Requests for actions and their responses in caregiver-child interactions : a conversation analytic approach

• Main Author: Tse Crepaldi, Yvonne
• Other Authors: Luke Kang Kwong Kapathy
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Sociolinguistics::Language acquisition; DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Discourse analysis; DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Discursive psychology; DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Sociolinguistics::Pragmatics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/72525
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Children regularly encounter caregivers' requests for action (or inaction) in everyday interactions (through ‘directives’, ‘proposals’, ‘entreaties’, etc.). Prior research shows that children may comply with or defy such requests by making use of a variety of verbal as well as multimodal resources including facial expressions, gestures and body language. The present thesis offers an interactional account of how a two-year-old child handles these ever-changing impositions on their freedom, focusing first on equivocal resistance-implicative actions and then outright non-compliance. Our interest lies in seeing how a young child's developing mind may be observable through the ways in which he formulates actions in locally, publicly and morally significant ways, and how different sequential trajectories unfold as a result of these actions. Using a Conversation Analysis method, ten hours of home videos involving the child, his Italian father, Chinese mother and Filipino English-speaking babysitter were collected, transcribed, and analysed with attention to participants' orientations to each other's actions, and the timing and design of their actions as well as the organization of the conversational sequences. It is found that a child may show his inclination towards non-compliance in a number of ways. He may disattend a request by not giving a response (‘non-response’), withhold a responsive action or withdraw engagement to avoid perceived upcoming ‘troubles’. Instead of responding, he may also initiate a new course of action by directing interlocutor's attention away from the current focus, which may momentarily postpone or divert a request sequence. Finally, bald resistance with single or multiple no's are analysed and contrasted with I don't want in terms of the notion of entitlement. The study hopes to contribute not only to studies of requests and adult-child interaction, but also to deepen our understanding of children's acquisition of social understanding.