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In:Constructing Collectivity: 'We' across languages and contexts
Edited by Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 239] 2014
► pp. 227–244

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Children’s use of English we in a primary school in Wales

 | The University of Waikato, New Zealand
Published online: 27 February 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.239.15bat
Children have their own culture (Corsaro 1985; Corsaro and Eder 1990) where they initiate rules and make these rules legal in the co-construction of their everyday lives (Bateman 2011; Cobb-Moore, Danby and Farrel 2008; Tholander and Cromdal 2011). Recent research demonstrates that children use the term we in their play in order to establish friendships (Bateman 2012). The children’s use of the term we is now further explored to reveal its referential flexibility and how young children gain intersubjectivity regarding who the collection of people are when we is asserted. This is accomplished through an investigation into the positioning of the collective proterm we and the tied action of an assertion of we with a category bound activity.
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