Social Meaning and Acquisition (SocMean2)

After the successful workshop Social Meaning and Grammar, which took place in Zürich in February 2026 (https://www.ds.uzh.ch/de/tagungen/social-meaning-and-grammar.html), we are now moving on to the second round. The term ‘social’ plays a central role in the acquisition and learning literature in general (e.g., in broad topics such as social cognition, shared intentionality, and theory of mind). Our workshop aims to focus on social aspects of acquisition from a more specific perspective: How are phenomena of social meaning acquired and learned by both children and adult learners across the lifespan?

At a conceptual level, the question is to what extent the acquisition of social meaning falls into the domain of semantics or pragmatics. In particular, the domain of modality seems to be relevant in the context of semantics. Deontic modality, for instance, is concerned with whether something is necessary or possible on the basis of social or moral rules and regulations. Deontic meaning is acquired by children based on a better understanding of the social consensus regulating issues of authority, duty, commitment, and power (Papafragou 2021). In the context of pragmatics, the question is to what extent differences in social status (e.g., power, gender) are reflected in children's use of different speech acts (e.g., direct vs. indirect) and politeness or discourse markers, and how these social meanings are acquired (Zufferey 2015).

As for specific empirical domains, recent research has focused on the acquisition of morphosyntactic means in requesting strategies (Reimer & Trotzke 2026), but also on ways of expressing politeness via multimodal means (e.g., body movements and gestures; Hübscher et al. 2022)—and how these strategies are acquired in children (Pronina et al. 2021).

Although young children already show linguistic reflexes in response to different social situations (including variations in social distance and imposition), acquisitional data indicate that an adult-like competence is attained rather late (see Reimer & Trotzke 2026). Furthermore, as adult speakers use a range of speaking styles, particularly in situations of social contact, bilingualism, and migration, changes can be observed across the lifespan (see Sharma 2024, 2025).