Using Categories to Assert Authority in Murrinhpatha-Speaking Children’s Talk

Abstract

Children, like speakers more generally, often use categories of person, place, and activity (e.g., doctor, school, bedtime) to frame and monitor interactions among themselves. This article explores the use of categories by a group of Murrinhpatha-speaking Aboriginal children in Wadeye, northern Australia, when attempting to assert authority. The creation and negotiation of power asymmetries are a common feature of children’s peer talk worldwide but analyzed here for the first time among speakers of a traditional Australian language. Analysis suggests that although there are similarities with children from other sociocultural/linguistic contexts, there are differences in these children’s choice of membership categories (e.g., husband, country) and how they deploy and react to them (e.g., by ambiguity and by silence respectively). Such differences highlight the connection between language, society, and the interactional resources available to speakers as well as reinforcing the merit of studying membership categorization in children’s talk. Data in Murrinhpatha with English translation.

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