Citation

Eilittä T, Haddington P, Vatanen A. J. Pragmat. 2021; 178: 175-191.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.005

PMID

unavailable

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.

Language: en

Keywords

Adult-child interaction; Agency; Conversational rights; In-car interaction; Summons; Turn-taking