Eilitta2021
| Eilitta2021 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Eilitta2021 |
| Author(s) | Tiina Eilittä, Pentti Haddington, Anna Vatanen |
| Title | Children Seeking the Driver's Attention in Cars: Position and Composition of Children's Summons Turns and Children's Rights to Engage |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Adult-child interaction, Agency, Conversational rights, In-car interaction, Summons, Turn-taking |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2021 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | |
| Journal | Journal of Pragmatics |
| Volume | 178 |
| Number | |
| Pages | 175–191 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.005 |
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Abstract
This paper explores the topic of children having restricted rights to engage in conversation with adults in multiparty interactions. Drawing on the principles of conversation analysis, and 7 h of video-recorded Finnish and English naturally occurring in-car family interactions, our focus is on moments when a child summons the driver while the driver is driving and having a conversation with another passenger. We suggest that the composition and position of the child's summons relative to other ongoing conversations play a crucial role in whether the child receives a response, or whether the summons will be ignored or suspended by the driver. Positioning and designing summonses in different ways is a resource for the child to exert agency and mobilize a response from the driver to different degrees, which affects the child's likelihood of entering in interaction with the driver at that moment. The analysis suggests that children cannot be a priori determined to have (or not to have) certain kinds of speaking rights; instead, the ``right to engage in a conversation is contingent and situated, (re)negotiated and accomplished in situ. Finally, summons-answer sequences provide adults a resource for socializing children into the regularities of turn allocation and turn distribution.
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