{"title":"Using Categories to Assert Authority in Murrinhpatha-Speaking Children’s Talk","authors":"Lucinda Davidson","doi":"10.1080/08351813.2022.2026161","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Children, like speakers more generally, often use categories of person, place, and activity (e.g., doctor, school, bedtime) to frame and monitor interactions among themselves. This article explores the use of categories by a group of Murrinhpatha-speaking Aboriginal children in Wadeye, northern Australia, when attempting to assert authority. The creation and negotiation of power asymmetries are a common feature of children’s peer talk worldwide but analyzed here for the first time among speakers of a traditional Australian language. Analysis suggests that although there are similarities with children from other sociocultural/linguistic contexts, there are differences in these children’s choice of membership categories (e.g., husband, country) and how they deploy and react to them (e.g., by ambiguity and by silence respectively). Such differences highlight the connection between language, society, and the interactional resources available to speakers as well as reinforcing the merit of studying membership categorization in children’s talk. Data in Murrinhpatha with English translation.","PeriodicalId":51484,"journal":{"name":"Research on Language and Social Interaction","volume":"55 1","pages":"18 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Research on Language and Social Interaction","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2022.2026161","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Children, like speakers more generally, often use categories of person, place, and activity (e.g., doctor, school, bedtime) to frame and monitor interactions among themselves. This article explores the use of categories by a group of Murrinhpatha-speaking Aboriginal children in Wadeye, northern Australia, when attempting to assert authority. The creation and negotiation of power asymmetries are a common feature of children’s peer talk worldwide but analyzed here for the first time among speakers of a traditional Australian language. Analysis suggests that although there are similarities with children from other sociocultural/linguistic contexts, there are differences in these children’s choice of membership categories (e.g., husband, country) and how they deploy and react to them (e.g., by ambiguity and by silence respectively). Such differences highlight the connection between language, society, and the interactional resources available to speakers as well as reinforcing the merit of studying membership categorization in children’s talk. Data in Murrinhpatha with English translation.
期刊介绍:
The journal publishes the highest quality empirical and theoretical research bearing on language as it is used in interaction. Researchers in communication, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, linguistic anthropology and ethnography are likely to be the most active contributors, but we welcome submission of articles from the broad range of interaction researchers. Published papers will normally involve the close analysis of naturally-occurring interaction. The journal is also open to theoretical essays, and to quantitative studies where these are tied closely to the results of naturalistic observation.