Children, 1925; C. M. Cox, et ai., The Early Mental Traits Of Three Hundred Geniuses, 1926; B. S. Burks, et ai., The Promise of Youth: Follow-up Studies of a Thousand Gifted Children, 1930; L. M. Terman and M. H . Oden, The Gifted Child Grows Up, 1947; L. M. Terman and M. H. Oden, The Gifted Group at Mid-Life: Thirty-five Years' Follow-up Of the Superior Child, 1959.

3 Lewis M. Terman, "The Discovery and Encouragement of Excep. tional Talent," in Walter B. Barbe and Joseph S. Renzulli (editors). Psychology and Educatiorl Of the Gifted. New York: Irvington Pub· lishers. Inc., 1975. page 9.

VOLUME SO. NUMBER S

Subsequent studies, employing more sophisticated sampling procedures, and observing a more diverse sample of students, have generally supported these find­ings. For instance, Project TALENT, a nationwide sur­vey conducted in 1960 and involving 450,000 secondary school students, examined the characteristics of those students scoring in the top two per cent on standardized achievement and aptitude tests. Like the Terman students, they were more actively involved with extra­curricular activities, elective office, and athletics than were average students. However, they seemed much less likely than the Terman students to be achieving at a superior level in high school, to have plans for post­secondary education, to have outstanding college experi­ences, and later to enter high-income, high-prestige occupations.

The high level of interest in giftedness represented by the Terman studies has not been consistently main­tained, however, and subsequent progress in the accumu­lation of knowledge has at times seemed agonizingly slow. In the 1950s, national attention was again focused upon the most able of the student population, and once again the snail's pace was quickened. With the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik I, the United States was thrown into a concerted attempt at regaining its former hegemony with respect to the production of scientists and engineers. According to Tannenbaum, as at Pearl Harbor, public education had been caught napping at the time of a surprise enemy attack.4 The response was massive: Students who might otherwise have selected a major in the arts or humanities were encouraged to seri­ously consider mathematics and science. For their part, educators were encouraged to raise the standards for academic performance which they customarily main­tained, and to quicken the pace at which students were allowed to proceed through learning materials.

The educational experiences of all students were influ­enced by these currents. In view, however, of the belief that the gifted student possesses a higher than usual po­tential for contributing to the good of society, it was upon this population of students that many of these in­novations had their greatest impact. Most important of all responses to this challenge were the temporary alli­ances forged between scholars and educators, joined in the creation of a new curriculum (most notably in science and mathematics), one geared toward imparting the fundamental concepts in a discipline and involving the student in more active inquiry-"leaming through

• Abraham J. Tannenbaum. "A Backward and Forward Glance al the Gifted." in Walter B. Barbe and Joseph S. Renzulli (editors). Ps)'·

chology and Education of the Gifted. New York: Irvington Publishers. Inc .• 1975. page 22.

SEPTEMBER 1976

discovery." Unfortunately, few of these reforms were fully incorporated into the ongoing educational pro­grams of the day, and within an amazingly short span of time, the fervor, the special classes, and the administra· tive innovations had fallen into disuse. In their stead, the educational needs of new populations began to com­mand the attention of governmental agencies, educators, and social scientists. With the advent of the 1954 Su­preme Court ruling, Blacks (and later, other minorities) increasingly looked to the schools as a primary vehicle for access into the wider society. During this period also, the educational needs of the mentally retarded and chil­dren with learning disabilities began to be diagnosed and redressed. As a result of these and other similar trends, there was a period of considerable decline for the systematic study of giftedness, one which has only recently begun to be reversed. One harbinger of re­newed interest in the gifted was the establishment in 1972 of the Office for the Gifted and Talented within the U.S. Office of Education, which has the express goal of increasing substantially the numbers of gifted students receiving a "qualitatively different" and appropriate educational experience.

Within the Council, active efforts leading toward the establishment of the Committee on Gifted Children be­gan in March 1975. At that time, the Council responded positively to a request from the American Psychological Foundation suggesting that the Council be responsible for the disposition of funds made available from the es­tate of Esther Katz Rosen, a clinical and consulting psychologist who had had a long-standing dedication to children and their educational experiences. Her wish was to have the bulk of her estate used for "the advance­ment and application of knowledge about gifted chil­dren." Since that time, the Council has been engaged in a number of activities intended to begin summarizing existing knowledge and efforts with respect to this sub­ject matter, and to make plans for future activities which would indeed bring about new and vigorous research activity in this field. Among these activities were two exploratory meetings conducted with Council staff, so­cial scientists, and educators who have been associated with various aspects of research on giftedness. The first of these meetings, held January 16-17, 1976, was most concerned with the definition of giftedness; 5 the second,

