Discourse analysis as a method to
explore pragmatic language difficulties
in children
Master Thesis
Abstract ………. 1
I. Introduction ……….. 2-6
II. Theoretical background ……….. 6-20
III. Research question .………. 20-24
IV. Hypotheses ……… 24-25
V. Methodology ……….. 25-47
VI. Discussion ……… 47-51
VII. Conclusion ……….. 51-54
References ……….. 55-58
Abstract
The current study aims to define a subset of the language-impaired children having broader communicative impairments reflecting pragmatic difficulties. The goal of this paper is to propose a method to assess pragmatic language difficulties in children. In order to address the following research question : “Are autistic and/or specifically language impaired children more likely to show pragmatic problems compared to their typically developing peers?”, this study provides an analysis of the
conversations of autistic, specifically language impaired and typically developing children. In other words, the methodology developed for this paper aims to study a predisposition for pragmatic language difficulties in children with specific language impairment and in children with autistic spectrum disorder. This paper focuses on conversational responsiveness, adequacy and appropriateness of children’s speech while using discourse analysis as a method to observe the data based on different groups of children. This study first clarifies pragmatic language difficulties in children and their position within developmental disorders. Secondly, it defines pragmatics and conversation analysis as two approaches to discourse analysis. This paper also focuses on communicative competence which is essential for a successful
conversational act, as well as on the consequences of the lack of pragmatic ability in children. The hypotheses on the children’s pragmatic behavior have been confirmed by the current study which predicted that both clinical groups would show significant pragmatic difficulties compared to typically developing children. Unsurprisingly, autistic children have shown most impairments in the domain of pragmatics. Even though a significant number of Specifically Language Impaired (SLI) children has also used utterances that can be categorized as inadequate and inappropriate, or has shown a high tendency of no responsiveness, there has been found an evidence for less severe and disproportionate pragmatic difficulties within this clinical group of children. This study, therefore, lends support to the notion of an existing group of population that possesses communication impairments that extend pure linguistic difficulties usually found in SLI, however, this group of children does not meet criteria for an autistic spectrum disorder.
I. Introduction
The study of communication impairments found specifically in children has lately become of increasing interest. Current research focuses on classifying different impairments observed in children, which brings several difficulties in describing children’s specific problems. These studies usually include children with general communicative problems as found in Specific Language Impairments (SLI), in Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) as well as in primary Pragmatic Language
Impairments (PLI). A particular category of communication impairments which will be the subject of our interest in this paper is presented by pragmatic language
difficulties. Since children with pragmatic language problems are thought to
represent an intermediate group between autistic and specifically language impaired children, it is important to place pragmatic language difficulties within communication disorders in order to assess them better (Bishop, 2000). It is assumed that not all population has the potential to express and communicate in the same way, therefore, in the following section, we are going to focus on several kinds of communication disorders, from the purely linguistic ones to those that may have nature in social difficulties. Our main interest will, however, be on the pragmatic language difficulties which seem to represent an intermediate group between language and social issues.
Specific language impairment (SLI) is a disorder of language acquisition in
children who do not have any obvious hearing, cognitive or neurological deficits, and regardless their language problems appear to be normally developing (van der Lely, 2005). SLI is marked by delays in the process of language acquisition, production of fewer utterances than expected for child’s age and exhibition of deficits in several aspects of language such as phonology, morphology or syntax (Leonard, 1998). Recent studies confirm that SLI is strongly connected with the increase of the risk of educational problems such as reading disorders : dyslexia (St.Clair et al., 2010; Stark, 1984) as well as social and emotional issues (Beitchman et al., 1986; Conti-Ramsden & Botting, 2004). It is not only language production that can be impaired but content and use of language may also have abnormal features (Bishop, 2000).
It is thought that children with a history of specific language impairment are more likely to present the features of autistic spectrum disorder : an impairment in the domains of communication, social interaction, creativity and flexibility of thinking (American Psychology Association, 1994) at some stage in their development (Conti-Ramsden et al., 2006). Even though in the earlier years of studying autism,
researchers suggested that autism is a form of language disorder which is only caused by poor communication skills, today we know that autistic children possess other characteristics, such as problematic social behavior, that are not seen in other language related disorders. To compare autism with specific language disorder; autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that affects several areas of functioning; it is an impairment in language, social relationships, behavioral and imaginative repertoire. In contrast, specifically language impaired patients have impairment in a single domain of functioning that is only related to their linguistic skills. Furthermore, there is an evidence of a subset of children who possess pragmatic difficulties which can not be considered as secondary consequence of linguistic limitations, and at the same time, these children do not meet all the criteria for autistic spectrum disorder. This particular group of population is thought to have a communication disorder often so-called pragmatic language impairment.
Children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) do not exhibit significant symptomatology in all three aspects of the autism triad but who have a distinct difficulty with social communication. In addition, they have certain language problem features that can be comparable to the symptoms found in SLI children. They are thought to produce fluent, well-formed sentences, to speak clearly and to be social. However, these children show problems with inference, nonliteral comprehension and social skills that are essential for pragmatic competence - an ability to
understand another speaker’s utterance intended meaning (Bishop et al., 2000; Botting & Adams, 2005). Children diagnosed with pragmatic language impairment usually lack conversational skills; they have troubles understanding discourse, their speech may be inaccurate, tangential or inappropriate, and their train of thought illogical and difficult to follow. Furthermore, children with pragmatic language disorder may possess some characteristics seen in children with specific language
impairment (SLI), such as grammatical and word-finding difficulties (Bishop & Adams, 1989; Adams, 2001). However, social difficulties that can be found in children with PLI are similar to those seen in children with high-functioning autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) or Asperger syndrome (Bishop & Adams, 1989; Adams, 2001).
However, the current study does not include a specific group of children already diagnosed with a Pragmatic Language Disorder per se, on the other hand, this paper focuses on the two clinical groups presented by children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to a group of Typically Developing children (TD). Overlaps between those two clinical groups (SLI and ASD) tend to cause impairments in pragmatic aspects of language and therefore can lead to pragmatic difficulties in children. It is important to find better methods to document pragmatic difficulties in children in order to find out whether pragmatic difficulties represent secondary consequences of language limitations usually found in SLI, or whether pragmatic problems are on a continuum with autistic spectrum disorder. A successful way to approach pragmatic aspects of speech seems to be in analyzing children’s conversations (Bishop, 2000). This study compares the groups of SLI and ASD children with TD controls and predicts that most ASD and SLI children will show certain pragmatic difficulties. However, while older SLI children might ressemble their younger TD peers, ASD children will show pragmatic problems in any age. Concerning SLI group of children, the study expects disproportionate pragmatic difficulties within this group, which supports the notion of pragmatic language impairment as a separate disorder, not a subcategory of specific language impairment. The current study focuses on responsiveness, adequacy and appropriateness of children’s speech and uses discourse analysis as a method to assess pragmatic difficulties.
