The Interpretation of Infant Communication

This book is an academic study of language acquisition and infant communication. An interpreter of infant communication examines the actual communicative behavior of the infant as well as the literature, a discourse surrounding that sort of behavior. One cannot simply observe an infant and say something meaningful without saying it in the context of an explicit discursive background. 'The interpretation of infant communication' is a sort of double sided allusion. On one side, it refers to interpretations of the interpretations which exist in the literature, while on the other side, it refers to the interpretation of the actual gestures, speech and actions of the infant herself. The early portions of this study consist in the hermeneutic study of the literature and incipient epistemology of 'language acquisition' theory. The latter portions consist in the phenomenological descriptions which are drawn from the observations of my infant daughter and her social interactions within our family. The two, nevertheless, continually interrelate. I hope that the following adds to a continuing story of the individual and her society, as she learns how to communicate within its culture.