Recipient design and collaboration in language socialization

Abstract

When people participate in a special event such as a religious ritual, they may need support to perform the appropriate actions specific to the ritual. This study adopts the methodology of multimodal conversation analysis to investigate how language socialization is achieved differently depending on the recipient and the agent and how adults of different social roles collaboratively socialize a child participant. The analysis of the linguistic and embodied behaviours directed towards child and adult participants during a Japanese household Shinto ritual reveals that the priest’s style of speech becomes informal, less formulaic, more involved, and more personal when directed towards child participants compared with those towards adults. Shifts in the membership category are also observed, which suggest that the priest assumes the role of a caregiver in addition to being a religious authority. The parent also contributes to the socialization of a child participant, but not in the same way as the priest. While the priest has the rights to give verbal instructions, the parent makes physical corrections to the child before the priest. Through analyses of multiple recipients and agents, this study contributes to the understanding of the intricacies of language socialization.