Discourse analysis is the study of language in use and can be categorized as a sub-field of linguistics. Discourse analysis is the study of the ways sentences and utterances are put together to make texts and interactions and how those texts and interactions fit into social world. However, discourse analysis is not only the study of language per se; it focuses on how people use language in real life. Discourse
analysis claims that language is ambiguous and always situated in a social situation. People do not communicate in a vacuum, therefore the interpretation of what is communicated is context-sensitive. There is a reflexive relation between language and society; language reflects and creates reality, it shapes our identities, the same as our identities shape our language. Discourse analysis offers an innovative way to display pragmatic abilities of conversational participants, as well as it brings a
qualitative study of children’s communicative competence. Obviously,
communicative competence is a value which is essential in any age, however, children and adults not always dispose all qualities that are necessary for social interaction. In that case, we talk about communication impairments, and specifically pragmatical language impairments are thought to be the most closely related with communicative competence. Since not everyone communicates in the same way, the study of communicative competence has become of increasing interest. While the narrow notion of linguistic competence involves only the correct production of all grammatical sentences of a language, communicative competence is a larger
concept containing all norms and expectations that people should have when coming to the conversation. People having communication impairments often lack the
capacity to understand all rules which are important in conversation. Another goal of the current study is to observe which communicative skills children with language and social impairments lack and how it influences their communicative competence. This study aims to use two principal analytical approaches within discourse analysis that deal with spoken conversations. The first one is pragmatics and the second one is conversation analysis. Pragmatics studies how people use words to accomplish actions, such as requesting, threatening or apologizing, in their
conversations. On the other hand, conversation analysis focuses on the methods members of a society use to interact with each other and interpret their experience. While pragmatics usually approaches a problem as a matter of logic, and focuses on utterances that all have a certain meaning (so-called pragmatic “force”), conversation analysis approaches a problem as an action, and focuses on specific conditions of each conversation itself. Pragmatic thus focuses on the intentions of speakers, while conversation analysis looks at the structure of talk and sequence organization. When
we take these two very different approaches together, it can help us to understand how people interact within a conversation. Discourse analysis of speech of
specifically impaired children as well as those with autistic spectrum disorder could show us a predisposition for pragmatic language impairment. In the following theoretical background we will first take a look at conversation analysis and
pragmatics as two approaches within discourse analysis. Secondly, we will review multiple studies that have been carried on the problematic of pragmatic language impairment, the nature of this disorder and its categorization between specific language impairment and autistic spectrum disorder.
II. Theoretical background
II. 1. Pragmatics and conversation analysis, and their role in discourse analysis
First of all, we are going to define several principles that are essential for the pragmatic approach of discourse analysis. Secondary, we will explain the notion of conversation analysis and show certain models that are used while analyzing a conversation. Communicative competence represents a key concept of pragmatics. As we said, linguistic competence involves only the correct production of all
grammatical sentences of a language, therefore children possessing language problems may have difficulties mastering linguistic competence. Furthermore, communicative competence represents a broader concept of norms, rules and expectations people bring into conversations. The term communicative competence was used for the first time in 1966 by Hymes as a response to Chomsky’s notion of linguistic competence. According to Hymes, communicative competence involves all linguistic and pragmatic aspects of language, therefore it shows how to use words appropriately according to the situation. Based on Hymes' notion, Canale and Swain (1980) introduced four components of communication competence:
1. The linguistic competence which represents knowledge of grammar ad vocabulary in written and spoken forms.
2. The sociolinguistic competence which represents knowledge of cultural norms and shows how to use the language appropriately according to them.
3. The discourse competence which represents knowledge of how to create cohesion and coherence by using both written and oral forms of language.
4. The strategic competence which represents ability to compensate from insufficient competence, interruptions that ruin the flow of the conversation etc. by using
methods such as gestures, change in speech, repetition or turn-taking.
As Hymes claims, “a normal child acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part is speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others”. (Hymes, 1974, 277). However, other experts on pragmatics called for another theory of
communicative competence that could specify so-called “the universal conditions of possible understanding”. They rely on notions of trouble free communication” which contradicts with Chomsky’s definition of a successful communication that only depends of grammatical rules. Gumperz (1982, 92-93) in his study on
communicative competence proposes a definition of communicative competence as “the knowledge linguistic and related communicative conventional involvement”. The following example shows an exchange that takes place between two secretaries in a small university office. It contains enough data which can serve to determine the notion of communicative competence. We note that B interprets A’s opening move as a request to stay in the office while A takes a break. Therefore, A confirms B’s interpretation and B confirm what they agreed on while concluding the exchange.
Example 3:
A: Are you going to be here for ten minutes?
B: Go ahead and take your break. Take longer if you want. A: I’ll just be outside on the porch. Call me if you need me. B: Ok. Don’t worry.
As mentioned previously, pragmatics focuses on studying meaning in
a certain context, but also how people, who are enrolled in the communication, play with this context. In pragmatics, we observe how people enter into conversation, which is called the cooperative principle. Pragmatics thus studies meaning in different contexts of use. Meaning observed by pragmatics depends on multiple variables, such as who, where, when, to whom and how. Integration of words with context and speaker’s intention are two basic characteristics that user needs to manage pragmatics. Pragmatics focuses on how the transmission depends on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved in the conversation and the inferred intent of the speaker. For instance, a question “Do you have a pen?” has the grammatical properties of a question, the semantic properties of yes/no possession of a pen, but its pragmatic properties are context sensitive. If we picture this situation in the context of two people sitting next to each other before an exam and one person is asking this question, we can suppose that that person is not wondering whether the second person possess a pen, however, his intention is to borrow a pen for the exam. Although, exactly the same question can have a totally different meaning if it appear in another context. For instance, if the situation is the same as in the previous example, however, the person who is asking the question is the teacher, in this context, the teacher has no intention of borrowing a pen; he/she is simply wondering whether the students possess a pen necessary for the exam. Pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity because meaning often relies on the manner, place and time of an utterance. Context is an important variable for the current study in terms of its complexity in comprehension. While typically developing children are expected to understand the context and behave in an appropriate way, language impaired children often show difficulties with context comprehension, appropriateness and adequacy in responses. In other words, in terms of the conversational maxims of Grice (1975), the
adequacy of the message transmitted by the person A is understood and interpreted by the person B with respect to the quantity, relation, manner and quality of the message. These principles, so-called maxims, represent four expectations about conversational behavior between participants. If some of these maxims are flouted, it
creates a special type of meaning called implicature. For instance, if a friend asks you if you think her new boyfriend is good looking, but you do not think so, you can say something like, “He has a lovely personality”, which does not implicitly answer her question (it does not follow the maxim of relevance) but on the other hand it creates implicature. Implicature is very important since it makes the conversation more playful, unique and creative. It shows the originality of the speakers and their conversation skills. In the example 1, we can also talk about implicature since we know why B responds in this way and we understand what is happening there, even though the situation is not explicit.
