Volume 23 (2019): Issue 1 (January 2019)

There has been little research conducted on the use of figurative language in parents' input provided by caregivers in child-directed speech during the first four years of the child's life. The aim of the described study was to check (a) how often ironic comments are present in child-directed speech when the interaction takes place between a mother and a child aged 4 and below and (b) what types of ironic comments children of this age are exposed to. In order to answer these questions, ironic utterances were identified in the videos of 50 hours of recordings that included mother-child interactions of five children aged 2;10‒3;05, available through the CHILDES ‒ Providence Data (Demuth, Culbertson, & Alter, 2006; MacWhinney, 2007). The extracts were then assessed by competent judges to make sure the identified instances met the criteria for verbal irony (Dynel, 2014). Results suggest that irony is present in the mother's language used while interacting with her child, with a significant number of comments where the child seems not to be the actual addressee of the message, but rather the overhearer. The ironic utterances identified during the interactions included mostly references to the child's behavior or being overwhelmed. The most common ironic markers present in these utterances were rhetorical questions and hyperboles.

This paper presents an overview of chosen concepts of irony as a communicative unit in the repertoire of the speaker. It adopts a framework of narration with emphasis on how minds in interactions co-construct meanings. Irony, which means more than it says, is always used with a specific attitude attached. Irony is thus an act of narrating the speakers’ mind, but in the speaker-hearer meaning perspective.

Due to the fact that there is no narration without a text and no irony without narration, this paper links the Theory of Narrative Line and Narrative Field (Bokus, 1991, 1996, 1998) with a few selected views on the theory of irony (e.g., Clark and Gerrig, 1984; Sperber and Wilson, 1981, 1984) and research results. It also explains how the Cooperation Principle (Grice, 1975) is flouted and again recreated in the process of sharing meanings. Further, we refer to linguistic bias (Maass et al., 1989) and highlight perspective shifting in narration, which can change along the ‘narrative line’ and within the ‘narrative field.’

This paper builds a platform for combining the theories of irony with fields of narration. This perspective situates irony as a vehicle hinged in dialectics between the explicit and the implicit, the like and the dislike, the truth and the falsehood, the praise and the criticism. All of these can be read from irony.

This article presents the results of a comparison of two educational methods – the “Storyline” and the “Associations Pyramid” – in developing language creativity among children. The methods were compared in terms of effectiveness with two post-tests, directly after the end of the experiment and after the next three months. Moreover, the initial level of operational thinking (from the pre-test) was used in a regression model as an independent variable to observe whether it predicts results in the language creativity of children in both groups, in post-test 1. Eighty-three preschoolers took part in the experimental study. The two methods do not differ significantly from each other in effectiveness. Also, the level of operational thinking does not predict an overall level of language creativity either in the “Storyline” group or in the “Associations Pyramid” group. The results are discussed in the light of pedagogical practice.

The aim of this paper is to show shifts in the language development of deaf and hard of hearing children over the last 30 years. The paper presents an overview of Western and Polish studies on education and language development in deaf children in terms of psycholinguistics. Perceptions of the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of such children must be subject to revision and continual methodological reflection due to rapidly changing variables, such as technological progress, social and cultural conditions of primary socialization and the aims of deaf education. Now that an increasing number of deaf children undergo cochlear implantation, and digital hearing aids can provide 70-75 dB of gain, thus enabling the children to spontaneously develop speech, many of them function in a bimodal environment of the sign and the speech. However, they perform at different levels of educational and developmental success. This paper elucidates the issues of language flexibility in and heterogenization of children using hearing aids or implants on a daily basis.

Theory-of- mind-related abilities present a long development characterized by both vertical and horizontal décalages. A vertical type of décalage can be seen in children’s abilities to take into account, on a practical level, others’ intentional and mental states and use internal state terms to talk about them before they are able to succeed, at the dominant representational level of functioning, in false belief tasks. Several horizontal décalages can also be observed. It is only after success in FB tasks that children can talk about the mental states of characters in fictional stories. Moreover, ToM-related and other inferential elements are expressed earlier and more frequently in conversationally-constructed than in monologically-produced narratives. This paper examines in particular this type of horizontal décalage by comparing the types of explanations produced by eighty 6- and 7-year-old French-speaking children during a short conversational intervention (SCI) focused on the causes of the story events to those expressed in monological narratives, about the same wordless picture story, produced immediately after or before the SCI. The results confirm that children expressed more ToM-related and other inferential elements during the SCI than in the two monologically-produced narratives. However, the comparison between explanations produced during the SCI and in the immediately following monological narrative also reveals complex relations among understanding, knowing and expressing this knowledge. The reasons and the significance of the horizontal décalages found in the study are discussed.

