Development of Communicative Intention in Children Aged 9 to 24 Months

Abstract

This study seeks to identify and recognize a clear and precise pattern in the development of the intentions children use to communicate, since these constitute the basic abilities of language. To this end, it examines the development of these abilities in children between 9 and 24 months of age belonging to two different contexts: a central urban context and a peripheral urban context.

The theoretical basis of this research is drawn from Halliday’s work (1982) on the study and analysis of communicative intention. Halliday proposes the concept of basic functions of language, comprising the instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative functions, which become more complex in their evolution and give rise to new functions known as pragmatic and mathetic.

A combined quantitative-qualitative approach was adopted. The quantitative methodology is framed within a quasi-experimental model. For this purpose, a population of 30 infants between 9 and 24 months of age was selected from two different sectors of the city of San Salvador de Jujuy. In order to form the two samples, the origin of the children living with their families was analyzed; that is, their belonging either to a central urban context, Sample A—nursery schools—or to a peripheral urban context, Sample B—the Hospital Playroom. The study lacked a control group. Within the qualitative methodologies, an ethnographic approach was used, insofar as it offers a comprehensive dimension of the development of communicative intention and is articulated with the quantitative methodology also employed.

After studying communicative intentions in young children, the study concludes that there is agreement between the appearance and evolution of the basic linguistic functions described theoretically and those observed in the research. In both samples, there is a predominance of the basic instrumental, regulatory, and interactional functions over the remaining ones. In all the children, presymbolic communicative behaviors appear during the personal function, with presymbolic gestures and preverbal vocalizations that extend beyond what is expected during the child’s first year of life.

A predominance of the functional uses of language known as “protoimperatives” was found, insofar as they are defined as direct attempts to obtain the adult’s attention toward an object or event. Protoimperative uses develop mainly during the first sixteen months of life. The personal function appears as a hinge between the first three functions and the increasing complexity of the later ones. These results coincide with the language known as “protodeclaratives”, at which point it becomes evident that children attempt to get the adult to do something.

The discussion focuses on complex axes related to the meaning that language has for the caregiver—mother or teacher—the place assigned to language, and its limited relation to the developmental character of the child’s communicative intentions.