Discussione and Friendship: Socialization Processes in the Peer Culture of Italian Nursery School Children

This paper addresses the lack of theoretical work on young children in sociology by presenting an interpretive approach to childhood socialization. This approach extends traditional views of human development by demonstrating that socialization is a collective process that occurs in a social, rather than in a private, realm. To illustrate the interpretive approach, we present a multilayered analysis of two phases of a lengthy verbal routine discussionn) among Italian nursery school children. The analysis demonstrates how (1) the routine of discussion is produced sociolinguistically; (2) the production of the routine builds on and extends shared knowledge basic to peer culture; and (3) the children, in the course of producing the routine, attempt to deal with aspects of the world they do not fully grasp and, thereby, move closer toward appropriating certain elements of the adult culture.