Conversation in children and adults

Question 1

What does increasing complexity of language result in?

Answer 1

Greater range and subtlety in how the child interacts with others

Question 2

What did Halliday (1975) come up with?

Answer 2

A small set of communicative functions which are used even before language (in the form of lexical development) develop

Question 3

What develops before the imaginative and the informative function?

Answer 3

The instrumental function

Question 4

What are already in the child’s repertoire and have been previously expressed by other forms (gesture/non-lexical vocalisations)?

Answer 4

New forms of communicative behaviour to express functions/meanings

Question 5

What occurs in the first year in terms of communication?

Answer 5

Discovering that vocalisations and gestures have predictable effects
Mapping prosodic contour to speaker affect and communicative intent

Question 6

What occurs between 8-15 months in terms of communication?

Answer 6

Requesting objects or activities
Refusing
Commenting
Communicative games

Question 7

What occurs 16-23 months in terms of communication?

Answer 7

Requesting information
Answering questions
Acknowledging response
Repeating

Question 8

What happens at 2 years onwards in terms of communication?

Answer 8

Symbolic play
Evoking absent objects and events
Misrepresenting reality

Question 9

What is interaction/social interaction?

Answer 9

Any form of social interaction between 2 or more people (e.g. Two infants playing silently together)

Question 10

What is conversation?

Answer 10

Social interaction that involves talk (this doesn’t have to be an adult form of conversation)

Question 11

What is conversation analysis according to Sidnell?

Answer 11

Focuses on naturally occurring interaction
Analyses utterances based on preceding talk, responses
Analyses issues such as turn taking, social actions, repair

Question 12

What are the rules the children have to learn to take part successfully in interaction?

Answer 12

Talk by one person is achieved by all participants
Listen while talking and talk while listening during overlapping speech
People can still be talking when they are silent (remembering or finishing sentence)
Talk may be interruptive before sequences are complete

Question 13

What are requests like at 12-18 months?

Answer 13

Point and vocalisation (protowords)

Question 14

What declines and increases in terms of requests?

Answer 14

I like forms decline and can you and shall we forms increase

Question 15

What do can you and shall we forms elicit?

Answer 15

Explicitly seek the alignment of the parent towards the course of action the child is proposing

Question 16

What is a pre sequence?

Answer 16

Requesting the right to talk the floor and become the main speaker

Question 17

What is repair?

Answer 17

Behaviours used to deal with trouble in speaking, hearing and understanding

Question 18

What are the three types of repair?

Answer 18

Self-initiated self repair
Other-initiated self repair
Other repair

Question 19

What is indirectly requesting for information?

Answer 19

One way adults can elicit information from another rather than ask directly is to tell of their own experience
First speaker refers to an event which they know the second speaker knows more about from personal experience

Question 20

How does irony work?

Answer 20

By a speaker producing talk which is obviously hearable by its recipient as inappropriate, and this therefore triggers the recipient to hear the talk as ironic

Question 21

Why do adults use sarcasm?

Answer 21

To resist or disagree with what somebody else is saying
Competent adults recognise sarcasm
Cultural factors may play a part in sarcasm

Question 22

What is teasing?

Answer 22

An exaggeration for humorous purposes of what might be true

Question 23

What is being po-faced?

Answer 23

Recognising teasing but choosing not to laugh along to it

Question 24

Why are stories not pre packaged?

Answer 24

Stories are only told a few times and are linked to the person telling the story

Question 25

What do stories do?

Answer 25

Alert recipient and allow for response with a visible structure
Achieve some display of emotion
Consists of acting out
Couples may co-tell the story to indicate closeness

Question 26

What is needed in institutional talk?

Answer 26

Need practical knowledge and expertise with distinctive ways of talking

Question 27

What is the lexical choice of institutional speech?

Answer 27

Use of technical vocab
Use of I and We depending on context - either on behalf of the individual or the organisation
Follow up responses

Question 28

What do the various approaches of communicative development agree on?

Answer 28

That it is difficult to separate ‘interactional development’ and ‘language development’