Example 1: /couple in car/ A The light is green! B Do you want to drive?
Another important fact in pragmatics is that utterances are thought to be
performatives; which means that all spoken utterances have some action in
meaning, such as requesting, promising or threatening. These actions are also called speech acts and have three kinds of forces: locutionary force, illocutionary force and perlocutionary force. Locutionary force represents the exact meaning of a demand, illocutionary force focuses on the intention of the speech and perlocutionary force represents the wished act (Austin, 1962). Example 2 explains the role of all of these three forces. When looking at locutionary force, the sentence “It’s cold in here” represents a simple statement. However, illocutionary force explains the intention of this statement, such as, for instance, asking for a coat or wanting to close the
window. Finally, perlocutionary force is attached to an actual act, it shows whether the speech has been successful or not (in this case, whether the person has been offered the coat or the window has been closed).
Example 2:
A: It’s cold in here B: Yeah, freezing
In addition, pragmatics logically analyses the conditions under which a particular utterance is produced and calls the ability of an utterance to perform a particular action the “felicity” of the utterance. In order to speech acts to be successful, felicity conditions must be met (Jones, 2012). According to Austin, we can understand communication as a main to achieve certain goal and meet felicity conditions. In Austin’s formulation, speech acts depend on the felicity conditions, therefore if a speech act wants to be successful, it needs to fit to certain felicity conditions. If some of the felicity conditions for speech acts are internal and involve thoughts or feelings, there is obviously more difficult to analyze the speech and interpret it in the right way. For instance, when we use ironical statement “such a nice day today!” while it is rainy and windy outside, some people could interpret it in wrong way and think that there is actually a nice weather outside. The definition of an efficient conversation is thus the conversation that follows felicity conditions. The conversation is an act viewed as a task-related, interpersonal construct, involving two participants A and B. We thus consider conversation act in terms of successful task fulfillment. The focus in this definition is on the specific task to be carried out by A, and on the reception of the message by B. What is considered ‘adequate’ by the receiver B will depend on the particular language task to be performed by A. For a successful conversation, it is thus essential to be able to understand the context in which in the speech is embedded, as well, as the relation between A and B and their speech act theory forces.
It is obvious that many language impaired children struggle with pragmatics.
Pragmatically language impaired children tend to overlook certain aspects of speech, such as implicature, that may be complicated in both understanding and creating one. There are many of factors that play a role in successful conversation and since we have carefully defined different approaches to pragmatics, now, we can move on
to conversation analysis and its role in assessing children’s communication
difficulties. Fist of all, conversation analysis is an easy way to approach children’s speech. Conversation analysis seeks to discover and describe the underlying norms and practices of an interaction. One of the fundamental aspects of the order of an interaction is strongly connected with the distribution of opportunities to participate in it. Conversation analysis in these terms thus search how a participant determines her/his turn to speak and turn to listen. This aspect of conversation analysis is so-called turn-taking. The manage of turn-taking is essential for every successful conversation act. However, the “turn-taking policy” may change from one culture to another one, as well as from one person to the other. Individuals often claim that pauses represent very important cues to know when to take turns. Usually, however, individuals shift turns without waiting for a pause (Sacks, 1974). In addition, the length of turns does not provide any guide since each turn can range from one word to many paragraphs. Within a conversation, however, individuals somehow develop methods to manage turn taking. In particular, the syntactic structure, intonation pattern and gaze direction can all signalize that a turn might end, which is called a transition relevant phase. The fulfillment of a goal or action, when the speaker has attained a purpose, also reflects a transition relevant phase. Furthermore, by a transition relevance place (TRP), we mean a place in the conversation in where who is speaking shifts and there are multiple possibilities of shifts :
1. Current speaker selects next speaker: this can be done by the use of addressing terms (e.g. names), initiating action with eye contact, initiating action that limits the potential eligible respondents and the availability of environmental cues (e.g. requesting the passing of salt in a situation where only a particular person is sitting close to the salt).
2. Next speaker self-selects: when there is no apparent addressee and potential respondents, one might self-select to continue the conversation. This can be done by overlapping, using turn-entry devices such as "well" or "you know"; and recycled turn beginning, which is a practice that involves repeating the part of a turn beginning that gets absorbed in an overlap.
3. Current speaker continues: If no one takes up the conversation, the original
speaker may again speak to provide further information to aid the continuation of the conversation. This can be done by adding an increment, which is a grammatically fitted continuation of an already completed turn construction unit (TCU).
Alternatively, the speaker can choose to start a new TCU, usually to offer clarification or to start a new topic.
According to conversation analysis, people use different strategies when they enter into conversation. Communication strategies represent a very important aspect when it comes to sociolinguistics. People use two strategies concerning relationships in communication - involvement strategy and independence strategy. While using involvement strategy, people show friendliness and solidarity, independence strategy is used to show difference and respect. Interactions always start with certain
expectations about relationships within participants in the communication and these expectations are called face systems. In the interaction where participants are distant but equal, participants usually use independence strategies, therefore so-called deference face system. However, when participants are close and equal, they usually tend to use involvement strategies which represent solidarity face system. In the situation when one person has more power than the other one, the person who has more person usually uses the insolvent strategy while the other person
possessing less power tends to choose independence strategy. This kind of interaction is called hierarchical face system. Independence and involvement strategies are used in function of the situation and therefore are context sensitive. However, all these ideas about face systems should rather be taken as expectations than rules. No conversation is ideal and thus no one can expect others to behave exactly the way they “should”. In addition, face strategies can function as resources to negotiate social distance or even manipulate people.
