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In:Acquisition of Korean: The state of the art
Edited by Soonja Choi
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 36] 2026
► pp. 227–262

Chapter 7
The relationship between mother–child collaborative communication and the development of social understanding

Two case studies

 | Sungkyunkwan University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This chapter examines how collaborative communication acts (CCAs) during mother–child book-reading interaction relate to social understanding (SU) such as Theory of Mind and emotional comprehension in Korean preschoolers. Following a review of pragmatic and sociocultural theories of language, this study conducts qualitative analyses contrasting two mother — child dyads with different SU levels. The analysis covers both the degree of thematic coherence at the macro level and CCAs in individual turns, including language-specific mental state terms and modal suffixes in Korean. The dyad with the high-SU child engages in richer CCAs — scaffolding, clarifications, elaborations — while the dyad with the low-SU child relies on procedural, directive communication. Integrating theoretical frameworks (Vygotsky, 1978; Grice, 1975; Tomasello, 2014), the chapter underscores how language shapes social cognition. It demonstrates the value of systematic, qualitative CCA analysis and concludes with implications for culturally responsive practices and arguments for the co-constructed nature of SU.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The sociocultural foundations of pragmatic development and social understanding
    • 2.1Core theories of pragmatic competence
    • 2.2From speech acts to collaborative communication
    • 2.3The role of mental-state language and narrative co-construction in communication
    • 2.4Cultural-linguistic variation in language socialization
    • 2.5The discourse-pragmatic features of Korean and language acquisition
  • 3.A comparative analysis of collaborative communication in Korean mother–child dyads
    • 3.1Study design and data for the present study
    • 3.2Transcription and segmentation procedures
    • 3.3Classification of discourse interaction
      • 3.3.1Thematic coherence
      • 3.3.2CCA analysis of utterances in individual turns
      • 3.3.3Analysis of Mental State Language (MSL)
    • 3.4High social understanding dyad: Transcript and analysis
      • 3.4.1Transcript of the high-SU dyad’s interaction
      • 3.4.2Analysis of the high SU dyad’s interaction
        • 3.4.2.1Thematic coherence
        • 3.4.2.2CCA analysis of individual turns
        • 3.4.2.3Mental State Language
      • 3.4.3Summary of the high-SU dyad’s interaction
    • 3.5Low social understanding dyad: Transcript and analysis
      • 3.5.1Transcript of the low-SU dyad
      • 3.5.2Analysis of the low-SU dyad’s interaction
        • 3.5.2.1Thematic coherence
        • 3.5.2.2CCA analysis of individual turns
        • 3.5.2.3Mental state language (MSL)
      • 3.5.3Summary of the low SU dyad’s interaction
    • 3.6Summary: Divergent interactional styles
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Scaffolding and pragmatic competence as co-constructors of social understanding
    • 4.2Pragmatics as a mediator for language-specific socialization in Korean
    • 4.3Implications, limitations, and future directions
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
References (83)
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