ABSTRACT
This chapter accepts a genetic analysis of a child's speech responses, it attempts to trace the general lines of development of children's speech. The chapter aims to shed some light on the social factors involved in the process. It emphasizes the psychological aspects of speech rather than on its phonetic and grammatical aspects. The chapter explores the psychological aspects of the speech of children from different social groups, and on the basis of the material ascertains some of the distinctive features of the speech pattern of children reared in different social environments. Social conditions play a tremendously important role in shaping speech; indeed, speech is social in nature, and communicative in both function and origin. Any structured pedagogical environment or, to put it in other terms, any placement of a child in a structured social situation will stimulate and structure that child's speech, which will then serve as a vehicle for the subsequent transformation of his intellectual operations.