5 Those attending the first meeting were: James E. Blackwell. Uni· versity of Massachusetts; David H. Feldman. Tufts University; James J. Gallagher. University of North Carolina; Howard E. Gardner. Vet· erans Administration Hospital (Boston); Howard Gruber. Rutgers University. Newark: Daniel P. Keating. University of Minnesota; Phillip Kilbride. Bryn Mawr College; Halbert B. Robinson. University of Washington; Julian C. Stanley. The Johns Hopkins University; Michael A. Wallach. Duke University; Alvia Y. Branch. David Jenness. Eleanor Bernert Sheldon, staff.

45

held April II, 1976, dealt with the nature of educational provisions for the gifted.'

Definition of giftedness Research summaries attempting to assess the state of

the art with respect to scientific knowledge of giftedness have repeatedly cited the definition and the identifica­tion of gifted individuals as crucial to the future of re­search in this field. The definition adopted by the U.S. Office of Education for its report to the Congress on the education of the gifted and talented illustrates many issues which could be profitably addressed by future re­search. According to this definition, the gifted and tal­ented are those individuals "who by virtue of outstand­ing ability are capable of high performance ... Children capable of high performance include those with demon­strated achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas, singly or in combination: general intellectual ability, specific academic ability, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and per­forming arts, psychomotor ability." 7 At the January meeting, the consideration of the implications for re­search of such a definition facilitated wide-ranging dis­cussion.

Concern was expressed both at this meeting and in other forums that there not be a premature foreclosure of the definition of giftedness. The talents and abilities that a given society values and is willing to reward has always been a function of the prevailing Zeitgeist, and thus subject to fluctuation. It may well be that our ability to meet the future will require the identification and nurturance of new forms of giftedness. The spate of investigations seeking to identify and nurture early forms of creativity share, to some extent, a similar rationale: In addition to the identification of those who are facile in the acquisition and manipulation of old knowledge, it is also important to be able to identify and nurture those individuals capable of providing unique answers to problems, reformulating them, and ultimately creating new knowledge. Though studies sug-

8 Those attending the second meeting were: Gwendolyn J. Cooke. Baltimore Cit)' Public Schools; John F. Feldhusen. Purdue University; James J. Gallagher. University of North Carolina; Jacob W. Getzels, University of Chicago; Larry Gross, University of Pennsylvania; Daniel P. Keating, University of Minnesota; Jean C. Lave, University of Cali­fornia, Irvine; David R . Olson, Institute for Studies in Education (Toronto); Irving Sigel, Educational Testing Service (Princeton, New

Jersey); Dorothy A. Sisk, University of South Florida; Abraham J. Tannenbaum, Teachers College, Columbia University; Alvia Y. Branch, Eleanor Bemert Sheldon, staD.

T Sidney P. Marland, Jr., Education of the Gifted and Talented: Report to the Congress of the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 19i2, page 10.

46

gest some overlap in such abilities, they may nevertheless be sufficiently distinct to warrant separate investigation.

While the participants at this meeting felt that inclu­sion in the definition of giftedness of such specific skills as leadership ability held some promise, they recognized that the knowledge base on which future researchers can draw is limited. Even in the realm of intellectual func­tioning-where the research evidence is most impressive -the participants thought it profitable to speculate about what might be the implications of modifications in the way intelligence has traditionally been opera­tionalized. The foundation for speculations of this na­ture exists already in the work of the American psycholo­gist J.P. Guilford, who conceptualized intelligence as comprising multiple abilities only some of which are tapped by the traditional measures, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who emphasized the interaction between the organism and the environment in the achievement of universal intellectual advances.

There was considerable discussion of the individual differences approach to the study of giftedness, an ap­proach which has until recently enjoyed the exclusive attention of researchers interested in this topic. The indi­vidual differences approach generally assumes a normal distribution of abilities such that a small percentage (be­tween two and five per cent) of the general population can be expected to exhibit a high degree of skill. Thus, the task becomes one of the identification of members of this select population, the study of the processes accord­ing to which they acquire and utilize knowledge of the world, and the use of administrative facilitators to nur­ture the development of their abilities. As evidence of the explanatory power of the individual differences model, adherents point to the vast differences between the mental retardate and the individual with an I.Q. score of 150 or better.

