Five-year-old girls negotiating pretend play: Proposals with the Finnish particle jooko

Abstract

Pretend play is an achievement in which children ‘talk and act’ the pretense into being. In order to do this, constant negotiations on the details of the play take place. This study describes how five-year-old girls propose and negotiate the ongoing play activity using the Finnish agreement pursuing question particle jooko. The data come from The Helsinki Cross-Sectional Child Language Corpus. The method of analysis is ethno-methodological conversation analysis. When Finnish five-year-old girls construct proposals, the question particle jooko is used frequently and flexibly. With jooko proposals girls open coherent negotiations. The analysis of three different proposal designs with jooko shows how girls shift the play frame, negotiate details of the play and persuade each other. A comparison with Finnish adult language reveals the girls’ similar use of the particle jooko in turn final position and different uses in turn initial and turn middle position. Our findings confirm the previous descriptions of English-speaking girls’ directives using specific, future oriented and co-operative practices in their play negotiations.