Resumen

HECHT, Ana Carolina. Niñez y desplazamiento lingüístico: reflexiones acerca del papel del habla en la socialización de los niños tobas de Buenos Aires. Anthropologica, dic. 2009, vol.27, no.27, p.25-46. ISSN 0254-9212.

This paper will analyze the relationship between language practices and childhood among Toba children. The study focused on a marginal urban setting in Buenos Aires where monolingual practices are replacing bilingual ones. Consequently, many children are rapidly shifting to Spanish and loosing their command of the Toba language. Through an ethnographic research, we observed native childhood categorization (nogotshaxac) to systematize the meanings, implicit and explicit, that languages have along different moments in children’s life.

Palabras llave: indigenous childhood; language shift; socialization; life cycle.