Abstract
Semantic-pragmatic strategies implemented by both therapists and parents are designed to remediate conversational impairments in young children with disabilities, but have been found to have varying degrees of success. This chapter employs relevance theory to understand the intentions and processing implications of using imitation, expansion, cloze questions, and follow-in wh-questions in naturally occurring conversations between adults and children with language delays, and thereby sheds light on the causes of this variability. The chapter also provides an overview of theoretical approaches to semantic-pragmatic disorders and the challenges of defining diagnostic categories, arguing that an ‘emergent’ account of pragmatic disorder can allow pragmatic impairments to be seen as the consequence of restricted resources that the strategies are designed to expand.
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Notes
- 1.
There is a large number of studies that appeal to an ordinary notion of relevance in the literature on learning of all kinds. These studies, quite reasonably, suggest that learners will learn what is relevant to them. Unhelpfully, since the development of relevance theory, many of these studies have started referencing the theory without justification as if appeal to a notion of relevance is all that is required for research to be a test/use of Relevance Theory.
- 2.
This may result in the creation of deceptively large vocabularies of words that are only seen in this format and are not used more widely for communication.
- 3.
All the data in this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, come from Wong (2012). All the children are of preschool age (between 2 and 6 years) but we have not provided either the age of each child or their diagnosis. This is deliberate as we are confident that it is not relevant to the analysis, and, as in Wong (2012), wish to encourage approaches to therapy that put the focus on the child’s abilities and needs rather than their diagnosis (assuming they have one).
- 4.
All the examples quoted here are from mothers. We could have used some neutral term such as ‘caregiver’, but decided that it was honest to acknowledge their role as mothers.
- 5.
Wong (2012) also includes a qualitative analysis of two children, one from each of the two studies to illustrate the children’s emerging ability to engage in joint activities through language.
- 6.
There are presumably some levels of compromise which do prevent relevance processing, but they are likely to be levels where consciousness itself is in question. Certainly, our clinical experience suggests that children with extremely high levels of disability are capable of drawing inferences and processing for relevance.
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Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Billy Clark for helpful comments on a draft of this chapter and to the children, parents and therapists at the Champion Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand for participation in the studies which provided the data used here.
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Foster-Cohen, S., Wong, T.P. (2017). Early Intervention at the Interface: Semantic-Pragmatic Strategies for Facilitating Conversation with Children with Developmental Disabilities. In: Depraetere, I., Salkie, R. (eds) Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32247-6_10
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