Young children using language to negotiate their social worlds

Within the early years, the importance of children's language is diminished when it is understood only as speaking and listening skills. This oversight ignores the central role that language plays in the social worlds of children. This chapter examines transcripts of children's naturally occurring talk from home, early childhood and primary settings. In demonstrating how children routinely use language to organise their social and literacy activities, we show that they contribute competently to their social worlds

From fledgling manoeuvres methodological confidence: Conversations between a doctoral student and supervisor on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to explore the everyday worlds of children and families

This chapter discusses the methodological journey, from the candi­date's first thinking about undertaking a doctorate to enrolling, con­sidering, and undertaking data collection and analysis, and to writing a thesis. In addition to exploring some milestone events of a doctor­ate, the chapter highlights aspects of undertaking a doctorate that are rarely found in texts about undertaking postgraduate studies, that is, the methodological manoeuvres. Personal, professional, and academic aspects are integral to a successful completion of a doctorate, but rarely shared by a candidate and her supervisor. Using second stories (Sacks, 1995), the journey explored in this chapter includes the sto­ries of the fledgling researcher and her supervisor. Features of second story include links back to matters discussed in the first story, demon­strations of understanding of the first story, the proffering of parallel experiences, and new perspectives that were invited by the first story (Arminen, 2004; Sacks, 1995)

Socializing children into pop culture: A visit to Santa

Investigating children’s pop cultures that rely on myth-making provide understandings about how children are active agents in the socialization into cultural and moral practices in their everyday lives. An annual visit to Santa Claus is important in children’s pop culture in the Western world, however, the social practices associated with the continuation of the myth are under-reported. Drawing on the related methodologies of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, this article examines video-recordings of children talking to Santa at a North American shopping mall. An inherent problem for Santa across the interactions is how to talk about the children’s wished-for item without actually promising the gift. Analyses show that Santa manages this problem through the design of his turn and responses, which allows him to mitigate and propose why certain items might not be delivered. Despite the infrequency of the interaction between Santa Claus and a child, a visit to Santa highlights the interplay between child, adult and societal agendas. Findings presented focus on how culture-in-action is produced through the resources of conversation and permeating cultural practices. © The Author(s) 2018

"I'm your best friend": Peer interaction and friendship in a multilingual preschool

This chapter investigate's childrens play and social interactions in a multilingual preschool context where the lingua franca (common language) is English