Learning to request in interaction
Intersubjective development of children’s requesting between
one and five years
This study examines intersubjective development of
children’s requests in home interactions of Finnish-speaking
1–5-year-old children with their caregivers, siblings and peers.
Children’s early requests emerge sequentially through the
caregivers’ co-construction of the children’s early vocalizations,
word-gesture combinations and two-word utterances. Children’s first
linguistically explicit requests, imperatives, also rely on
intersubjective understanding between the child and the caregiver.
Children start to use conditional verb forms and interrogatives as
social adaptations for making requests to equal peers. Between one
and five years, children’s requesting develops from embodied,
co-constructed action to distinct linguistic formulations.
Caregiver interaction supports the children’s reliance on
co-participants’ co-operation in fulfilling requests whereas peer
interaction enhances children’s intersubjective understanding of
co-participants’ varying commitment and entitlement to grant the
request.
Article outline
- 1.Requesting as social action
- 2.Development of language and requests in childhood
- 3.Data and procedure
- 4.Interactional development of requesting between one and five
years of age
- 4.1Intersubjective understanding of embodied requests
- 4.1.1Shared agency in co-constructing embodied
requests
- 4.1.2Declined embodied request: Child displays
dissatisfaction
- 4.1.3Intersubjective development of embodied requests
- 4.2Interactional development of emerging verbal requests
- 4.2.1Caregiver co-constructs early word-gesture
combinations
- 4.2.2Imperative forms in requesting
- 4.3Learning linguistic sophistication of requests in peer
interaction
- 5.Conclusion and discussion
-
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