ABSTRACT
In this chapter, my aim is to explore further the concept of social domains, as outlined in Chapter 5, in analysing extracts from children's conversations. I want to suggest, following on from the ideas presented in Chapter 6, that the children's negotiations of their experiences and relationships through language have features which in some ways distinguish them from adults, as inhabitants of the social world, while in other ways these negotiations and the language resources used in them are not distinctive to children. In other words, the 'blurred boundaries' identified in Chapter 7 are porous in both directions. A crucial difference, I shall suggest, between what adults and children can do with language in interactions is their respective locations in the domains of the social world.
