“What does it say about it?”: Doing reading and doing writing as part of family mealtime

Abstract

How children acquire knowledge about and use written language has been examined in a range of disciplines or fields. While formal education settings provide instruction for children to develop literacy, support occurs during everyday activities in the family home. This chapter examines a number of extended sequences of talk during one breakfast of an Australian family comprising the mother and the father and their five children. The interactions were video recorded and then transcribed using conversation analysis conventions. This chapter focuses on how the family members deploy interactional resources to support access to the text of a bookclub brochure, assess the appropriateness of the books for individual family members, and fill in the forms to order books. Analysis shows how the multiparty context and the incipient agenda of purchasing a book from the bookclub brochure are consequential for when and how literacy events are accomplished. Second, analysis shows how the provision of assistance with literacy practices is accomplished interactionally. Also identified in the analysis is the way in which literacy events happen ‘on the hop’ with a shifting in and out of other activities. The chapter contributes understandings about how family members accomplish reading and writing interactionally during an ordinary everyday family occasion, having breakfast.