A world of language

My four year-old-nephew asked me, "What's the world called today?" and I realised in the context of our conversation that he was asking me what the date was. I told him, and marvelled at children's verbal dexterity and their ability to find ways of making themselves understood. I look forward to more explorations of children's language in a fantastic new project I am involved in. Led by Andrew Burn at the Institute of Education, it is a project that involves tracing children's playground games and rhymes in a new media age and will lead to the development of games for the Nintendo Wii. You can read more about it here and I will update you on the project as it progresses. We will soon be advertising for a .5 post-doctoral research assistant for 2 years from April 2009 to conduct playground ethnography in a primary school in Sheffield as part of the project, so if anyone reading this might be interested, let me know and I can send you details!