How do children go from being people who talk at you to people who talk with you?

Adults use an impressive toolkit of communicative resources to coordinate in everyday conversational. By the time American English-speaking children begin school, they have used conversational interaction to master many of the fundamentals of their language. They are not, however, masters of conversational interaction.

My research explores the acquisition and integration of linguistic and non-linguistic elements of discourse-pragmatics from infancy to adulthood. I treat language learning as a social phenomenon, necessarily contextualized in dynamic cultural and interpersonal aims and expectations. I work to understand how interlocutors of all ages leverage their speech, voice, and body to take stance, organize dialogue, and co-create conversation.