ABSTRACT

This chapter draws out similarities, as well as differences, between children and adults. One of the main claims is that, as human beings, children, as well as adults, occupy all the domains of the social world. Their location in the different domains is partly a product of their childhood, but is also related to other social groupings to which they belong. They participate in the economy, both immediately and indirectly as consumers, and on the basis of the labour they invest in school work, whose organization and staffing, of course, are financed by society. Children are also consumers of society's cultural products. The chapter describes that the enterprise of researching children and language takes place not in a vacuum but in social settings in the context of social structures, with features.