Mutual Apprentices: The Making of Parenthood and Childhood in Family Dinner Conversations

Abstract

Starting from a view of socialization as a bidirectional process, the paper contributes to the field of language socialization in detailing how conversational interaction provides tools for parents and children to collaboratively construe a sense of moral meaning and social order. The paper illustrates both the agentive participation of Italian children in dialogue on normative behavior and ways that their discursive contributions shape the structure and thematic content of parental talk that ensues. Parental responses to children’s normative transgressions socialize them also into the language of transgression. The children we studied supply and elicit accounts from others that attempt to justify or explain transgression.

Management of children’s offences in Vietnamese contexts: an analysis of children’s social competence

“…Children and childhood studies have been once influenced by socialisation theory (Ochs, 1988;Ochs & Schieffelin, 2001, Pontecorvo et al, 2001). Socialisation theory draws upon an assumption that children are immature, irrational and incompetent while adults are mature, rational and competent (Mackay, 1991).…”

“…Furthermore, the concept of apprenticeship can also be applied to both children and adults (Pontecorvo, Fasulo & Sterponi, 2001). On the interactive standpoint, both adults and children are able to mutually acquire different knowledge and experience.…”

“…Socialisation must be seen as a bidirectional process rather than a unidirectional one (Emura, 2006). For example, Pontecorvo et al (2001) argue that interactions at evening meals are the setting where "parents learn to be parents with their children, and children learn to be sons or daughters of their specific parents" (p.344). It is a process of mutual apprenticeship, in which both adults and children construe together a sense of social order.…”

“…As noted by Pontecorvo et al (2001), deviant actions are "occasions to test and train children in normative competence" (p.352). Deviant actions may include insulting, criticising or mocking.…”

“…The emergence of offence relies on the subjective assessments and decisions of participants in each moment of their interactions. Offence or infraction is thus the label attached to an action or incident through a posthoc procedure, rather than something that is evaluated objectively (Pontecorvo et al, 2001). …”