How do very young children use talk to create relationship? Are there associations between the quality of children’s relationships and their language use? Do children’s pragmatic abilities relate to other language competencies? This qualitative study addresses these questions using naturalistic data from a daycare setting by looking at the spontaneous peer talk in two overlapping dyads of toddler girls. This analysis indicates that young children have considerable pragmatic skill in using talk to create and maintain relationship. Children’s relational style and language use seem closely connected: the different talk styles of the two dyads instantiate and support their distinct relational styles. Further, different styles of relational talk appear to tap different language abilities. Considered with other studies looking at young children’s language and particularly pragmatic skills, this analysis suggests that young children’s language capabilities in the context of specific relationships merit further attention.
Astington, J.W. (1993) The Child’s Discovery of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
2.
Berentzen, S. (1984) Children Constructing their Social Worlds. Bergen: University of Bergen Press .
3.
Brownell, C. (1990) ‘Peer Social Skills in Toddlers: Competencies and Constraints Illustrated by Same-age and Mixed-age Interaction’ , Child Development61: 838-848 .
4.
Brownell, C. and Carriger, M.S. (1990) ‘Changes in Cooperation and Self-Other Differentiation during the Second Year’ , Child Development61: 1164-1174 .
5.
Bruner, J. (1984) ‘Interaction, Communication and Self: William Alanson White Lecture presented at the New School for Social Research’ , Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry23(1): 1-7 .
6.
Corsaro, W. (1985) Friendship and Peer Culture in the Early Years. Norwood, NJ: Ablex .
7.
Denham, S.A. , Zoller, D. and Couchoud, E.A. (1994) ‘Socialization of Preschoolers’ Emotion Understanding’ , Developmental Psychology30: 928-936 .
8.
De Oliveira, Z.M.R. and Rossetti-Ferreira, M.C. (1996) ‘Understanding the Co-constructive Nature of Human Development: Role Coordination in Early Peer Interaction’, in J. Valsiner and G. DeVos (eds) The Structure of Learning. Norwood, NJ: Ablex .
9.
Donaldson, M.C. (1979) Children’s Minds. New York: Norton .
10.
Dunn, J. (1993) Young Children’s Close Relationships: Beyond Attachment (Individual Differences and Development Series, Vol. 4). Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
11.
Eckerman, C. and Didow, S. (1996) ‘Non-verbal Imitation and Toddlers’ Mastery of Verbal Means of Achieving Coordinated Action’ , Developmental Psychology32: 141-152 .
12.
Eisenberg, N. (1990) ‘Preschoolers’ Vicarious Emotional Responses and their Situational and Dispositional Pro-social Behavior’ , Merrill-Palmer Quarterly36: 507-529 .
13.
Eisenberg, N. (1992) The Caring Child. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
14.
Farver, J. (1992) ‘Communicating Shared Meaning in Social Pretend Play’ , Early Childhood Research Quarterly7: 501-516 .
15.
Fasulo, A. , Liberati, V. and Pontecorvo, C. (2002) ‘Language in the Strict Sense of the Term: Children’s Poetics and Conversation’, in S. Blum-Kulka and C.E. Snow (eds) Talking to Adults: The Contribution of Multiparty Discourse to Language Acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum .
16.
Furman, L.N. and Walden, T.A. (1990) ‘Effects of Script Knowledge on Preschool Children’s Communicative Interactions’ , Developmental Psychology26: 227-233 .
17.
Garvey, C. and BenDebba, M. (1974) ‘Effects of Age, Sex and Partner on Children’s Dyadic Speech’ , Child Development45: 1159-1161 .
18.
Garvey, C. and Hogan, R. (1973) ‘Social Speech and Social Interaction: Egocentrism Revisited’ , Child Development44: 562-568 .
19.
Garvey, C. and Kramer, T (1989) ‘The Language of Social Pretending’ , Developmental Review9: 364-382 .
20.
Goffman, E. (1963) Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press .
21.
Göncü, A. (1993a) ‘Development of Intersubjectivity in Social Pretend Play’ , Human Development36: 185-198 .
22.
Göncü, A. (1993b) ‘Development of Intersubjectivity in the Dyadic Play of Preschoolers’ , Early Childhood Research Quarterly8: 99-116 .
23.
Gottman, J. and Parker, J.G. (1986) Conversations of Friends: Speculations on Affective Development. New York: Cambridge University Press .
24.
Hamo, M. , Blum-Kulka, S. and Hacohen, G. (in press) ‘From Observation to Transcription and Back: Theory, Practice and Interpretation in the Analysis of Children’s Naturally Occurring Discourse’ , Research on Language and Social Interaction.
25.
Howes, C. (1983) ‘Patterns of Friendship’ , Child Development54: 1041-1053 .
26.
Howes, C. (1988) Peer Interaction of Young Children (Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 53, No. 1). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
27.
Howes, C. and Matheson, C. (1992) ‘Sequences in the Development of Competent Play with Peers: Social and Social Pretend Play’ , Developmental Psychology28: 961-974 .
28.
Howes, C. and Phillipsen, L. (1992) ‘Gender and Friendship: Relationships within Peer Groups of Young Children’ , Social Development1: 230-242 .
29.
Katz, J.R. (2000) ‘Young Children’s Verbalizations of Relationship: A Measurement Pilot’, unpublished qualifying paper, Harvard Graduate School of Education .
30.
Keenan, E.O. (1977) ‘Making it Last: Repetition in Children’s Discourse’, in S. Ervin-Tripp and C. Mitchell-Kernan (eds) Child Discourse. New York: Academic Press .
