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Intersubjectivity in Action: Studies in language and social interaction
Edited by Jan Lindström, Ritva Laury, Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 326] 2021
► pp. 349–

Learning to request in interaction

Intersubjective development of children’s requesting between one and five years

| University of Helsinki

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.

Keywords: children, co-construction, development, request, conditional, imperative
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
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.326.16laa
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