ABSTRACT
Many children enter mainstream education with a history of having been read to while at home. Although many suppositions have been made as to what book-based interactions in the family might involve and what their significance might be, exactly what a given individual child’s very early reading history actually consists of has rarely been documented. Thus, while the development of oral language has been observed longitudinally from its first beginnings, this account pioneers a situation-specific approach to the analysis of emerging patterns of literacy. This has been achieved by a series of video-recordings made in the home environment of one British family, comprising mother, father, son and daughter, where both parents have been educated to university level. The recordings are of parent-infant exchanges between the ages of 9 and 27 months based around a joint book-reading experience, the book being either a children’s picturebook or illustrated story. The aim of this work has been to understand, taking linguistic behaviour as the starting-point and using appropriately developed analytical tools, something of what book-based interactions involve. Evolutionary processes and the developmental significance of early reading have been of major concern. However, as the number of subjects of this study are small, its terms of reference restricted and the empirical evidence limited to what happens in just one family, the discussion which follows must be read for what it is – evolving out of single case study example.