A somewhat different approach, one emphasizing the importance of social variables, was discussed by the par­ticipants. Important issues from this point of view in­clude the belief that high levels of competency can be developed, that the reaction of significant others is im­portant to the recognition and subsequent expression of talent, and that cultural differences in valued abilities and the availability of role models are also important considerations in the study of giftedness. From this point of view, the notion that the accomplishment of the gifted individual is the exclusive accomplishment of a single mind without reference to the historical or so­cietal context in which it occurs needs substantial altera­tion.

A third and related perspective from which the study of giftedness was discussed is the developmental per-

VOLUME lIO, NUMBER II

spective, one which would examine the implications of Piagetian notions for the study of giftedness. From this perspective, the study of the development of the preco­cious child may reveal with unusual clarity the processes of universal stage advance which all individuals go through. Attention would be given not only to the gifted individual but also to the characteristics of the field of knowledge he masters and the system of instruction in which he must operate. In order to study such questions as the developmental antecedents of adult achievement, late blooming, and appropriate points of entry for inter­vention, the longitudinal study of gifted individuals was suggested and discussed with respect to problems of generalizability posed by the influences of historical periods and individual differences.

Educational provisions for the gifted

Among the goals for the second exploratory meeting was the beginning of a dialogue among the several par­ties interested in the education of gifted individuals. In­vited participants included teachers of the gifted, train­ers of teachers, administrators of innovative programs, researchers responsible for evaluating curriculum ma­terials, and individuals involved in the generation of so­cial science knowledge about the gifted. They met with Council staff in order to discuss the relationship between the unique features of educational programs for the gifted and developments in the relevant research litera­ture.

Special programs for the gifted were found to vary widely, but are most likely to contain either one or both of the following components: (1) acceleration, and (2) enrichment. Acceleration allows the gifted student to advance according to academic ability: early admission to first grade, skipping grades, exposure to subjects usually reserved for students at higher grades, and early admission to college are all examples of this form of provisions for the gifted. It is generally considered that acceleration is probably the most effective means of pro­viding for the educational needs of gifted students; nevertheless, school administrators have been quite resistant to acceleration (especially "radical" accelera­tion) and have relied instead upon "enrichment" activi­ties of various kinds. It is in connection with enrichment programs that the research on creativity has had the greatest impact on the education of the gifted child. Creativity research was once thought to hold great promise for research on gifted children, especially as

SEPTEMBER 1976

disenchantment with the use of I.Q. scores increased. In recent years, however, the construct validity of creativity research has been called into question. There is little evidence to support a conclusion that divergent think­ing ability, more than any of a number of abilities such as general intellectual ability or task engagement. is the defining element of creativity. In addition, more work needs to be done to establish the predictive validity of such tests for adult achievement. Nevertheless, it is upon this body of research that many educational programs for the gifted are based. Many such programs provide ac­celerated curricula in various academic subjects such as the sciences, mathematics, and the arts, but rely to a great degree upon enrichment activities, designed to in­crease creativity. Participants pointed this out as an instance where there had been some significant corre­spondence between developments within social science research and educational programs for the gifted, but that the implementation, perhaps, had not been accom­plished with as much thoughtfulness and evaluation of appropriateness as could be desired. A similar assess­ment was made with respect to the development of curriculum materials for the gifted, and programs for the training of teachers of the gifted: that with some note­worthy exceptions, they lacked the conceptual frame­work needed to make them optimally effective.

On the basis of these meetings and extensive discus­sions with many other individuals and groups identified with research on giftedness, the Council has invited Robert R. Sears, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, to be chairman of the new Commit­tee on Gifted Children. The following individuals will be the initial members: James J. Gallagher, a psycho­gist and director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Caro­lina; Howard Gardner, a psychologist and codirector of Project Zero at Harvard University; Daniel P. Keating, a psychologist at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota; Jean C. Lave, an anthropolo. gist at the University of California, Irvine; Halbert B. Robinson, a psychologist at the University of Washing· ton; and Julian C. Stanley, a psychologist and director of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth at the John Hopkins University. The committee will meet in the fall in order to develop a program intended to re­kindle active research interest in the field. At the time of this meeting, the appointment of the membership will have been completed with the designation of a develop­mental psychologist interested in the application of the Piagetian model to the study of giftedness.

