The collaborative construction of non-serious episodes of interaction by non-speaking children with cerebral palsy and their peers

Inequality in communicative resources available to non-speaking children with cerebral palsy in comparison with their 'naturally' speaking co-participants has material consequences for the ways in which face-to-face interaction is organized. Analyses of interaction involving non-speaking children with physical disability and speaking adults has often interpreted the patterns of interaction observed as indicative of non-speaking children's apparent passivity in interaction. Research concerned with these children's interactions with their peers has shown evidence of non-speaking children's active engagement in episodes of interaction characterized by, for example, shared laughter and heightened affect. The analysis presented here utilizes the principles and practices of Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine how non-speaking children with cerebral palsy and their peers bring about and organize episodes of non-serious interaction. In so doing the analysis reveals how non-speaking children are demonstrably active in developing the interaction as non-serious, and how both children collaborate in constituting the non-speaking child as playfully naughty.