Abstract

This paper explores the topic of children having restricted rights to engage in conversation with adults in multiparty interactions. Drawing on the principles of conversation analysis, and 7 h of video-recorded Finnish and English naturally occurring in-car family interactions, our focus is on moments when a child summons the driver while the driver is driving and having a conversation with another passenger. We suggest that the composition and position of the child’s summons relative to other ongoing conversations play a crucial role in whether the child receives a response, or whether the summons will be ignored or suspended by the driver. Positioning and designing summonses in different ways is a resource for the child to exert agency and mobilize a response from the driver to different degrees, which affects the child’s likelihood of entering in interaction with the driver at that moment. The analysis suggests that children cannot be a priori determined to have (or not to have) certain kinds of speaking rights; instead, the “right” to engage in a conversation is contingent and situated, (re)negotiated and accomplished in situ. Finally, summons-answer sequences provide adults a resource for socializing children into the regularities of turn allocation and turn distribution.