Conversation analysis focuses on sequential organization of talk, turn-taking organization and topic management. Analysts interpret utterances in conversation as actions, one following or predicting another one. These sequences are also called
that one utterance always determines another one. Expectations which are brought into conversation are mostly not about the content but about the structure of
conversation, and represent so-called preferred responses. If these preferred responses do not take place in conversation, we talk about dis-preferred responses. In other words, during an actual conversation analysis, researchers often focus on adjacency pairs. An adjacency pair refers to two turns, which are usually uttered by different speakers. For instance, a question followed by an answer is one
example of an adjacency pair. "Hello" followed by "Hi" is another adjacency pair. These pairs typically correspond to a specific order, for example, a question always precedes an answer. The absence of an answered preceding a question might cause the implicature. However, even if the answer takes place, it does not always satisfy the conversation. For instance, in the situation of a question which represents an invitation, the immediate response would be considered as a preferred response, while a pause or a delayed response would be considered as a dis-preferred
response. Dis-preferred responses may sometimes evoke problems in social
relationships, therefore people usually tend to avoid them in conversation. According to Sacks (1974), individuals often prefer contiguous responses. For example, in response to two questions, like "Are you tired? Or hungry?”, the answer might be "I'm not hungry, but I am exhausted". In this situation, the person answering the question try to involve the maximum of information possible to satisfy the other participant of the conversation. In addition, individuals also often expand adjacency pairs. For instance, after an answer, individuals often add an "Oh" sound or a question "Really?” in order to show the attention and empathy. A researcher who is carrying a conversation analysis has to pay attention to all adjacency pairs, as well as an omission of them in order to understand the aim of speakers or their
communication difficulties.
II. 2. Communication impairments
Today, many children suffer from communication problems which can either have a purely linguistic nature, however, they can also impact a more pragmatic domain of
communicative competence. In the early years of studying communication disorders in children, pragmatic difficulties were either regarded as a direct consequence of poor oral language skills (Brinton & Fujiki, 1993) or were exclusively related to autistic disorder (Shields et al., 1996a,b). Therefore, in the following section, this paper is going to focus on these two clinical groups of children and will try to find a reason of overlaps between specifically language impaired children and autistic children; which could bring a possible nature of pragmatic language difficulties. In the very beginning of observing pragmatic language impairments, pragmatic difficulties used to be considered as secondary to the language difficulties. It has commonly been thought that since SLI children can not express themselves in the correct way because of their linguistic difficulties, they show more social-interactional problems than their peers whose language skills are more developed. The research carried by Redmond and Rice (1998) argued that SLI children show more social difficulties than their typically developing peers. This study confirmed the theory of pragmatic
language impairment as a subcategory of SLI, in which pragmatic difficulties function as a consequence of the linguistic ones. However, another set of the early studies argued that pragmatic language difficulties are part of autism (Simpson, 1996a). The results coming from the tests of social cognition and neuropsychology have found a bigger correlation between pragmatic language difficulties and autistic spectrum disorder than those between pragmatic language difficulties and specific language impairment. According to several studies, not only social difficulties, but also pragmatic abnormalities, are typical for autistic children. These abnormalities were usually also used to distinguish autistic children from chidlren with specific language impairment.
Since pragmatic impairments seem to take a place exactly in between language and social deficits, more and more studies have focused on overlaps between SLI and autism. For instance, the longitudinal study by Bartak et al. (1975) for the first time compared SLI children with autistic children. The goal of their study was to find clear differences between specifically language impaired children and those having autism spectrum disorder while looking at their pragmatic difficulties. They found that in children with specific language problems, communication difficulties and immature
utterances usually came from the lack of communicative skills since they did not socialize enough with their peers because of their linguistic deficits. In this case we can mostly talk of a communication delay. On the other hand, autistic children tend to use the language which is more bizarre for any age and which does not seem to develop or change. Since I mentioned that it was a longitudinal study, it is important to know that the same SLI children were examined during their adolescence
(Cantwell et al., 1989). They showed a significant improvement in their
communication skills, however, their stereotyped utterances and social difficulties have increased. On the other hand, status in the autistic group remained unchanged. The same individuals with SLI examined as adults (Howling & Rutter, 2000) have again showed the improvement in the linguistic forms while struggling with
remaining social difficulties. This set of studies clearly focus on increasing overlaps between both impairments. Overlaps between autism and language disorders have always been present. There are cases of children who moved from an autistic
disorder to a language impairment or vice-versa. Especially with growing up, it might be difficult to clearly identify to which category (SLI or autism) should children belong (Cantwell et al., 1989). In the studies by Paul and Cohen (1984) and Paul et al. (1983) half of the observed SLI children showed characteristics of autism, especially in communication problems, which have been improved by years when their
expressive abilities progressed.
Recently, multiple studies have shown that many social problems have been found in children diagnosed with SLI. Bishop and Norbury’s (2002) study shows how language impaired children can also meet criteria for autism. Following study by Conti-Ramsden et al. (2006) measured the correlation of autism with SLI and ended up with 25% of autistic spectrum disorder overlap with specific language impairment. In addition, Ford and Milosky (2003) compared SLI with typically developing children in recognizing and inferring emotions. According to their results, SLI children show more difficulties in understanding social interactions. Even though it might seem that only children who suffer from exclusive language difficulties can meet autistic
spectrum disorder symptoms because of their lack of social interaction, also autistic kids seem to have difficulties with language as a system. The study by Kjelgaard and
Tager-Flusberg (2001) focused on children with autism and found that half of the group showed impairments in language which was equal to those found in children with diagnosis of SLI. These results have also been supported by other studies (Roberts, Rice & Tager-Flusberg, 2004; Tager-Flusberg, 2006) that used tense-marking and non-word repetition tasks to assess the ability of autistic children in grammatical and semantic skills. One of the most recent studies (Leyfer, Tager-Flusberg, Folstein et al., 2008) also focuses on overlaps between autism and SLI while using the ADI-R and ADOS methods. From the two groups possessing exclusively SLI or ASD, more than a half of the children from each group showed difficulties typical for the opposite group. Many findings on overlaps between SLI and ASD have inspired linguists to look more closely on aspects of communication that are problematic for both groups. The existence of an intermediate group between autism and specific language disorder has been found by Lord and Pickles (1996) who found difficulties in social behavior in both autistic and language impaired patients. Since, the severity of pragmatic, social and specific language problems is not always correlate, according to one of the most important studies on social-communication disorders (Bishop, 2000), some children may have problems with communication because of their pragmatic deficits.
