From everyday exposure to pragmatic mastery

Abstract

In this paper, we review recent findings on the development of communicative behaviour of monolingual and bilingual toddlers and preschoolers. We describe how the unique experience of growing up with two (or more) languages affects children’s everyday experiences and the pragmatics of their communicative behaviour. Deriving from this literature, we introduce a novel perspective on children’s development of communicative behaviour (COMmmunicative-Experience, COME), discussing potential mechanisms behind this pragmatic behaviour. It assumes that children experience communicative situations of varying efficiency and that these experiences shape their communicative behaviour: The more experiences children have with non-effective communicative situations, the larger their communicative repertoire becomes and the more flexibly this repertoire can be applied in a given situation. Notably, the COME perspective is not limited to bilingual communicative development but can be applied to a variety of other pragmatic contexts. Therefore, we broaden the discussion by identifying open questions for future research.