imagination & talk

[SA Blackwell]

>
> 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.


Hi Carolyn, and others,


Here is one reference for you:

"Reproducing the Discourse of Mothering: How Gendered
Talk makes Gendered Lives", by Jenny Cook-Gumperz, in
_Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially
constructed Self_, edited by Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz.
Routledge: New York and London, 1995.


As you can tell from the titles, this is in a collection
on gender rather than child language.  But it is a very
interesting study: it does a detailed analysis of two
3-year-old girls engaging in "play talk" as they play
with their dolls.  Cook-Gumperz discerns four distinct
"voices" used by the girls: (1) in-character speech
from Mummies to Babies; (2) in-character speech from
Mummies to Mummies; (3) off-record speech (real-life
talk or organizational comment with Lucie and Susie
in their real-life characters as themselves); and
(4) narration (description of things and events in
the game).

Some of the references cited in this article may also
be useful to your student.

Hope this helps.

Sue Blackwell
Department of English,
The University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston,
BIRMINGHAM   B15 2TT

Phone:  +44 - 0121-414-3219
Fax:    +44 - 0121-414-5668

e-mail:  S.A.Blackwell at bham.ac.uk

Sue's Home Page: http://web.bham.ac.uk/sue_blackwell