Communication problems can come either from the structural language difficulties : a child cannot speak properly because of word-finding difficulties or correct formulation, or from autistic spectrum disorder : a child should be classified as having a pervasive disorder instead of specific developmental disorder. Rapin and Allen (1983) and Bishop and Rosenbloom (1987) described a kind of communication disorder in which language was intact but pragmatics was impaired. They named this phenomenon the semantic-pragmatic disorder. Although, there has been debate whether the term “semantic” should be used since there is no clear association between word-finding and word-naming difficulties. Even though pragmatically
impaired children tend to possess word-finding difficulties, the absence of low scores on word-naming (Bishop, 1998) showed no correlation between them. “Pragmatic” and “semantic” should thus not co-occur and they cannot define this particular
order to better assess pragmatic impairments in children by people who know them the best, such as their teachers, parents or relatives. This checklist was for the first time used by Conti-Ramsden et al. in 1997. Their study supported the idea of
independency of PLI from SLI or autism. Conti-Ramsden and Bishop then introduced for the first time the term “Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI) since the
“semantic” deficit was no longer marked. In Bishop’s state of knowledge (2000), PLI has been categorized exactly between SLI and autistic disorder, since children with pragmatic difficulties showed communicative problems extending usual SLI and approaching autism. Bishop and Norbury’s (2002) theory says that while some children diagnosed with PLI provide only communication difficulties which might be caused by their lack of appropriate language knowledge, other children meet criteria for autism. This conclusion comes back to Bishop’s (2000) theory of no clear
boundaries between pragmatic disorder, specific language disorder and autistic disorders.
Conti-Ramsden and Botting (1999) carried on the first research on Pragmatic language impairments, in which they examined multiple mixed group (PLI, SLI and ASD) by more objective methods such as CCC, naming tasks and word-finding or language assessment. This study shows that even though, children with PLI are thought to possess good linguistic skills, half of the children in this sample showed some language impairments. In addition, from this sample, six out of 10 children with PLI did not meet any criteria for ASD, which is usually more related group to
pragmatic disorders. Three children would thus meet the criteria for autism and one child may be described as having Asperger syndrome. This result corresponds with Brook and Bowler’s (1992) definition of “autistic continuum” involving not only high-functioning autism but also Asperger’s syndrome and pragmatic disorder.
An important debate is now whether pragmatic language difficulties represent a primary deficit in social knowledge or a secondary consequence of poor language skills? Is pragmatic language impairments an isolated disorder, a subcategory of specific language disorder or is this impairment in communication approaching autistic spectrum disorder? It is still unclear what is the best way to identify the reason of pragmatic language difficulties. Several current studies compare children
with pragmatic difficulties with those possessing specific language disorders and/or those with autism. It seems that these two successfully studied categories are the most related to pragmatic problems and thus share similar features. Multiple
assessment methods are used to categorize those children who are in the middle of language and social impairments. Earlier, word-finding and word-naming difficulties, which are more typical for SLI children, as well as social interactional difficulties, more common for ASD children, have been found in PLI patients. Recently, non-word repetition asks and grammar-related tasks, such as formulation of sentences in past tense are often used to test SLI and ASD children’s abilities. In addition,
multiple checklist have been added into clinical assessments, such as Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (Baird et al. 2000) or CCC (Bishop, 1998).
Even though the number of pragmatically impaired children is widely significantly lower than of those with specific language impairments, this new phenomenon catches more and more attention from current researchers. Especially because of the difficult classification of the impairment within developmental disorders. However, since the “turnover” of pragmatically impaired children is much slower than of their peers with linguistic problems, there is a need of more studies in this domain (Botting, 1998; Botting et al., 1998). A relatively new way to assess developmental disorders is thus in studying psycholinguistic markers. This mean has usually been used for language impairments but never before for other communication problems. However, since its usage has been successful in diagnosing SLI children and
according to multiple studies, other communication disorders show similarities with language impairments, it seems to be useful to look for psycholinguist markers for other impairments than languages ones in the future. Conti-Ramsden and Botting (2004) have used four psycholinguist tasks, namely the Children’s Non-Word Repetition (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990), the Past Tense Task (Marchman et al., 1999) and the CELF Recalling Sentences (Semel et al.,1987). Since these potential markers have been useful in SLI diagnoses, they might also play an important role in exploring PLI. Conti-Ramsden and Botting’s (2004) study found a strong relationship between SLI and autism. From the examined group of 11-year-old children with SLI, forty percent demonstrated social difficulties. Around thirty percent of examined
children confirmed problems within peers, seen by their tendency to play alone or fighting with other children. According to their results, there are different categories of PLI. One of the groups described in the study contains children possessing severe pragmatic language difficulties without any autistic traits and with a number of
linguistic problems. Another group matches with Bishop’s (1998) term PLI plus, thus children who in addition to pragmatic problems show some autistic-type
characteristics but their language skills are intact. The existence of these two groups contradicts all theories that want to categorize PLI either as a subcategory of SLI or inside autistic spectrum disorder. There is no one particular definition of pragmatic language disorder since not all children meet the same criteria and they do not belong to the same group. It seems to be better to place them on the spectrum of language and autistic disorders than. In addition, this study disapproved the idea of the diagnosis by exclusion - the unclear nature of clinical description comes from the lack of accurate diagnostic “markers”. Since we do not talk about a specific disorder, we can not diagnose it by exclusion, in contrast, there is a need for better diagnostic “markers” when it comes to pragmatic difficulties. The study by Conti-Ramsden and Botting (2004) suggests that ideal markers would be “subclinical” including family members in order to assess their genetical contribution to certain disorders. The genetical aspect thus seems to be another important factor in assessing multiple developmental syndromes. For instance, the non-word repetition task shows high heritability or genetic pattern in families of children with SLI (Bishop et al. 1996). Other studies including family members of impaired children also show a significative evidence of disorder in the family. For instance, 3% of the siblings of children with SLI meet the criteria for autism (Hafeman & Tomblin, 1999) while their parents show difficulties in social interactions (Ruser et al., 2007). These findings have a huge impact on current PLI studies. Since both SLI and autism are caused by the interaction of several genes, we can suppose that these genes are associated (Leyfer, Tager-Flusberg, Folstein et al., 2008). According to several studies (Alarcon et al., 2002; Ashley-Koch et al., 1999; Bartlett et al., 2002; CLSA, 2001; Tomblike et al., 2003) the same chromosome 7q and 13q is responsible for both autism and SLI. In addition, Dworzinski et al. (2007) suggest that some characteristic of autism may
be influenced by language skills obtained by children, thus these two disorders may be closely related. Various studies on pragmatic deficits tend to look for the nature of this relatively unknown communication impairment by combining two related
disorders that have been successfully studied. After all, specific language
impairment and autism may have more similarities than it has been thought earlier and this discovery can help in assessing all children’s developmental disorders. After looking at several studies on developmental disorders, the nature of the pragmatic language impairments should be clearer than before.
