A social-pragmatic account of the development of planned discourse

Journal/Book: Hum Develop. 1999; 42: Allschwilerstrasse 10, CH-4009 Basel, Switzerland. Karger. 225-246.

Abstract: This article presents a social-pragmatic account of the emergence of planned discourse in development. The central claim is that planned discourse is a product of interactive emergence, arising in development from the creation of discourse themes, and that these in turn are dependent on language, especially on the linguistic subsystem of cohesion. I propose that the emergence of discourse themes relies on children's use and elaboration, in spontaneous speech, of cohesive terms that are at first borrowed from adult sources. The extrasentential processes proposed to account for the development of discourse themes are parallel to those that have been proposed at an intrasentential level. The persistent influence of adult discourse patterns is illustrated with examples from a young child's spontaneous crib talk, especially from culturally packaged sources such as nursery rhymes, story books, and fairytales.

Note: Article Levy ET, Univ Connecticut, Dept Psychol, 1 Univ Pl, Stamford,CT 06901 USA

Keyword(s): cohesion; discourse; language acquisition; planning; ACQUISITION

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