Linguistic Complexity and its Relation to Language and Literacy Education

The notion ‘complexity’ is inherent in science and mathematics. Children are expected to progress from simple concepts to complex ones and these concepts are often organized in a hierarchical structure. However, it is not so in literacy education as the notion “linguistic complexity” has posed some challenges not only to teachers but also linguists. Intuitively teachers can comfortably identify written texts on the basis of linguistic complexity but there are no clearly defined criteria to guide them so that they can use to monitor children’s reading and writing development. This chapter examines some aspects of linguistic complexity and attempts to provide some insights into literacy teaching.