Conventionality in family conversations about everyday objects

Abstract

Children' s developing understanding that words have conventional meanings and objects have conventional functions emerges in parent- Conventionality in Family Conversations About Everyday ObjectsMaureen A. Callanan, Deborah R. Siegel, Megan R. Luce Conventionality is central to theories of the development of language and thought. There is, however, some ambiguity in how conventionality is understood. Conventional meanings must be stable enough at a global level so that one can assume that others in the community know them, yet flexible enough that new meanings can be negotiated in the context of individual conversations. Paradoxically, then, conventionality sometimes refers to stable shared meanings (or even stodginess), while at other times it signifies flexible and arbitrary meanings, understood in context and modified as needed. This paradox must be carefully considered if we are to achieve clarity about how conventionality figures in children' s developing understanding of language and action.We discuss these contradictory senses of the term conventional, raising two key goals. First, we focus on how children develop an understanding of conventionality and of the conventional meanings used in their community. Developmental studies have investigated at what age children use the principle of conventionality (Clark, 1993;Diesendruck, 2005). Our goal is to ask more directly how this understanding comes about. The second, and related, goal is to focus on the actual social settings where shared meanings are negotiated and understood. Ironically, while conventionality focuses on shared meaning, it has been analyzed largely as a concept that is held in the mind of the individual who is attempting to understand and learn conventions (but see, e.g., Clark & Wong, 2002

Children’s Sensitivity to the Conventionality of Sources

“…In particular, Callanan and colleagues have suggested that the way in which parents label objects when speaking to children (Callanan & Sabbagh, 2004) and the way in which parents demonstrate the uses of objects to children (Callanan, Siegel, & Luce, 2007) may endorse the notion that there is a best way to label and use objects. According to this proposal, conventionality would be limited to knowledge forms about which children receive this type of rich parental input.…”

Children’s Assumption of the Conventionality of Culture

“…With these parameters in mind, and inspired by sociocognitive approaches to the acquisition of culture (Callanan, Siegel, & Luce, 2007; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005), we posit below a number of candidate cues children might use to define the domain of conventionality. These are cues about how people use certain forms—which should inform children about what is conventional—and cues about who uses these forms—which should inform children primarily who is conventional.…”

“…A fourth and final cue has to do with pragmatic or semantic indications offered by adults (Callanan et al., 2007). For instance, Callanan and Sabbagh (2004) found that when interacting with their children, parents typically engage in labeling strategies that may convey to children that there is a best way to refer to objects (e.g., insisting on a single label for each object).…”

“…For instance, Callanan and Sabbagh (2004) found that when interacting with their children, parents typically engage in labeling strategies that may convey to children that there is a best way to refer to objects (e.g., insisting on a single label for each object). Callanan et al. (2007) noted that parents also seem to provide children with subtle cues about the existence of preferred ways for using certain objects, such as using a generic noun form to describe object functions (e.g., “pens are for writing”).…”

What Is a Conventional Object Function? The Effects of Intentionality and Consistency of Use

“…According to one proposal, children receive cues from the input about how to treat a certain form. Specifically, the claim is that adults often indicate to children that there are preferred ways to express certain concepts or use objects (Callanan & Sabbagh, 2004;Callanan, Siegel, & Luce, 2007;. A second proposal suggests that young children's assumption of conventionality derives from their limited capacity to understand that others have a subjective representation of reality (Sabbagh & Henderson, 2007).…”