“Communicative Participation” as a Way of Facilitating and Ascertaining Communicative Outcomes

Abstract

In this article, communicative participation is developed as a unit of analysis for gaining information about children's communication in everyday contexts. A construct is proposed that consists of five interrelated layers: lifeworld participation, participant structure, participant stance, participant accommodation, and participant resources. Although each of these five dimensions can be pulled apart for the sake of analysis, their impact becomes evident when viewed in relation to each other as they constitute the greater communicative context. Given that communication is central to how people go about building their social worlds, managing their lives, and constructing their identities, communicative participation is a relevant framework for documenting the outcomes of language intervention.