ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some examples of casual conversation involving children to illustrate how they, like other social actors, use such talk 'as a resource to negotiate social identity and interpersonal relations'. It suggests that children provide a particular illustration of the nature of the interplay in such negotiations between the possibilities of agency, on the one hand, and the constraints and enablements of social structures, on the other. Some examples of the children's self-identifications and self-descriptions were presented to illustrate how they align themselves discursively with different groups, as well as maintaining a unique 'I', in the context of rapid changes in the corporeal self and differentiated status associated with the different ages of childhood. The chapter suggests that the children's representation of the world and their experience in it has many features in common with the adult equivalents, but also reveals a perspective which derives from having relatively little power or status.