47

Current Activities at the Council The impact of television viewing

The Council's Committee on Television and Social Behavior recently sponsored two conferences on the impact of tele­vision viewing_

The entertainment functions of televi­sion _ Most research dealing with the mass media generally. and television in particu­lar. has focused on direct or mediated learning from communicaton messages_ In so doing. it has overlooked the fact that most deliberate exposure to television is motivated by the desire to be "enter­tained." We know little about the nature of entertainment and its psychological and social psychological consequences_ What is it about entertaining materials that provides positive incentives for people to seek them out? What are the by-products of "being entertained." particularly of its emotional components? What are its im­mediate and long-term consequences? In what way. if any. does the purely enter­tainment function of television help or hinder the mediation of other effects of the message and of other subsequent behaviors?

With these questions in mind. the Com­mittee on Television and Social Behavior convened a study group under the direc­tion of Percy H_ Tannenbaum on October 24-25, 1975. The main agenda items for the meeting were to ascertain the current status of conceptualization and research in the field. to learn what the main re­search needs seem to be, and to exchange information among the participants about their current research interests. A confer­ence report is being prepared for publi­cation in late 1977.

Members of the study group were Paul Ekman, University of California. San Francisco; Seymour Feshbach. University of California, Los Angeles; Gerald S. Lesser. Harvard University; William J. McGuire. Yale University; Paul E. McGhee. Fels Research Institute; Harold Mendelsohn, University of Denver; Je· rome L. Singer, Yale University; and DoIf Zillmann. Indiana University. In addition. several members of the committee par­ticipated in the discussions: Leo Bogart. Newspaper Advertising Bureau; Hilde T. Himmelweit, London School of Economics and Political Science; Aimee Dorr Leifer, Harvard University; Jack M. McLeod.

48

University of Wisconsin; Stephen B. Withey, University of Michigan; staD: Ronald P. Abeles.

The portrayal of Blacks on television. In American society, television may be a major source of information about other racial and ethnic groups. This informa­tion is often incomplete and stereotyped and may lead to misconceptions about one's own and other racial or ethnic groups. In addition, television presenta­tions may influence the self-concepts of children and adults whose racial or ethnic groups are depicted in a simplistic and stereotyped fashion. These attitudes and self-concepts mayor may not promote the mental health and positive social functioning of television viewers. As yet. little is known about the importance or functions of television in the formation of such attitudes and self-concepts or about the way in which people deal with such information.

The Committee on Television and So­cial Behavior sponsored a meeting on February 6-7, 1976 to consider the social forces that shape the portrayal of Blacks 011 American television, the potential consequences of this portrayal for Blacks and whites. and means of more actively involving social scientists. particularly mi­nority social scientists, in the production of television programming and in study­ing the effects of television. The meeting was organized by Irving L. Janis, Yale University; Aimee Dorr Leifer, Harvard University; and Chester M. Pierce, Har­vard University. The conference partici­pants were: Gordon Berry, University of California. Los Angeles; James E. Black­well. University of Massachusetts. Boston; Sherryl Browne Graves, New York Uni­versity; Mary S. Harper, National Institute of Mental Health; Morris Rosenberg. University of Maryland; staD: Ronald P. Abeles.

Longitudinal methodology in the social sciences

Questions concerning social change and human development are of fundamental concern to social scientists. In the past decade, the longitudinal data required to investigate many of these issues have be­come more available to researchers and a variety of methods for the collection and

analysis of such data are currently being developed and utilized throughout the so­cial sciences. For example, psychologists and demographers are investigating the relative contribution of cohort. time of measurement, and maturation to observed changes. Many sociologists are exploring modifications of Markov process models to describe social change processes more adequately. Economists and political sci­entists are elaborating various time series models for the analysis of aggregated data. There are efforts in all these disci­plines to develop methods that will ac­count for measurement error and will provide causal models of change pro­cesses.

This situation of relatively intense ac­tivity on the methodology of longitudinal research contrasts markedly with that which existed 10 to 20 years ago. At that time, there were few longitudinal data sets available to researchers and compu­ters were just developing the capacity to analyze large. multivariate, longitudinal studies. Throughout the social sciences there was an awareness of the immense methodological difficulties involved in longitudinal research. Many of these early concerns focused upon problems of sam­pling. sample maintenance. and data man­agement, and the inadequacy of available analytical techniques was widely recog­nized. In 1970. a group of British social scientists 1 addressed themselves to the dif­ficulties of longitudinal research and de­fined some areas for future consideration.

