Mutual apprentices: The making of parenthood and childhood in family dinner conversations

Starting from a view of socialization as a bidirectional process, the paper contributes to the field of language socialization in detailing how conver sational interaction provides tools for parents and children to collaborati vely construe a sense of moral meaning and social order. The paper illustra tes both the agentive participation of Italian children in dialogue on norm ative behavior and ways that their discursive contributions shape the struc ture and thematic content of parental talk that ensues. Parental responses to children's normative transgressions socialize them also into the languag e of transgression. The children we studied supply and elicit accounts from others that attempt to justify or explain transgression. Copyright (C) 200 1 S. Karger AG, Basel.