Chapter Child-directed speech in catechisms for the religious education of children under the age of three in early modern Germany and the Dutch Republic
Abstract
This article presents three early catechisms for the religious education of
children under the age of three, printed in Germany and the Netherlands.
Two of them were best- and long sellers on the book market, while one of them
was a commercial failure. Catechisms were influential reading primers. The
children’s catechisms written by Jacobus Borstius, Johann Cyriacus Höfer and
Nikolaus von Zinzendorf contained questions for children who were too young
to read the texts themselves. Therefore, these catechisms had to be performed
in the form of interactive read-alouds. Höfer, Borstius, and Zinzendorf used
child-directed speech in their catechisms: short and foreseeable answers and
a basic vocabulary to facilitate the understanding and the pronunciation of
words in the process of language acquisition and the deliberate introduction
of new religious vocabulary. Whereas the catechisms of Borstius and Höfer
reckoned with pedagogical laymen and chose standardized questions and
answers, Zinzendorf proclaimed an ideal of Socratic intercourse, enthusiasm
and aesthetic-poetic affirmation – an ideal that exceeded the capabilities of
average teachers and parents.