There is obviously a need to review methodological techniques which are em­ployed in each of the social sciences to resolve various problems encountered in longitudinal research. An interdisciplinary consideration of longitudinal methods could define the types of dynamic anal­yses that are possible with different types of data: cross-sectional. retrospective, panel, multiple cohort panel. and re­peated cross sections. In particular, it would be useful to establish guidelines to suggest when the increased cost and effort of a longitudinal design seem justi­fied. to indicate measurement and analysis strategies which are appropriate for vari-

1 Wall, W. D. and H. L. Williams. Longi­tudinal Studies and the Social Sciences. Lon­don: Social Science Research Council, 1970.

VOLUME 50. NUMBER 5

ous types of research questions and, with respect to the design of new longitudinal studies, to specify criteria for determining the appropriate number of measurement points, the intervals between these points, and the types of time-related data that need to be collected_

Apart from the development of broad guidelines for longitudinal research, there are specific methodological problems that are currently receiving considerable atten­tion but which could benefit from: (a) a sharing of different disciplinary ap­proaches, (b) a specification of when cer­tain techniques are appropriate, (c) a designation of problems that appear to

have no reasonable solutions, and (d) the development of new techniques. This work could improve the methodology of research with longitudinal data in such problem areas as the measurement of change; the modeling of change processes; accounting for missing data; and distin­guishing the relative contribution of mat­uration, time of measurement. and cohort to observed changes.

For some time now, the Council has been concerned with these issues in the methodology of longitudinal research. In­formal consultations have been held with many researchers and during the past six months three exploratory meetings have been held. Small groups of statisticians and researchers from several disciplines who have worked with longitudinal data were convened at the Council in January. March, and May. These groups discussed a wide range of methodological problems. although a consistent theme was the need to develop and clarify methods which utilize the unique potential of longitudi­nal data. Some of the discussions stemmed from presentations of longitudinal data. Sociologists Aage S~renson and James S. Coleman described their research upon

To our readers:

the determinants of income and occupa­tional status. John R. Nesselroade, a psy· chologist at Pennsylvania State University. presented data on personality develop­ment and change and another psycholo­gist. Robert B. McCall of the Fels Re­search Institute (Yellow Springs. Ohio). discussed his findings concerning the de­velopment of mental behavior. Econo­mists James J. Heckman of the University of Chicago and Robert J. Willis of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Stanford) described their data on the labor force participation of women. Other participants in these meetings included Douglas A. Hibbs. Jr .• Department of Political Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jacob Mincer. Depart­ment of Economics. Columbia University; Burton Singer. Department of Mathemati­cal Statistics. Columbia University; Sey­mour Spilerman. Department of Sociol­ogy. University of Wisconsin; and Nancy Tuma. Department of Sociology. Stanford University.

These meetings have begun to identify those aspects of longitudinal methodol­ogy in need of further development. as well as to indicate those areas in which there is currently considerable methodo­logical innovation. In some instances. these are methodological concerns which reflect the substantive interests and re­search histories of specific disciplines. For example. economists and political scientists frequently work with highly aggregated longitudinal data which con­tain a relatively large number of units with relatively few measurement points. In contrast. psychologists often employ data from a small number of respondents. but with numerous repeated measures. The determination of appropriate tech­niques to analyze longitudinal data de­pends to some extent upon these factors

of sample size and frequency of measure­ment. However. there are many methodo­logical problems of concern to all dis­ciplines. The estimation of cohort effects upon change measures. the assessment of the impact of repeated measurement, and (he development of multivariate causal models are three such problems.

The meetings held at the Council dur­ing the past year have revealed the im­portance of incorporating knowledge and competencies from several disciplines in any attempts to review and improve the methodology of longitudinal research . The Council is reviewing a number of activities to support and stimulate de­velopments in this important area of research methodology.

New subcommittee on education indicators

The Council's Advisory and Planning Committee on Social Indicators has estab­lished a Subcommittee on Social Indica­tors of Education. The members are Arthur L. Stinchcombe. chairman (Uni­versity of Chicago). C. Arnold Anderson (University of Chicago). William Coffman (University of Iowa). James S. Coleman (University of Chicago). Christopher Jencks (Chicago. Illinois). and Natalie Rogoff Rams~y (Institute of Applied So­cial Research. Oslo).

The subcommittee will examine the measurement of educational processes. in­stitutional changes in education. and the interactions between the education sys­tem and other major social and economic institutions and activities in American society. The first meeting was held in March 1976. Roberta Balstad Miller, staff associate at the Council's Center for So­cial Indicators. is staff to the subcommittee.

Items is correcting its mailing list. If there is a post card attached to this issue. kindly fill it out and return it. If there is no post card attached. simply drop us a note and tell us if you would like to receive Items.

