Young children’s use of laughter as a means of responding to questions

Techniques of Conversation Analysis are employed to reach a better understanding of the interactional competencies of young children. Drawing on audio-video recordings of mother-child interactions, this paper examines laughter by young children after questions by the child’s mother. It is argued that by laughing the child is showing an orientation to the conditional relevance of a second pair part of an adjacency pair on the production of a first pair part. It is argued that possible bases for young children using laughter after a question are the child’s inability to answer a question in full, and their unwillingness to do so. The children studied are in the second year of life and are making the transition from the single to multiword stage. All participants are native speakers of English and speak English throughout the recordings.