To summarize, there are significantly different categories of pragmatic language impairments. Some children possessing pragmatic difficulties show characteristic more typical for specifically language impaired children while certain pragmatic disorders are closer to autism. The fact that the more and more children deal with conversational problems, communication difficulties and other pragmatic aspects of language, is equally caused by children’s lack of social knowledge which comes from their autistic-type behavior and from their oral language deficits. According to these findings, we can determine multiple groups of PLI patients and rather put them on the scale between language autistic disorders than exclusively in one of these categories. The findings coming from the earlier studies have also influenced the current research which is based on the two clinical groups (SLI and ASD) that seem to overlap the most and therefore predict certain pragmatic difficulties in the
diagnosed children.
III. Motivation for the research, research question and goal of the research
The largest problem in studying PLI seems to be in the clinical nature of the tests. Clinical professionals are in disagreement about pragmatic impairments in children and have difficulties to classify them correctly. The lack of literature and research makes the study even more challenging and less objective. There is a significant need of new studies and renovated interventions for pragmatically impaired children since their difficulties are equally severe to those presented by children diagnosed with specific language impairment or autism. The first debate concerning pragmatic
language impairment is whether this type of disorder should be classified separately or as a subcategory of other disorders such as specific language impairment or high-functioning autism. Children who show pragmatic difficulties are usually similar to those diagnosed with SLI since they may show word-finding and comprehension difficulties (Bishop & Rosenbloom, 1987; Rapine & Allen, 1987). On the other hand, their social-interactional problems are more closed to children with autistic spectrum disorder or Asperger syndrome (Gagnon et al. 1997). This specific connection between the two primary isolated impairments - SLI and ASD has created a debate and a place for another communication disorder. The predisposition of SLI children to have autistic-type characteristic and vice-versa is thus the topic of many studies. On the other hand, an actual assessment of pragmatic language impairment plays an important role in exploring this new phenomenon. Many quantitative studies have shown that pragmatic difficulties may be found in both clinical groups (SLI and ASD). Pragmatic language impairment is still a new phenomenon which needs more exploring and further research in order to be better assessed. According to multiple studies, another branch of investigation should be into the heritability of pervasive developmental disorders as well as language disorders. In my opinion, it is a difficult journey to assess pragmatic impairments by looking only at clinical aspects of
individuals since we do not talk about a specific language impairment but a disorder which is closely related to social skills of a particular child. Furthermore, a completely different, and perhaps a more appropriate way seems to be in observing how
children manage with pragmatics in real situations. A successful way could thus be in analyzing children conversations. In the past, Bishop et al. (2000) provided an analysis of children’s conversations. She categorized children utterances in terms of pragmatic competences as either adequate, immature or inappropriate. According to her, pragmatically inappropriate responses were those that were irrelevant, repetitive or bizarre. This analysis showed that some children could provide too little or too much information, or use stereotyped utterances. She compared typically developing children with their peers possessing certain communication disorders. Her study showed that younger typically-developing children used a relatively high rate of inadequate responses but relatively few pragmatically inappropriate responses. On
the other hand, the results of impaired children varied individually but in average they showed a high rate of both pragmatically inappropriate and inadequate responses. This study shows that there is a successful way in assessing social language difficulties, but it requires a different method than only language assessment. My suggestion for a research is thus in using similar patterns - the analysis of children’s conversations while using standard methods for discourse analysis - the analysis of spoken language in everyday talk. The research question for my study is following : Are autistic and/or specifically language impaired kids more likely to show pragmatic problems compared to their typically developing peers? I will try to find an answer for this question by analyzing conversations of autistic, specifically language impaired and typically developing children. Conversational analysis usually pays attention to the sequential organization of talk, turn-taking and topic management. On the other hand, pragmatic approach of discourse analysis focuses on norms, rules and expectations people bring into conversations. These features are thought to be the most difficult for pragmatically impaired children, therefore it would be very useful to look at these exact aspects of communication. In addition, the analysis of children’s conversation and the eventual findings of inappropriate and/or inadequate utterances might help researchers to understand the nature of such utterances and thus predict the cause of pragmatic difficulties. Are these responses caused by the misunderstandings of the asked question or do they come from the misinterpretation of the actual conversational act? It is a more challenging way in assessing certain developmental communication disorders, since it does not involve any clinical
method, although it might be more appropriate in terms of social aspects - only when we understand what kind of pragmatic difficulties children possess, we can provide an appropriate intervention.
It is obvious that we need better methods to document pragmatic difficulties in children. In my research, I describe the development of a method that can
characterize pragmatic difficulties found in conversations between different groups of children; from those showing language problems, children with autism to typically developing children. My study, however, does not include a particular group of children already defined as having a Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI) per se,
on the other hand, this paper focuses on the two well-defined clinical groups (SLI and ASD) in comparison to a control group. The aim of my study is thus in analyzing the pragmatic difficulties at a microscopic level while using the children’s
conversation utterances. Rather than looking at macroscopic level which is usually provided by a general impression of pragmatic difficulties in children across
developmental disorders, I try to use another model to achieve a better
documentation of pragmatic language impairments. Conversational responsiveness seems to be an appropriate way to show disproportionate pragmatic difficulties in different groups of children. In my own analysis of the children’s utterances, I have looked at these three aspects :
1. The amount of responses given by a child : Non responsiveness can be a consequence of limited language skills, therefore, language impaired children are expected to resemble younger language-matched controls. On the other hand, autistic children are expected to show fewer responses in any age because of their social difficulties. Since conversational interaction is one of the factors that can point on communication problems in children, I suppose that those children who have pragmatic difficulties will provide fewer responses regardless their age or clinical group. I have therefore decided to compare the number of responses given by typically developing, specifically language impaired and autistic children.
2. The adequacy of responses : Problematic utterances in language impaired children appear to reflect limited language skills such as poor comprehension of vocabulary, word-finding difficulties or problems formulating sentences. However, children having difficulties with social and pragmatic aspect of language (autistic children) tend to use inadequate responses much more than typically developing children. Therefore, I suppose that pragmatically impaired children from both clinical groups will show higher percentage of short and repetitive responses than children who manage pragmatics.
pragmatic difficulties such as using context to interpret speakers’ intention. Pragmatic difficulties are the most connected with appropriateness of children’s speech. I suppose that the quality of the responses given by pragmatically impaired children is lower than the quality of responses given by children with no pragmatic disorder.
IV. Hypotheses
Several hypotheses have been selected for my study. First of all, this study expected that both SLI and ASD children would possess certain pragmatic language
difficulties. Based on a previous study on conversational responsiveness in specific language impairment (Bishop, 2000), the current study supposed that younger normally developing children would show less responsiveness than older normally developing children. Generally, the current study predicted that older SLI and ASD children would resemble younger TD children. However, younger SLI and ASD children will show more pragmatic difficulties than
their age-matched TD peers. The specific hypotheses concerning different areas of the study are following :
1. Responsiveness
Autistic children of any age with provide less responses than typically developing children. In contrast, older specifically language impaired children will not differ in the amount of given responses from younger typically developing children. However, younger specifically language impaired children will provide slightly less responses than their age-matched typically developing peers.