SEPTEMBER 1976 49

Fellowships and Grants GRANTS FOR EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES

The Joint Committee on Eastern Europe-sponsored jointly by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies-has announced the awarding of post­doctoral grants to the following individuals:

Caleb M. Clark, assistant professor of government, New Mexico State University: The theory of economic depen­dence in Eastern Europe: Relations with the U.S.S.R.

Melvin Croan, professor of political science, University of Wisconsin: Leadership and systemic change in East Europe

Antonin Dostal, professor of Slavic languages and litera­tures, Brown University: The beginning of Christianity among the Slavs: A textual investigation of the Eucholo­gium Sinaiticum

Barbara Jelavich, professor of history, Indiana University: Russia and the formation of the Romanian national state, 1828-1878

Inga Markovits, lecturer in law, Stanford University Law School: Socialist vs. bourgeois law: The case of East and West Germany

Kleofas H . Rundzjo, instructor in Russian and Polish, Orange Coast College: East European contributions to modern art

Sarah M. Terry, assistant professor of political science, Tufts University; chairman, Operating Committee, Russian Re­search Center, Harvard University: The Oder-Neisse boundary in Polish politics, 1943-1950

Jozo Tomasevich, professor emeritus of economics, San Francisco State University: War and Revolution in Yogo­slavia, 1941-1945, Volume 3, The Partisans

Laura D'Andrea Tyson, assistant professor of economics, Princeton University: An analysis of unemployment and inflation in Yugoslavia

The following persons have been awarded grants for the study of East European languages:

Albanian Victor A. Friedman, assistant professor of Slavic linguistics,

University of North Carolina

Bulgarian Ruth Magdalino, graduate student, Byzantine History, Uni­

versity of London (presently junior fellow, Dumbarton Oaks)

Czech

Nancy B. Fowler, graduate student. Slavic languages, Uni­versity of Michigan

Olga Peters. graduate student, Slavic linguistics. Yale Uni­versity

Marilyn J. Webb, part-time instructor. History. Morning­side College

Hungarian

Elizabeth M. LaCava. graduate student, Uralic and Altaic studies. Indiana University

John T. Ririe, graduate student. Hungarian Studies, In­diana University

50

Modern Greek

Debra Jo Kaufman. teaching assistant, Folklore and Mythol­ogy, University of California. Los Angeles

Judith A. Korey, Ph.D. candidate, Catholic University of America. presently instructor of music. Federal City Col­lege

Robert S. Nelson, graduate student. Art History, New York University (presently junior fellow, 'Dumbarton Oaks)

Stephen W. Reinhert, graduate student, History, University of California. Los Angeles

Joseph E. Sheerin, professor of classics, Assumption College

Polish

Paul Body, teaching and research associate, City and Re­gional Planning, Ohio State University

Daniel N. Nelson, assistant professor of government, Frank­lin and Marshall College

Romanian

Thomas D. Cravens, graduate student, Linguistics, Univer­sity of Arizona

Ella Fry, graduate student, Linguistics, University of Florida

Serbo-Croatian

Naomi Berkowitz, graduate student, Slavic Languages, Uni­versity of Washington

Amy Geoghegan, teaching fellow, History, Kent State Uni­versity

Cheryl Kariya, graduate student, Slavic Languages, Harvard University

Greta Swenson, graduate student, Folklore Institute. In­diana University

Sloven ian

William W. Del1byshire, associate professor of Slavic lan­guages, Pennsylvania State University

GRANTS FOR SOVIET STUDIES

The Joint Committee on Soviet Studies-sponsored jointly by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies-has announced the awarding of post­doctoral grants to the following individuals:

James M. Curtis, associate professor of Germanic and Slavic studies, University of Missouri: Philosophy and criticism in Russia. 1915-1930

Mark G. Field, professor of sociology, Boston University: Soviet psychiatry and the polity: A case of the "medical­ization" of deviance

Edgar Goldstein, M.D., clinical assistant, Karen Horney Clinic (New York): Psychiatric evaluation of sociopolitical dissidence in Soviet society

Donald W. Green, assistant professor of economics, Univer­sity of Pennsylvania: The macroeconomic role of the annual plan in the determination of investment, capital formation, and production in the U.S.S.R.

VOLUME 1I0. NUMBER 1I

Christopher D. Jones. assistant professor of political science. Marquette University: Soviet military intervention in East Europe since 1948

Gail W. Lapidus. lecturer in political science. University of California. Berkeley: Social research and Soviet policy

Carol A. Luplow. assistant professor of Russian. Dartmouth College: The works of Isaac Babel

Shimon Redlich. assistant professor of Jewish studies. Uni­versity of Pittsburgh: Soviet policies and Jewish national­ism during World War II

Michael S. Swafford. assistant professor of sociology. Vanderbilt University: Social stratification in the U.S.S.R.

