Karina Fascinetto-Zago, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, MX.
Research interests: Bilingualism, Language Contact, Bilingual Language Acquisition, Code-Switching, Pragmatics, Linguistic Interfaces
Scholar profile: https://independent.academia.edu/KarinaFascinettoZago
Contact: kfascinetto@gmail.com
Abstract:
Children’s interaction: conversational turn-taking between bilingual twins
The communicative interaction in a conversation is regulated by turn-taking, a mechanism that regulates who speaks and when (Stivers, Enfield, et. al. 2009). In the conversation, the emerging meanings can be negotiated among the participants (Bakhtin 1981; Linell 1998). In communicative dynamics, the turn-taking is observed from birth, as there are exchanges in which the structure of dialogue is appreciated. The relevant moment for alternation of turn can be recognized not only through verbal elements, but also through prosodic and gestural elements. In this way, the turn-taking system that structures the conversation has units and rules (Sack, Schegloff, Jefferson, 1974) that children develop as part of their communicative competence. In language acquisition processes, the child not only interacts with adults, the child also interacts with other children. The child becomes involved with another, he negotiates with another, he evaluates the utterances, and he takes a stand in front of others. When the child performs these actions, he reflects his socio-pragmatic development and greater social awareness. These actions show the emergence of their communicative competence (Hymes 1972) for social interaction (Enfield 2014). When two communication systems are acquired, the language chosen between shifts is not always the same. The code-switching becomes a communicative strategy of evaluation, involvement and positioning in the bilingual interaction. The language of interaction are Spanish and a minority European language of a migrant group in Mexico. This paper explores the code change between the taking of turns of two twins (3; 09) as a strategy of social interaction to regulate and establish their position in a conversation that is structured during the game between child-child conversations in a family situation.
References
Bakhtin M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: four essays. (Press Slavic series 1). Texas: University of Texas Press.
Enfield N. J. (2014). Natural causes of language: Frames, biases, and cultural transmission. (Conceptual Foundations of Language Science 1). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Hymes D. (1972). On communicative competence. In Sociolingüistics. Selected readings (eds J.B. Pride and Holmes). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Jefferson G. (1972). Side sequences. In Studies in Social Interaction (ed Sudnow D. N.) New York: MacMillan/The Free Press: 294-338.
Linell P. (1998). Approaching dialogue. Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Schegloff E. A., Jefferson G., Sacks H. (1977). The Preference for Self-Correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation. Language. 53: 361-382.
Stivers T., Enfield N.J., Brown P., Englert C., Hayashi M., Heinemann T., Hoymann G., Rossano F., de Ruiter J., Yoon K-E, Levinson S.C. (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 106(26): 10587-10592.