31.
Keenan, E.O. and Klein, E. (1975) ‘Coherency in Children’s Discourse’ , Journal of Psycholinguistic Research4: 365-374 .
32.
Killen, M. and Naigles, L.R. (1995) ‘Preschool Children Pay Attention to their Addressees: Effect of Gender Composition on Peer Disputes’ , Discourse Processes19: 329-346 .
33.
Kramer, T. , Bukowski, W. and Garvey, C. (1989) ‘The Influence of the Dyadic Context on the Conversational and Linguistic Behavior of its Members’ , Merrill-Palmer Quarterly35: 327-341 .
34.
MacWhinney, B. (2000) The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, 3rd edn.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum .
35.
Mandell, N. (1986) ‘Peer Interaction in Day Care Settings: Implications for Social Cognition’, in P.A. Adler and P. Adler (eds) Sociological Studies of Child Development, Vol. I. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press .
36.
Mueller, E. (1972) ‘The Maintenance of Verbal Exchanges between Young Children’ , Child Development43: 930-938 .
37.
Mueller, E. and Brenner, J. (1977) ‘The Origins of Social Skills and Interaction among Playgroup Toddlers’ , Child Development48: 854-858 .
38.
Nelson, K. and Seidman, S. (1984) ‘Playing with Scripts’, in I. Bretherton (ed.) Symbolic Play: The Development of Social Understanding. New York: Academic Press .
39.
Nicolopoulou, A. (1997) ‘Children and Narratives: Toward an Interpretive and Sociocultural Approach’, in M. Bamberg (ed.) Narrative Development: Six Approaches, pp. 179-215. Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum .
40.
Ninio, A. and Snow, C.E. (1996) Pragmatic Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press .
41.
Ninio, A. and Wheeler, P. (1984) ‘Function of Speech in Mother-Infant Interaction’, in L. Feagans , G.L Garvey and R. Golinkoff (eds) The Origin and Growth of Communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex .
42.
Parker, J.G. and Gottman, J.M. (1989) ‘Social and Emotional Development in a Relational Context: Friendship Interaction from Early Childhood to Adolescence’, in T.J. Berndt and G.W. Ladd (eds) Peer Relationships in Child Development. New York: Wiley .
43.
Renshaw, P. (1981) ‘The Roots of Peer Interaction Research: A Historical Analysis of the 1930s’, in S. Asher and J. Gottman (eds) Development of Children’s Friendships. New York: Cambridge University Press .
44.
Rizzo, T.A. and Corsaro, W.A. (1995) ‘Social Support Processes in Early Childhood Friendship: A Comparative Study of Ecological Congruences in Enacted Support’ , American Journal of Community Psychology23: 389-417 .
45.
Ross, H. , Conant, C. , Cheyne, S. and Alevizos, E. (1992) ‘Relationships and Alliances in the Social Interactions of Kibbutz Toddlers’ , Social Development1: 1-16 .
46.
Ross, H. and Lollis, S.P. (1989) ‘A Social Relations Analysis of Toddler Peer Relationships’ , Child Development60: 1082-1091 .
47.
Sanches, M. and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1976) ‘Children’s Traditional Speech Play and Child Language’, in B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (ed.) Speech Play. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .
48.
Sawyer, R.K. (1996) ‘Role Voicing, Gender, and Age in Preschool Play Discourse’ , Discourse Processes22: 289-307 .
49.
Schatz, M. and Gelman, R. (1973) The Development of Conversational Skills: Modifications in the Speech of Young Children as a Function of Listener (Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 38, No. 5). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
50.
Schieffelin, B. and Ochs, E. (1986) Language Socialization across Cultures. New York: Cambridge University Press .
51.
Schober-Peterson, D. and Johnson, C. (1989) ‘Conversational Topics of 4-year-olds’ , Journal of Speech and Hearing Research32: 857-870 .
52.
Schwartzman, H. (1978) Transformation: The Anthropology of Play. New York: Plenum Press .
53.
Sell, M.A. , Cohen, R. , Graesser, A.C. , Duncan, M.K. , Ray, G.E. , MacDonald, C.D. and Crain, M. (1994) ‘The Form and Function of Speech Act Exchanges in Children’s Dyadic Interactions’ , Discourse Processes18: 119-139 .
54.
Sheldon, A. (1990) ‘Pickle Fights: Gendered Talk in Preschool Disputes’ , Discourse Processes13: 5-31 .
55.
Short-Meyerson, K.J. and Abbeduto, L.J. (1997) ‘Preschoolers’ Communication during Scripted Interactions’ , Journal of Child Language24: 469-493 .
56.
Slomkowski, C. and Dunn, J. (1996) ‘Young Children’s Understanding of Other People’s Beliefs and Feelings and their Connected Communication with Friends’ , Developmental Psychology32: 442-447 .
57.
Sperry, L.L. and Smiley, P.A. (1995) Exploring Young Children’s Concepts of Self and Other through Conversation (New Directions for Child Development, No. 69). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass .
58.
Tizard, B. and Hughes, M. (1984) Young Children Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
59.
Tomasello, M. (1995) ‘Joint Attention as Social Cognition’, in C. Moore and P. Dunham (eds) Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum .
60.
Wells, G. (1985) ‘Preschool Literacy-related Activities and Success in School’, in D.T. Olsen , N. Torrence and A. Hildyard (eds) Literacy, Language and Learning: The Nature and Consequences of Reading and Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press .
