Mobilising recipiency: Child participation and ‘rights to speak’ in multi-party family interaction

► Examines a child's participation in multi-party family interaction. ► Describes how the child mobilises the recipiency and engagement of addressee(s). ► Discusses the notion of children's ‘rights to speak’ in interaction. ► Contributes to understandings about children's communicative competence. ► Identifies generic aspects of the management of multi-party interaction. This paper discusses a child's participation in multi-party family interaction. Drawing from video-recordings of a family Christmas event, we examine instances where a child produces an initiating action that is unsuccessful at first in gaining the recipiency of the addressee(s). We show how for the child a regular issue might be not simply pursuing a response, but more generally mobilising the adult addressee's recipiency and engagement. The analysis describes the methods by which the child attempts to mobilise recipiency, how these attempts are responded to by the adults in the interaction, and how the child pursues recipiency when it is not gained in the first instance. Drawing on these empirical findings we examine the notion of children's ‘rights to speak’ in interaction, in particular reconceptualising it the along the lines of ‘rights to engage’. The paper contributes to understandings about children's communicative competence, as well as identifying more generic aspects of the management of multi-party interaction.