On the Observability of 'Children' in Conversation

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate how we observe 'children' in the conversation process. How is it that an organism can be defined as a 'child' and then treated as such. How do we confirm or revised our theoretical perspective of what represents a child ? The answer to these questions need to be addressed as a prerequisite for any research into socialization. But before attempting to do so, we must first confirm that the entity that we have described as a 'child' is actually observable in conversational data.To do so, we can follow the approach proposed by Harvey Sacks, which can be characterised as self-descriptive reconstruction of our practical reasoning, using conversational data as a trigger. We, as members of conversational community, may be able to identify some utterances in conversational data as turns by a child even in the absence of clear contextual clues. It is argued here that this can be achieved by members undertaking a 'conversation analysis' on the basis of 'asymmetrical rules', which are referred to interpretive - constructive rules adopted in a conversation between asymmetrical participants (eg. a child and adult). By the word 'conversation analysis' I mean a series of practices by members to observe-describe-formulate conversations. I focus here on the asymmetrical aspects of conversational structure because they are believed to be fundamental factors in the socialization of children. In this paper, I propose experimental procedures by which we can confirm the observability of 'children' in conversation and also the asymmetric nature of conversation between children and adults.