Pragmatic aspects of the assessment of Australian Aboriginal children's language use

The assessment of the speech and language skills of children from nondominant cultural or linguistic backgrounds is a complex task. Australian Aboriginal children represent one such group. There are a number of factors that are likely to affect the assessment process, including the communication and interaction styles characteristic of Aboriginal culture. Whilst there is information in the literature describing these communication and interaction styles, there is no information about Aboriginal children's pragmatic skills, and how this is likely to affect the assessment process. The current study examines the pragmatic behaviours of Aboriginal children in different contexts, and over time. Subjects were 5 preschool-aged Aboriginal children. Subjects were observed in a play interaction in three different contexts; with a gender-matched peer, with an Aboriginal adult, and a non-Aboriginal adult. The subjects' pragmatic behaviours were measured using the Pragmatic Protocol (Prutting & Kirchner, 1987). Fewer numbers of inappropriate pragmatic behaviours were found in the peer interaction as compared with the interactions with the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal adults. No differences in the number of inappropriate pragmatic behaviours were found between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal adult contexts. The number of inappropriate behaviours declined over time for all contexts. The implications of the findings for the assessment of the speech and language skills of Australian. Aboriginal children are discussed.