ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have discussed how the English language represents chil dren as a distinctive social group. This third part of the book is concerned with what ‘being a child’ might mean in relation to childly ways of using the English language. Age-grading is an area of sociolinguistics which is receiving increasing attention, as one of the social categories by which we intuitively classify speakers, given the expectations we have of ‘characteristic linguistic behaviours which are appropriate to and typical of the different stages in the speaker’s lifespan’ (Romaine 1984: 104). One of the considera tions for research in this field identified by Coupland et al. (1993) is ‘ageappropriate behaviour’, including linguistic behaviour, and the authors raise the questions ‘how (when and why) is age-appropriateness implied or incul cated prescriptively (“act your age”), such as in relation to moral responsibil ity, health, sexuality, appearance, social control, maturation, achievement?’ (p. 289). Although these authors identify such considerations particularly in respect of older people, they reflect similar social preoccupations to those illustrated in Part I, about what children should do and should refrain from doing.
