On „brama pupowa” and „pryskaczka”, or how children speak to themselves

Abstract

Apart from communicating with the outside world, children at kindergarten and early primary school often “speak” to themselves and for themselves. The present article attempts to reflect upon children’s speech in its linguistic dimension, aiming at isolating the characteristic features of speaking to oneself based on a few recorded children’s plays. The results of the analysis demonstrate that there exists a separate style of “speaking to oneself”. The objective of internal communication is not much different from the traditional interaction – it does have its sender and receiver. However, it is peculiar since the interaction between these two persons is generated in a single mind. The research corpus has been analysed on the level of lexis, morphology, syntax and discourse. As a result, idiosyncratic features of a child’s speaking to oneself have been isolated, such as spontaneity of speech, violation of coherence of speech, numerous micro-topics of play, ambiguity of the message when heard “on the outside”, creativity and dramatization.

Keywords

• child’s language
• speaking to oneself
• style
• egocentric speak