2. Adequacy
Younger typically developing children will provide an equal number of inadequate responses compared to older autistic and specifically language impaired children. Older typically developing children will not show any severe difficulties in adequacy of their responses in comparison to age-matched clinical groups.
3. Appropriateness
In all age categories, typically developing children will show less inappropriate utterances than specifically language impaired children. However, specifically language impaired children will show less inappropriate utterances than autistic children.
V. Methodology
V. 1. Participants
For the current study, I have compared conversations of SLI, ASD and TD children found in CHILDES database. I have first focused on the first two areas of my
research, namely responsiveness and adequacy of the talk. My research is based on conversations of four children with SLI aged 3-4 and two children with SLI aged 6, four children with ASD aged 3-4 and two children with ASD aged 6, four TD children aged 3-4 and two TD children aged 6, all found in CHILDES database of children talks. The combination of age matched (3-4 and 6 year old SLI, ASD and TD) children with younger (6 year old SLI and ASD with 3-4 year old TD)
children is important in our analysis. This choice helps us to predict pragmatic difficulties within the same age range as well as in younger children. Lately, I have more deeply analyzed the conversations and looked at more pragmatic aspects of the given utterances. In this analysis, my main interest was on the last area of my research, therefore, on appropriateness of children’s speech.
Children with specific language impairments
Firstly, I have found six children with SLI in the database CHILDES. Some of the children’s conversations come from the Bliss Corpus (Bliss, 1988). The corpus consists of transcripts from seven American language impaired children collected by Lynn Bliss at Wayne State University and formatted in CHAT. These data are not intended as comprehensive documentations of particular types of language
disorders, but simply as illustrations of language-disordered children from different ages. From this particular corpus I have used the conversational utterances of impaired Denise (aged 5;7), Joel (aged 3;0), John (aged 6;4) and Terra (aged 4;11). In addition, I have used the Conti-Ramsden 3 Corpus (Conti-Ramsden, 2002): This corpus includes longitudinal data from four monolingual British children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) ranging from 2;6 to 4;0 at the beginning of the study and from 3;11 and 5;0 at the end of the study. Rachel Hick and Kate Joseph conducted data collection and analysis. The four children in this study, one girl and three boys, were recruited through a number of speech and language therapists in the North West of England. The therapists were initially informed by letter of the criteria for participation including the following: age range between 2;6 and 4;0, early stages of multiword speech, no history of hearing problems, good degree of
intelligibility, non-verbal abilities within the normal range, no obvious autistic tendencies, poor language abilities including poor receptive abilities. Parents of children meeting these criteria were subsequently contacted and visited at home by two researchers. In the initial screening visit one of the investigators explained the aims and methods of the study to the parents and helped them fill in an anglicized copy of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory Words and
Sentences (Fenson et al., 1993) to assess the child’s lexical skills and their
productive use of multiword utterances. The parents were also asked to complete a questionnaire including information on parental education and occupation, number of siblings, pregnancy and birth history, family history of speech and language
impairment, learning difficulties and mental retardation, and child’s previous ear infections and hearing problems. The Autistic Screening Questionnaire (Berument, Rutter, Lord, Pickles & Bailey, 1999) was also administered to ensure that the children did not have any obvious autistic tendencies. During the initial visit a twenty minute spontaneous speech sample was also obtained while one of the investigators played with the child and administered the receptive component of the Reynell
developmental language scales (Edwards et al., Letts & Sinka, 1997). In order to be enrolled in the study the children had to present receptive as well as expressive difficulties and only children below the 16th centile were therefore included.
A measure of non-verbal ability was also elicited using the Leiter International Performance Scale (Leiter, 1969) to ensure that the children were within the normal range. Once the children were identified as potential participants in the study the parents were required to sign a consent form in which they agreed to take part in the study with their children for a period of up to 18 months. At the start of the study all the children were attending mainstream nursery schools and were either receiving speech and language therapy or had received it in the previous six months. By the end of the data collection period two of the children, Bonnie and Harry, were enrolled in mainstream primary schools and Bonnie had the support of a teaching assistant. From this particular corpus I have used the transcripts of Bonnie’s (aged 4;0) and Harry’s (aged 3;4) conversational utterances.
All the data were collected for a period of sixteen months at fortnightly intervals in the children’s homes with breaks due to illness and family commitments. The
activities the children engaged in during the recordings ranged from looking at
picture books to playing with toy trains, drawing, playing with Lego. The investigators also provided a set of toys including miniature Playmobil people and a variety of assembly sets such as a café, a log cabin with fishing boats, a farmyard, a
playground and a furnished house. The new toys were quite successful in engaging the children’s attention and in generating a considerable amount of speech with their mothers and the investigator. In the last three months of the study the investigators supplied three different story books with a clear sequential narrative in the attempt to elicit more complex structures and longer mother-child exchanges. All sessions were audiotaped using a portable Sony digital minidisc recorder MZ-R35 and an ATR97 omnidirectional boundary microphone placed on a flat surface near the re-corder. At monthly intervals the sessions were also videotaped using a Panasonic VHS-C camera installed on a tripod. The spontaneous data were orthographically
transcribed in CHAT format by the three trained researchers who originally collected the samples.
Children with autistic spectrum disorder
Secondly, I have searched for six children with ASD in the database CHILDES. I have used transcripts from the Tager-Flusberg Corpus : ASD (Tager-Flusberg, 1990). This corpus contains files from children with autism; the data were contributed by Helen Tager-Flusberg and reformatted into CHAT by Pam Rollins. From the whole corpus, I have analyzed certain parts of conversations of Stuart (aged 3;4), Roger (aged 3;9) and Brett (aged 5;8). In addition, I have used the Nadig ASD English Corpus (Bang and Nadig, 2015): The overall goals of this project were to
longitudinally examine word learning in children with autism spectrum disorders (henceforth ASD) from English-speaking families in Montreal, Canada. The study employed a variety of measures, including a natural language sample during parent-child interaction. Families participated at three time points over the course of a year (between 2009-2012). The first and last visits were conducted at McGill University and included developmental assessments and other experimental measures (i.e., fast mapping and a non-word repetition task). The present language sample was collected at the second time point (approximately 6 months after the first visit) and was either conducted at the families’ home or at McGill University, depending on the preference of the families. The language sample that comprises this corpus was collected during a freeplay task in which the parent and child played with a
standardized set of toys for approximately 10 minutes and an experimenter video recorded the session. At the end of 10 minutes the parent was asked to clean up with the child. This freeplay task was often the first task of the second visit,
depending on the child’s interests. Pretend play was another focus of the freeplay task; toys were chosen based on those commonly used in the pretend play literature. Other activities during this second visit included shared book-reading and a task examining how parents teach children novel words. For the freeplay interaction, a blanket approximately 4x4 square feet was laid down and parents were asked to try their best to stay on the blanket and play with their child as they typically would. Toys included: a tea set (two cups, saucers, spoons), colored blocks, two dolls (a female doll and a small baby doll), a telephone (on the telephone was a hologram of a
horse), baby bottle, and a dump truck. Families were videotaped and transcription was done from the video recording. Each video was viewed twice, with each time by a different transcriber. The first transcriber completed the transcription and the
second transcriber reviewed the original transcription for utterance breaks, possibility of deciphering unintelligible utterances, and adherence to CHAT conventions. Any large discrepancies between the first and second transcriber were noted on a protocol sheet for later review. No transcriptions needed to be reviewed.
