Interpersonal meanings in small group classroom interaction: a young child's discoursal journey

Combining Hallidayan accounts of “the interpersonal function” in meaning-making with a Bakhtin-derived interpretation of voice and genre in dialogue, this study examines one 7-year old's shifting patterns of participation in small group interaction over a 5-month period. The analyses chart the child's developing capacity to influence the group's agenda in ways which seem educationally empowering, with contrastive evidence of his peers' different discoursal strategies. Fuller participation is equated with a repertoire of explicit interpersonal cues, a diminishing reliance on prosody to communicate interpersonal intention, and the appropriation and blending of a range of classroom and “community” genres. It is argued that sustained experience of small group interaction in a friendship grouping provided opportunities for these children to articulate personal perspective, to make meanings explicit, and to experiment with voice and genre in ways which supported their learning and social growth