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Explanatory talk in low-income families' mealtime conversations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Diane E. Beals
Diane E. Beals*
Affiliation:
Washington University
*
Department of Education, Washington University, Campus Box 1183, St. Louis, MO 63130
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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to outline the types and frequency of explanatory talk that occur in naturalistic conversations of low-income families of preschoolers. Thirty-one families participated in the study, tape-recording family mealtimes when their children were 3, 4, and 5 years old. A total of 75 transcripts were collected and analyzed for the presence of nine categories of explanatory talk, including intentional, causal, evidential, definitional/descriptive, procedural, and consequential. Explanatory talk consisted of conversation concerning some connection between objects, events, concepts, and/or conclusions that one speaker is pointing out to another. The most frequent type of explanations fell into intentional categories, which accounted for more than half of all segments of explanatory talk.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 489 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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