Presented as a series of captivating stories from a village in Oceania, Talking Like Children is an intimate analysis of interaction that shows how age comes to be. Children in the Marshall Islands do many things that adults do not: they walk around half naked, display food in public, and explicitly refuse to give. Although many see these behaviors as natural results of children’s immaturity, the author shows that children are socialized to be different from adults—to be rude and immature. She analyzes a variety of interactions all broadly based around exchange: adoption negotiations, efforts ... More

Presented as a series of captivating stories from a village in Oceania, Talking Like Children is an intimate analysis of interaction that shows how age comes to be. Children in the Marshall Islands do many things that adults do not: they walk around half naked, display food in public, and explicitly refuse to give. Although many see these behaviors as natural results of children’s immaturity, the author shows that children are socialized to be different from adults—to be rude and immature. She analyzes a variety of interactions all broadly based around exchange: adoption negotiations, efforts to ask for or avoid giving food, debates about supposed child abuse. In these dramas both large and small, age differences emerge through the decisions people make, the emotions they feel, and the asymmetries they produce. Age and the life course often appear less interesting, less important, or more biologically determined than gender, race, or class. But Berman shows that, like gender and race, age differences are culturally produced and socially influential. Age differences give Marshallese children and adults “aged agency,” or the ability to manipulate social life in distinct but complementary ways. These differences are also a central mechanism of language socialization. Talking Like Children reestablishes age as a foundational concern of anthropological and linguistic research and as a variable that transforms our views of socialization, cultural reproduction, agency, giving, and culture.