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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 5:2 (2014) ► pp.243–270

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Some People

From referential vagueness to social-moral socialization in middle school dance classes

Published online: 25 August 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.5.2.04sch
This paper integrates methods associated with language socialization and pragmatics to examine how participants in one middle school dance program use the indefinitely referential language of ‘some people’ as a robust resource for socializing embodied competencies related to dance, linguistic competencies related to the ability to use ‘some people’ in indexically and pragmatically complex ways, cognitive competencies related to error-correction and problem-solving, and social-moral competencies related to responsibility-taking. A key argument is that the referential vagueness inherent in ‘some’ as an indefinite determiner contributes fundamentally to the usefulness of ‘some people’ as a language socialization resource in this community of practice.
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