Leon2007
| Leon2007 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Leon2007 |
| Author(s) | Lourdes de León |
| Title | Parallelism, metalinguistic play, and the interactive emergence of Zinacantec Mayan siblings' culture |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Children's play, Mayan, Anthropological linguistics |
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| Year | 2007 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Research on Language and Social Interaction |
| Volume | 40 |
| Number | 4 |
| Pages | 405–436 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1080/08351810701471401 |
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Abstract
In this article, I investigate how 2 young Tzotzil Mayan siblings playfully manipulate the sequential structure of adjacency pairs to align, to confront each other, and to challenge family roles and hierarchies. The young learners' intentional disruption reveals the early control of dialogic repetition typical of Mayan languages. More important, it illustrates the children's development of communicative competence as they reorganize greeting structures or reauthorize messages through frame shifts.
In the case of a greeting game, the siblings disrupt its inherent sequential structure using semantic counterpointing with different address terms. When conveying a question sent by an adult, the 4-year old playfully repeats it and recycles it across several turns in alignment with his younger brother and his grandfather. The subversion of the social organization of talk shows how the children interactively construct an emergent sibling culture that contests the social organization of the age-graded structure of the extended family.
The study contributes to the understanding of peer socialization in a small-scale society. One finds here how siblings' language play organizes and contests the social and moral order amidst everyday family life.
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