Twenty-five years ago, a book “Z badań nad kompetencją komunikacyjną dziecka”, edited by Barbara Bokus and Maciej Haman, was issued containing, among else, the first Polish review of the studies on the development of Theory of Mind. During these 25 years, the area developed extensively and a new “state-of-the-arts” paper is necessary. The current paper does not pretend to the role of a complete review, instead it focusses on two live issues in the Theory of Mind (ToM) research progress: early (before the age of four years) competences in false-belief understanding, which leads to the question of continuity versus discontinuity (e.g., “Two-system theory”) between early and later ToM abilities, and neuroimaging studies of Theory-of-Mind, which may also contribute to the continuity debate.

The aim of this study is to determine what linguistic resources are used for stance-taking in confrontational interactions. For this purpose, we analyze 70 argumentative sequences in spontaneous peer conversations during play situations of 4 dyads (2 mid and 2 low socio-economic status backgrounds) of 4 to 7-year-old Argentinian children. Stance-taking relies on the use of evaluative language, understood as the markers of speaker’s attitude (reference to internal states such as attribute, cognition, emotion, intention, and reported speech, [Shiro, 2003]); and the use of evidential markers, understood as speaker’s reference to the status of the information in the utterance (causality, concession, capacity, deontic and epistemic modality, and inference, [Shiro, 2007]), including markers of politeness which serve to mitigate (or intensify) the confrontation (Watts, 2003). Our findings describe the evaluative resources used for stance-taking strategies produced by children at this early age in confrontational interactions with their peers.

In this paper, we show that early interaction can be seen as comprising of strands of coordinated activity on multiple levels and timescales. In tracing the development of such multilayered organization from an embodied and situated perspective, we underscore the role of the reliable presence of the structured environment, an enacted niche, supporting the segregation and integration of participatory interaction strands. This perspective allows us to study the development of social coordination not only in terms of development of individual skills but, crucially, as a change of participatory emergent patterns, a transformation in engagement. We illustrate this approach with some results from the collaborative research project on Early Semantic Development (EASE). Using qualitative microanalysis combined with quantitative dynamical time series analyses, we were able to demonstrate several layers of such organization: from local forms of coordination, such as basic informational coupling within a modality, and the emergence of specific social affordances, to more global co-action structures such as affect imbued ‘action arcs’ – dynamic action contours with a beginning, build-up, climax and resolution, co-enacted by participants. Pointing to future work, we underscore the potential of these global structures to contribute to the emergence of more complex interactions, such as composite activities within ‘pragmatic frames’, narratives, or language.

There is a growing body of research on variability in the early development of biological knowledge. Most of the studies focus on the variability related to culture and direct exposure to nature, however, there is also data suggesting that parental input plays an important role. In children’s first years of life, parents play a key role in scaffolding development. It is therefore very important to provide a detailed account of how parents contribute to children’s understanding of living things, and how they convey biological knowledge through everyday conversations. The present article provides a review of the literature on variability in biological knowledge and parent-child conversations about biological kinds. It also presents original data from parent-child interactions while viewing picture books. Eighteen parent-child dyads who differed in the level of parental expertise within biology, talked while viewing books containing 24 photographs of animals and plants. The speech analysis specified labeling, perceptual and conceptual descriptions, relational, and mentalistic talk. Parents also completed a questionnaire on the child’s interests. The results showed that biology expert families produced more content overall, and a higher proportion of relational content than lay families. The findings help elucidate the specific role parents have in shaping children’s early biological understanding. In particular, I discuss the role of relational language in shaping children’s ontological commitments.

Children’s emotional and mental worlds are often influenced by their experiences with companion animals. This study explored 77 (50 g; 27 b) 6- to 12-year-old children’s empathy; perceived companion animal friendship, comfort, and bonding; and mental state talk in conversations about their interactions with their companion animal. Children completed self-report questionnaires and responded to two moral stories about companion animals. Results showed that higher levels of children’s mental state talk were related with high levels of empathy for companion animals. Compared to boys, girls reported significantly stronger companion animal friendships, and that they received more comfort from their companion animals. Results also showed that, for girls only, higher levels of perceived companion animal friendship were related to higher levels of emotional comfort received. The findings can inform humane education programs that promote mental state talk, moral agency, and relationships.

