Significations Embodied in the Co-Construction of Child Rearing Practices: Outline of a Frame for its Analysis

Abstract

In this short communication, the sketch of a proposal for the analysis of how children come to embody cultural significations in the process of being actively involved with their caretakers in the instantiation of episodes of social practices that constitute their everyday life, is presented. This process takes place at the action level, which involves interactions that are enacted rather than reflected, and constituted mainly through the way caretakers achieve the involvement of infants as participants in such practices, through their reflexive monitoring of action. Only later, when people start acting at the semiotic level and the meta-reflexive level, they can position themselves vis-à-vis the significations they embody in a tacit or conscious way.