imagination & talk

[George Hunt]

cchaney at sfsu.edu writes:
>One of my undergraduate students has a 3-year-old niece who regularly
>shifts the topic of conversation into an imaginary scenario that may or
>may not be triggered by the conversational context.  My student is
>interested in analyzing the conversations as a way of getting a peek at
>the child's imagination and how it is expressed linguistically.
>
>Having searched childes, we are not coming up with much in the way of
>previous research on this kind of phenomena...have you encountered it?
>Can anyone suggest key words we may not have tried (we've given imag* and
>creativ* a go) or know of papers on this subject?
>
>Thanks for any help.
>
>Carolyn Chaney
>
>

You could try

Fox, C. (1993) At the very edge of the forest: the influence of literature
on children's storytelling. london and New York: Cassell

This is case study of the development of Carol Fox's son's oral
storytelling in his pre-school years and beyond, exploring the role of
literature, in the broadest sense, on both imagination and linguistic
development. It's a very enjoyable read.

George Hunt
Department of Educational Studies
University of Edinburgh
Moray House Institute
Holyrood Road
Edinburgh EH8 8AQ
UK

0131-651-6600
george.hunt at education.ed.ac.uk