Analysing Interactions in Childhood offers a fresh perspective for understanding the ways in which mundane and institutional interactions concerning children operate. Even the youngest children routinely find themselves in everyday contexts and situations that necessitate their drawing upon ‘conversational’ skills and resources to communicate effectively. This is often not a particularly easy task and this volume sets out to examine such contexts in detail. Encompassing linguistic, psychological and sociological perspectives, the contributors demonstrate how conversation analysis can be used to highlight the sophisticated nature of what children actually do when interacting with their peers, parents, and other adults (often those involved in the caring professions).
Conversation analysis (CA) has a long and established methodological history in the study of human interaction, particularly in sociology, but only more recently has this method been applied to studies of childhood. The fine detailed analysis of turn-by-turn talk adds an incisive layer to our understanding of children’s active partnership in interaction. Here we find that, even those with the most challenging of disabilities are shown to be working to establish joint understanding in conversation and to repair troubles in talk.
The chapters in this book span communications with typically developing children and those who face a variety of challenges to participation, as they interact with parents and friends, teachers, counsellors and health professionals. Over and above indicating how CA can be successfully employed in such fields, this work gives new insights into children’s communication as they move from home into wider society, highlighting how this is expressed in different cultural contexts.
The contributions to this work come from leading experts in the emerging field of child-focused conversation analytic studies, and who come from academic and professional research backgrounds. This groundbreaking text will be an invaluable resource for academics, students and professionals working with or with an interest in children’s communication and development.
