Komunikacinė vaikų kompetencija: oficialiojo ir familiariojo registrų mandagumo žymekliai
The Communicative Competence of Children: Politeness Markers of Formal and Informal Registers

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the acquisition of politeness marked among Lithuanian children aged 3 to 7. It analyses children’s ability to use different registers and politeness markers, i.e., politeness phrases, address forms, and requests, based on a social situation. The aim of the research is to investigate the expression of politeness markers of the Lithuanian children aged 3 to 7 in different social situations and to discuss their ability to use registers on different levels of formality. The hypothesis has been proposed that the children aged 3 to 4 years have already acquired sufficient communicative competence to use different politeness markers and registers. The research data consists of a corpus (~ 30,000 words) of conversations of similar age children recorded in role-plays and represents formal and informal linguistic situations. The language of 77 children has been recorded. The main findings of the research support the hypothesis: depending on the game situation, the children used formal/informal greetings/ sayings goodbye and other politeness phrases, formal/informal address forms. The features of stylistic variation and tendency for children to use direct requests in both formal and informal social situations are also discussed in the analysis of conversations.

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