Lynn Visson. assistant professor of Slavic languages. Co­lumbia University: The poetry of Sergei Esenin

APPLICA TION DEADLINES fOR COUNCIL FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS Applications are now being accepted for fellowship and

grants offered by the Council for the academic year 1977-1978. Awards will be made for both dissertation research and work at the postdoctoral level under several different programs. Those fellowships and grants that are confined to foreign area research are offered under programs spon­sored jointly by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

Final dates for filing applications (listed below) vary by program. Prospective candidates are urged to initiate cor­respondence well in advance of the deadlines. A brochure describing the fellowships and grants offered is available on request from the Social Science Research Council. Fellow­ships and Grants. 605 Third Avenue. New York. N.Y. 10016.

Postdoctoral Research Training Fellowships. Deadline 101' applications: Decem be,' 15, 1976.

International Doctoral Research Fellowships are awards for dissertation research in the social sciences and the humani· ties to be carried out in AFRICA. ASIA. LATIN AMERICA AND

THE CARIBBEAN. THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST. or WESTERN EUROPE. Sponsored jointly by the SSRC and the ACLS; administered by the Council. Aplication deadline: No­vember 1, 1976.

Postdoctoral Grants for Research on Foreign Areas in the social sciences and the humanities are sponsored jointly by the SSRC and the ACLS.

I. Administered by the Council are programs for AFRICA. CONTEMPORARY AND REPUBLICAN CHINA. ECONOMY OF CHINA. JAPAN. KOREA. KOREAN COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH GRANTS. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN. LATIN AMERICAN COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH GRANTS. THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST. SOUTH ASIA. SOUTHEAST ASIA. Applica­tion deadline for all programs: December 3, 1976. 2. Application deadlines for grants programs adminis­tered by the ACLS are as follows: CHINESE STUDIES. De­cember 1,1976; RESEARCH ON EAST EUROPE. December 31, 1976; TRAVEL TO EAST EUROPE. February 15, 1977; STUDY OF EAST EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. February 1, 1977; RE­SEARCH ON THE SOVIET UNION, December 31, 1976.

GRANTS FOR ADVANCED TRAINING IN CHINESE STUDIES The American Council of Learned Societies has an­

nounced a program of postdoctoral grants. funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. to sustain and advance competence in Chinese studies by providing scholars with opportunities to maintain and improve teaching and research skills through advanced language training, further specialization in one's field, or the acquisition of new or improved disciplinary training in the social sciences and humanities. Emphasis in this program is on training. rather than on research, and applicants are asked to describe the nature of the training requested and state how it is expected to contribute to their intel­lectual growth and productivity.

Eligibility is restricted to persons in the area of his· torical or contemporary Chinese studies, who. at the time proposed for tenure. will be within twelve years of receipt of the doctorate and will have taught for at least three years. Awards will not normally exceed $12,000, and the amount will be prorated according to the length of tenure.

Grants of two kinds will be made: (1) Postdoctoral internships for advanced training at

major university centers of Chinese studies These internships will be available only to scholars

SEPTEMBER 1976

who need to relocate at a major center during the tenure of the grant. Prior consultation by an applicant with the center at which he wants to be associated will be neces­sary, and the application materials will include a refer­ence form to be completed and returned to the ACLS by the scholar at the center with whom the applicant intends to work. Minimum tenure for the internships will be one semester or two quarters.

(2) Postdoctoral fellowships for language and other training in East Asia

It is expected that these fellowships will usually be given for the improvement of language skills (Chinese or Japanese). and fellows undertaking language training will normally be required to affiliate with a language teaching center in East Asia; applications for other kinds of field training will also be accepted. The minimum tenure for the fellowships will be six months.

The deadline for applications for both programs is December 1. 1976.

Application forms are available from: Office of Fellowships and Grants American Council of Learned Societies 345 East 46th Street New York. New York 10017

51

Recent Council Publications ..4pplrinlf Soeial P'relaololfr: Implieation, lor RNeareh. Praetiee. and Traininlf. ed­ited by Morton Deutsch and Harvey A. Hornstein. Product of an international conference sponsored by the Committee on Transnational Social Psychology (1964-74). Hillsdale. New Jersey: Law­rence Erlbaum Associates. 1975.287 pages. $12.95.

