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Kinship, seniority, and rights to know in Datooga children's everyday interaction
- Source :
- Journal of Pragmatics, Mitchell, A & Jordan, F M 2021, ' Kinship, seniority, and rights to know in Datooga children’s everyday interaction ', Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 181, pp. 49-61 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.04.029
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- This paper explores the epistemics of social relations among Datooga-speaking children of rural Tanzania. It describes two linguistic resources for epistemic management in the Datooga language, namely, questions and an epistemic particle neada. The paper then investigates children's use of these two resources in a 3.5 h sample of children's spontaneous interaction, taken from a video corpus. Questions often establish epistemic asymmetries by positioning addressees as more knowledgeable, while use of the particle neada projects speech participants' equal rights to know, typically in emphatic contrast to the epistemic implications of an earlier turn. Of special interest is how children's negotiation of rights to know reveals sensitivity to social relations, particularly those defined by kinship and age. Though by no means ever-present, concepts of kinship and seniority are made relevant in these children's interactions. Children oriented to kinship relations when deferring to other people's rights to know about their own kin, and they positioned speech participants in junior–senior relationships when requesting generalizable knowledge. The paper contributes to empirical research on children's everyday language use with insights from a rural African community.
- Subjects :
- 050101 languages & linguistics
Linguistics and Language
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
Sample (statistics)
Special Interest Group
050105 experimental psychology
Language and Linguistics
Social relation
Epistemics
Negotiation
Empirical research
Artificial Intelligence
Kinship
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Sociology
Seniority
Social psychology
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 03782166
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Pragmatics
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....54329415ae730ee2bebd2c88796879d5
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.04.029