Transcribers worked in a quiet room and wore headphones while watching the video recording using Windows Media Player. The full duration of the interactions
(approximately 10 minutes) were transcribed. Gems mark approximately 9 minutes of transcription. When applicable, utterances breaks were determined by clear intonational markers such as questions or exclamations. All other utterances were determined by a clear pause followed by a breath. If an utterance was difficult to comprehend, transcribers were told to listen to the segment a maximum of 3 times before transcription. If the utterance was still unintelligible, the portion or full
utterance was marked with an “xxx”. If there was an overlap between speakers, the transcriber was to first pay attention to the parent utterances, then the child
utterances. All CHAT conventions applicable to the present study were provided in an abridged manual, which was made available in printed and electronic forms. The original manuals provided by CHILDES (v2000) were also made available. From the chosen corpus, I have used the conversations of children aged 3;1, 3;7 and 6;1.
Typically developing children
Thirdly, I have compared the clinical groups with six typically developing children from the database CHILDES. I have used the Forrester Corpus (Forrester, 2002). This is a video-based longitudinal case study of the development of Michael Forrester’s daughter Ella child’s conversational skills. All participants involved in these dialogs are British, white, and middle class. The transcription uses CA
conventions in CHAT. I have used the part of transcript which included Ella’s speech when she was 4 year old. In addition, I have used the Bliss Corpus (Bliss, 1988)
which contains normally developing children’s conversations. From the chosen corpus, I have used the utterances of Aimee (aged 5;4) and Willie (aged 6;1). Finally, I have used the Ambrose-Moeller Control Corpus (Ambrose, 2016). Ambrose, S. E. (2016). From the chosen corpus, I have analyzed the conversation of three TD children (aged 3;0).
V. 2. Method
After carefully watching and listening to all conversations mentioned above, the transcript is the next step for a successful analysis. All the conversation have been provided with a transcript on the child database. The transcription should contain context elements which are very important in real situations. While transcribing, it is difficult to involve all signals which are visible in face-to-face communication and it is more challenging to understand the whole context which is around it. On the other hand, transcription always add additional information and we can easily feel
transcriber’s goals and beliefs. The precise pronunciations are often represented in a transcript, with records such as "dunno" preferred over "don't know" if applicable. Often, researchers diverge from conventional spelling to capture these speech styles. Nevertheless, when such divergence from conventional spelling is overused, readers might struggle to follow the exchange. Typically, the physical movements, mannerisms, and gestures of individuals, such as holds gaze while scratching cheek, are not included. However, in my own transcripts which involve specifically language impaired and autistic children, I have included all gestures and body language since I am wiling to include non verbal communication in my analysis.
After the transcript is successfully prepared, the researcher interprets the
conversation - by reading the transcripts as well as replaying the recordings and/or watching the videos. First, the researcher offers an intuitive interpretation of the acts and reactions of each person. Second, the researcher considers each response in more detail, attempting to uncover mechanisms and devices the speakers use to maintain a common understanding and to reach their goals. Finally, the researcher provides the full analysis of the chosen conversation act. I have decided to carry out
a discourse analysis while using conversational analysis and pragmatics as two frameworks which help me to approach children’s communicative competence. In the following section, I will again clarify the notion of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and pragmatics and explain my own research.
V. 3 Analytical framework
Conversation analysis and pragmatics as two approaches to discourse analysis study social interaction embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. The same as in all kinds of researches, discourse analysis begins by setting up a research question. The data collected for analysis usually are in the form of video or audio recorded conversations. The data is collected with or without researchers' involvement, often simply by adding a video camera to the room where the conversation takes place. From the audio or video recording the researchers construct a detailed transcription which is ideally with no details left out. After transcription, the researchers perform inductive data-driven analysis aiming to find recurring patterns of interaction. Based on the analysis, the researchers develop a rule or a model to explain the occurrence of the patterns.
In my own discourse analysis, I have focused on different aspects of pragmatics in the conversations and whether these aspects have been omitted by children. My main interest was on the elements which are usually problematic for pragmatically impaired children, therefore how they manage their topic and turn-taking
organization and mostly what their responses look like. I have focused on the utterances which were inadequate - repetitive or too short and those inappropriate ones. Concretely, as mentioned previously, I have payed attention to these three pragmatic aspects of the children’s utterances in the conversation :
1. The amount of the responses given by a child (TD, SLI and ASD)
First of all, not every child’s utterance that occurs immediately after an adult’s utterance can be considered as a response. To be counted as a response, child’s response must be an answer that provides information on the requested topic. On
the other hand, child’s opportunity to react to a solicitation has also been taken into account. For instance, if the adult continues with the turn without giving a pause to an answer, this kind of utterance is not included into the analysis. No response therefore means that the child has an opportunity to respond to the adult’s
solicitation but he/she does not respond (Example (1)). Another type of no response is presented by a statement given by the child that can not be counted for a
response to the adult’s solicitation (Example (2)).
Example (1)
A : What did you do yesterday? B : 0
Example (2)
A : Do you like swimming? B : I want to go home.
2. The adequacy of the responses given by a child (TD, SLI and ASD)
Not adequate responses are those that seem to be repetitive or too short. For
instance, the child’s answer “yes”, “no” or “ I don’t know” to a soliciting utterance with the form of a yes-no question is considered as a perfectly adequate. However, the analysis mostly focuses on minimal verbal answers which are those that come after a “wh” question and contain not more than one word (Example (3)); those responses are considered as too short. The study also focuses on yes-no responses that come after another than a yes-no question (Example (4)). In addition, all responses that for no reason take place more than once are considered as repetitive (Example (5)).
Example (3)
