Saturday, October 14, 2006

Five-year-old struggles with the concept of a speech act

"Now you close your eyes and when I say 'okay' you can open them, okay? But not now. Even though I just said 'okay'. And not just then, either. Only when I say 'okay'. But not now! That wasn't the proper 'okay': that was just me saying 'okay' -- and so was that. You can't open them until I say 'okay', but not that one just there either... I think I need a new word."

2 Comments:

Arbitrista said...

wow that's funny :)

StyleyGeek said...

I thought so too. Which meant that conversation was followed with a few minutes of insistent: "Why are you laughing? Are you laughing at me? Did I say something funny? Mummy says it isn't nice to laugh at other people."