Speech acts, social context and parent-toddler play between the ages of 1;5 and 2;3

Abstract This study attempts to show that pragmatic development in young children—in terms of speech acts—involves the gradual acquisition of the capacity to take several dimensions of the interaction situation into account simultaneously. Communicative behavior patterns (frequency of different types of speech acts) are studied in relation to two components of the interaction context: the characteristics of the child's conversational partner (father or mother) and the type of play. Three groups of ten French urban middle class toddlers whose mean ages were 1;5, 1;10, and 2;3 were observed as they interacted with each parent. Materials for object building or free play were provided. The results showed that by the age of 1;5, the parent's gender had a significant effect on the production of directives, and then later, on that of assertives. The type of play started to have an impact at 22 months, affecting action requests and expressives (more frequent in object building), as well as requests for information (more frequent in free play). At the age of 2;3, these two factors had a joint effect on the speech act distribution: action requests were the most prevalent when the child was building a pre-specified object with the father. These developmental processes are discussed in terms of interaction “formats”, as described by J. Bruner.