Children's meta-pragmatic abilities and the identification of polite and impolite requests

Abstract

The present study investigates two aspects of 5- and 7-year-old chil dren's meta-pragmatic knowledge. The first is the ability to attribute polite and impolite requests according to degrees of perceived famil iarity among participants in a verbal exchange. The second is the representational explicitness of the pragmatic rule involved in the task. Thirty-two children of two age groups participated in the experi ment. Results showed a developmental difference both in the attribu tion task and in metapragmatic awareness, confirming an age-related increase in the ability to establish representational links among prag matic procedures.