Language Acquisition
Led by: Maisa Martin (U. of Jyväskylä) and Matti Lehtihalmes (U. of Oulu)

The goal of the Language Acquisition Doctoral Program is to acquaint the students with a wide range of research in speech and language development, processing and use, as well as language learning, teaching and speech and language therapy. The program strives to assure the continuation of high level research and the planning of new internationally significant research projects. Speech and language development and learning are seen as a whole, involving the learning of one or more languages, with the successes and problems encountered over the life span of an individual. The program thus covers first, second, and foreign language acquisition, potential attrition and deviations, together with the needs for education and therapy. The study of lifelong language learning and its problems brings together theories and knowledge from many disciplines. Academic areas involved include Finnish, other languages, and speech and language therapy (logopedics). The researchers in the field must have a broad expertise in language, speech and interaction and problems involved in these areas. In addition knowledge of other research fields, such as phonetics, psychology, education, sociology and medicine, is needed.

Language is an essential tool for the process of developing individuals becoming members of their community. The older members of the social group transfer the younger ones their knowledge and cultural heritage, including the language. Thus language can be seen both as a tool and a goal of this learning process. Language integrates people in society which forms their social network and field of activity. Via the language shared by their speech community they can identify as its members and participate in its activities. Even if the focus of research is usually the linguistic development of an individual, the doctoral program emphasises the interactional and social view of language use. The results of research conducted in this area are unequivocally useful for the development of language teaching and speech and language therapy.