Situation and task in young children's talk∗

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Abstract
Two studies were conducted in which the speech of 3‐to 4‐year‐old, black Head Start children was compared in two situations; a trip to a local supermarket and discussion about the trip upon their return to the classroom. Comparisons were carried out using a method of speech‐act analysis developed by Dore (1977) to supplement more standard psycholinguistic measures of language development. Results of the first study showed that speech in the two situations was markedly different, but that differences appeared at different levels of data aggregation depending upon the age of the children. Differences were located in the frequency with which different speech acts were used in the two settings, not intra‐speech act characteristics of talk. A shift in quality of talk between the supermarket and classroom situations was not obtained in the second study. Discussion of the two studies centers on the way in which participants’ constructions of the task constrain their talk and on the inferences regarding language use that different situations make in speech.