Children's Elicited Use of Pragmatic Language Functions: How Six- and Seven-year-old Children Adapt to the Interactional Environments of Story Scenarios

Abstract

Pragmatic language skill involves adapting to an interactional environment where a communicator must interpret and originate communicative acts. This study used an elicitation procedure to reveal how 80 six- and seven-year-old children adapted to the pragmatic context of a story and furnished a remark that would be pragmatically appropriate for a story character to utter. Children 'spoke for' characters in about 70% of the contexts and thus revealed facility in conceptual perspective-taking and attributing mental states to others. The use of self-generated extra-textual language reveals one way that pragmatic language skill is at work when young children comprehend and respond to text. Given these findings, a model of children's transaction with narrative based on interpretation of others' mental states, understanding of pretence and characterisation, and pragmatic language skill is proposed.