Pragmatic development in children's telephone discourse

This study examined children's telephone discourse. The subjects were 20 children, five at each age of 2, 3, 4, and 5 years. Three telephone calls between each child and an adult were analyzed for opening sequences, answerer rules, turn‐taking, constructional units, conversational acts, closing sequence, and ability to take messages. Results showed developmental differences. However, mastery of discourse skills appeared only in response categories, and these occurred primarily at 4 and 5 years. Initiating behaviors were only beginning to emerge by 5 years. Also discussed are turn‐taking, quality, telephone discourse, contrasted with face‐to‐face discourse, and the telephone as a language eliciting procedure.