Leveraging the Occasion to Resist: A Young Child's Noncompliant Responses to Requests for Actions

This paper investigates how a 2-year-old child grapples with caregivers' requests for action (‘directives’). Video recordings, totaling 7.5 hours, from a trilingual (Italian-Mandarin-English) household were examined using Conversation Analysis. Close examination revealed that the young child, during the age of 2;0–2;5 years, may not immediately respond with negation tokens such as “no” and “I don't want.” Instead, he displays preoccupation with an ongoing or an alternative activity, or diverts the caregiver's attention through accounting, summons, and counter-requests. These practices demonstrate the child's ability to fit his responses to the occasion, foreshadowing and legitimizing his noncompliance. However, the outcome of these noncompliance attempts depends on interactional efforts from both parties. These findings showcase early pragmatic competence in formulating dispreferred responses, highlighting the emerging social skill of children, and contributing to the growing body of research on early social understanding.