Children's peer talk: learning from each other

Inside and outside the classroom, children of all ages spend time interacting with their peers. Through these early interactions, children make sense of the world and co-construct their childhood culture, while simultaneously engaging in interactional activities which provide the stepping stones for discursive, social and cognitive development. This collection brings together an international team of researchers to document how children's peer talk can contribute to their socialization and demonstrates that if we are to understand how children learn in everyday interactions we must take into account peer group cultures, talk, and activities. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of language acquisition, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis, and related disciplines. It examines naturally occurring talk of children aged from three to twelve years from a range of language communities, and includes ten studies documenting children's interactions and a comprehensive overview of relevant research.

Children's peer talk and learning: uniting discursive, social, and cultural facets of peer interaction / editors' introduction: Asta Cekaite, Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Vibeke Grøver and Eva Teubal -- 'Now I said that Danny becomes Danny again': a multifaceted view of kindergarten children's peer argumentative discourse / Sara Zadunaisky Ehrlich and Shoshana Blum-Kulka -- Narrative performance, peer group culture, and narrative development in a preschool classroom / Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, Aline de Sá, Hande Ilgaz -- 'Let's pretend you're the wolf!': the literate character of pretend play discourse in the wake of a story / Esther Vardi-Rath, Eva Teubal, Hadassah Aillenberg, Teresa Lewin -- Explanatory discourse and historical reasoning in children's talk: an experience of small group activity / Camilla Monaco and Clotilde Pontecorvo -- Evaluation in pre-teenagers' informal language practices around texts from popular culture / Janet Maybin -- Peer interaction, framing, and literacy in preschool bilingual pretend play / Amy Kyratzis -- Metasociolinguistic stance taking and the appropriation of bilingual identities in everyday peer language practices / Evaldsson An…