Evie's All The Things: To what extent is this an example of child-led discourse?

To a certain extent this example is child-led discourse, but on the hand it could be said that the Grandmother is leading the conversation. For example, 65% of Grandma's language is made up of interrogatives, guiding the conversation. Evie only asks two questions (5% of Evie's language is made up on interrogatives, within the transcript).  Grandma asks questions such as, 'now what’s he doing?' to encourage Evie to respond is a certain way, asking her to consider what he could do and decide what he is doing (installing ideas of past, present and future). This displays Grandma using interrogatives to lead the conversation. At other times Grandma uses the interrogatives for clarification; ' tigger?  what’s tigger going to do?' looking for Evie to agree that tigger was who she was talking about and once again guiding the conversation, encouraging Evie to think about what tigger could be doing and to decide. 
On the other hand, Grandma takes her cues from Evie, generating questions from Evie's behaviour and promoting Evie to make decisions; 
E          in the picture
G         we want cat in the picture okay
E          (2) one two
G         two cats (2) how many things have we got now in the picture?
E          (inaudible)
G         how many? count them
Evie is leading the actions whilst Grandma is leading the conversation. Evie wants things to be done, like taking a photo of the cats whereas Grandma wishes to discuss these actions. Grandma is basing her language and questions on Evie's chosen actions but Evie rarely leads the discourse, she is often simply responding to Grandma's questions. 

Comments

  1. This is very good although you can make the links between what Evie says and what G says more explicit by exploring the techniques used e.g. expanding Evie's telegraphic utterance, echoing and summarising "two" and using a combination if interrogatives and imperatives to explore answers. Use quotes from within the quotes a you explore this. Then link back to the overall question and any relevant theory. What do you feel is characteristic of these participants' language?

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