Balle Bae1c",.ound Item, lor U.S. Hou.e­hold SUM/ey" edited by Roxann A. Van Dusen and Nicholas Zill. A publication of the Center for Coordination of Re­search on Social Indicators of the Social Science Research Council. Washington. D.C .• 1975. 6S pages. $2.00.

E"perimental Te,ting 01 Public Policy: The Proceeding, 01 the 1974 Social Sci· ence Re.earch Coullcil Conlerence on Social E"perimenu, edited by Roben F. Boruch and Henry W. Riecken. Product of a conference sponsored by the Com­mittee on Experimentation as a Method for Planning and Evaluating Social Inter­vention. held in Holderness. New Hamp­shire on August 19-21. 1974. Boulder. Colorado: Westview Press. 1975. 145 pages. Cloth. $13.25.

The Formation 01 National StatN in We'tern Europe, edited by Charles Tilly. Studies in Political Development 8. spon­sored by the Committee on Comparative Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1975. 711 pages. Cloth. $22.50; paper. $4.95.

Latin America and the United State,: The Changinlf Political Realitie" edited by Julio Cotler and Richard R. Fagen. Product of a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. November SO-December S. 1972. Stanford: Stanford University Press. June 1974. 428 pages. Cloth. $17.50; paper. $4.95. (Spanish language edition pub­lished by Amorronu Editores. Buenos Aires. Argentina.)

The Limi" 01 Change: E •• aYII on Con· lIervative ..4lternative. in Republican China, edited by Charlotte Furth. A pub­lication of the Joint Committee on Con­temporary China. Cambridge. Massachu­setts: Harvard University Press. 1976. 426 pages.

Mutual Imagell: E"ay. in ..4merican.Japa. ne.e Relationll, edited by Akira Iriye. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. June 11-15. 1972. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1975. S04 pages. $15.00.

Oeea,ional Paper. on Korea, edited by James B. Palais and Margery D. Lang. A publication of the Joint Committee on Korean Studies in cooperation with the Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies. University of Washington. Seattle. Washington. (No. S) June 1975. 88 pages. (No.4) September 1975. 76 pages. No charge.

Political Leadership in Korea, edited by Dae-Sook Suh and Chae-Jin Lee. A publi­cation of the Joint Committee on Korean Studies. Seattle. Washington: University of Washington Press. 1976. 272 pages. $9.50.

Social Science Re.earch Council: Publica· tion., 1929-1975. New York: Social Science Research Council. 1976.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK., N.Y. 10016

Incot"porated In the State 01 Illinois. DecembeT 27. 1924. ,ot" the purpose of advancing r'esearch in the social scimca

Directot"s, 1976: BRIAN J. L. BERRY. PETn B. DEWS, ROBERT EISNER. LEON D. EpSTEIN. JACOB 1- FELDMAN. CUFFORD GEERTZ. PHILIP W. JACUON.

HAROLD H. KELLEY. LAWRENCE R. KLEIN, FRANKLIN W. K.NIGHT. WILLIAM H. KRUSKAL. OTTO N. LARSEN. CHARLES E. LINDBLOM. GARDNER LINDZEY.

LEON LIPSON. CORA BAGLEY MARRETT. HERBERT McCLoSKY. SALLY FALIt MOORE. MVRllAY G. MURPHEY. PAUL H. MUSSEN. GUY H. ORCurr. SAMUEL

C. PATrERsoN. JOHN W. PRATT. AuCE S. ROSSI, PEGGY R. SANDAY, ELEANOR BERNERT SHELDON. JANET T. SPENCE. ALBERT J. STUNKARD. JOHN M. THOMPSON. HARRIET ZUCKERMAN

OlJicers and Staff: ELEANOR BERNERT SHELDON. President; DAVID JENNESS. DAVID L. SIU.5. Executive Associates; RONALD P. ABELES. ALVIA Y. BRANCH,

ROBERT A. GATES. MARTHA A. GEPHART. LoUIS WOLF GOODMAN. PATRICK G. MADDOX. ROBERTA B. MILLER, ROWLAND L. MITCHELL. JR •• ROBEIlT

PARKE. PATRICIA R. PESSAR. SUSAN J . PHARR, PETER B. READ. DAVID Sf.IDMAN, DAvm L. SzANTON; MARTHA W. FORMAN, Assistant TreasureT; CATH­

ERlN~ V. RONNAN. Financial Secretory; NANCY L. CARMICHAEL, Librarian

52 a....,.,