Susan Hoyle & Carolyn Temple Adger (eds.), Kids talk: Strategic language use in later childhood. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xv, 290. Hb $75.00, pb $35.00.

Abstract

This is a book containing reports of original research on children aged somewhere between seven and eighteen. All the contributors are based in the US, and with one exception all the thirteen studies were also carried out in the US; the exception, by Marilyn Merritt, also incorporates material from work which she has done in various parts of the African continent. Taken together, the studies cover many aspects of these young people's lives – home, school, playground, voluntary group meetings and work schemes. In most cases, one is struck by the extensive fieldwork which lies behind these research reports. Long periods of observation seem to be commonplace; and the efforts are impressive because, as Shirley Brice Heath points out in her chapter, obtaining naturalistic data from young people of this age can pose problems regarding both access and quality of data. In almost all cases, a corpus of audio or audio-visual recordings forms a basis for at least part of the analysis, though chapters are generally written so as to focus on only a small set of conversation extracts – a strategy which often does little justice to the range of data gathered within the research.