Our research aimed to investigate the relationship between the measures of satisfied need for relatedness (perceived academic and personal peer support and teacher-assessed social acceptance of the student) and measures of active English as a Foreign Language (EFL) (teacher-assessed and student self-assessed EFL engagement and EFL anxiety), as well as possible gender differences in an EFL setting. The research included 535 students and 11 teachers from rural primary schools in Slovenia. The predictive value of need for relatedness was the strongest for students’ emotional EFL engagement and teacher-assessed EFL engagement of the students, followed by students’ behavioral EFL engagement and EFL anxiety. Students who report higher peer support and are assessed as more socially accepted by their teachers experience higher engagement (self-assessed and teacher-assessed) and lower EFL anxiety. All measures of active learning, apart from anxiety, were higher for girls.

What is a metaphoric picture of a “well-doer” made of? In a study devoted to the development of the ability to use metaphorical descriptions of humans, I tried to establish the semantic fields of four target metaphors: Human-Apple Tree, Human-Sun, Human-Cup, Human-Dolphin. Over 300 young adults (the exact number depending on the stimuli), both men and women aged 19-26, were asked to decipher the metaphors’ meanings. The results were obtained mainly by qualitative analysis, with frequency counts of clusters containing synonymous meanings. The results indicate that, while creating imaginary characteristics of ‘“kind humans,” young adults focus on three factors: benefactor provides help (which takes various, but consistent forms: he/she gives hope, an ear to listen to one’s problems, shares fruits of work, provides warmth and joy, etc.), benefactor’s mental stability (as opposed to sudden changes of mood, which is associated with weakness), benefactor’s skill of merging cheerfulness and tranquility. The semantic fields of stimuli addressed to kindness are more complex than the ones connected with evil. Goodness may be associated with wisdom, maturity, generosity, with both inactivity and vividness. Beauty seems to be less important than was expected. The results may serve for developmental comparisons.

Impact belief is the conviction that parents have that they can affect their children’s language development (De Houwer, 1999). This paper investigates how parents’ impact belief is shaped and how it transpires into language management which supports the bilingual and biliterate development of children in exogamous families. Interviews with eight English-speaking parents raising English-Japanese bilingual children in Tokyo, Japan were analyzed using the constructive grounded approach (Charmaz, 2014). The results revealed that the parents’ impact belief was influenced by their individual experiences, the support of their Japanese spouses, and peer influence. Specifically, it was positively affected by other parents with older bilingual children. The parents’ impact belief was also strengthened by their involvement in ‘communities of practice,’ i.e., English playgroup and weekend school. Their strong impact belief led to language management efforts which included their insistence on their children speaking English and the regular practice of home literacy activities.

The verbs ser and estar have been a subject of great debate in the literature, mainly because the adjectives that are combined with each copula are not in complementary distribution. A cognitive linguistics approach proposes that estar allows for a comparison of the entity referred to by the utterance’s subject and that very same entity that goes through a temporal change; on the other hand, ser allows for a comparison among entities of different type (Delbecque, 1997). I provide an analysis of spontaneous child-directed speech from a longitudinal database and find variation sets that may allow children to detect the differences between ser and estar. In child-directed speech, the entities referred to by the subject of a sentence with estar are always entities that undergo a perceptible change within an activity of daily life, while the entities referred to with ser never undergo a change.

This research aimed to perform linguistic analysis of the statements of experts and novices in the arts concerning figurative paintings from the 16th to 19th century of different aesthetic value under different instructions. The experts were selected based on a formal criterion of education in visual arts. Based on previous research, the paintings were divided into three groups: beautiful, not beautiful and controversial. The participants viewed them from different points of view defined by seven instructions. The Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) was used to measure the connotation of statements in emotional and cognitive terms. Hypotheses, according to which the statements of novices are marked more with emotional, and those of experts more with cognitive processes, were only partially confirmed. It turned out that the emotional or cognitive connotation of statements concerning paintings is mostly modified by the point from which they are viewed and their aesthetic value.