Perspective-taking and pretend-play: Precursors to figurative language use in young children

Abstract

At what point do children move from literal uses of language to figurative ones, making use of metonymy and metaphor, for example? In this paper, I explore the contributions of perspective-taking and pretend-play as precursors to the emergence of figurative language in children. Speakers mark conceptual perspective with lexical choices to indicate kind and level of categorization (for example, Siberian tiger vs. tiger vs. animal), membership in orthogonal domains (bear vs. mailman, in a Richard Scarry book), and re-categorization (waste-basket vs. hat). In pretend-play speakers assign roles and make use of props (e.g., I'm the daddy and this is my baby [holding teddy-bear]; Fill up my cup [holding out a block]; This is my sword [waving paper roll]). In short, pretend play typically involves re-categorization – viewing participants and objects in new roles. This in turn requires that children extend their uses of conventional terms in talk. Perspective-taking emerges in the second year, along with early pretend-play: these abilities, I suggest, provide a foundation for figurative uses of language in children.