Collective constructionof children’s reasoningduring “philosophy for children” workshops

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN?

The philosophy for children (P4C) is an education program invented by

Matthew Lipman (Lipman, 1991) on the 1980’s. Inspired by John Dewey

(Dewey, 1902) philosophy, Lipman advanced that we could not became the fully

thinking citizens without some philosophy education. Lipman used the word

"reasonableness" as a necessery skill to atempt. The bene� ts of the program on

learning, cognitions, critical thinking are very large and visible quickly after the

program’s introduction in class. Furthermore of those advantages, the linguistic

construction of children dialogues during the P4C seems very di� erent than

during other lessons.

EXAMPLELou: well:: it was it’s quite nice ’cos like that // after we talk and we talk // and:: // well we’re

happy and uh //{mumble} she lent it me ’cos // like one day uh //{mumble} I went and

stayed at her house // and then uh how // she did lend me a game // and {inaudible}

they changed the bed // uh I slept right on the mattress // so // after {inaudible} slept

// in her bed // so after around uh dunno what time // uh // I was in the bed // and

{inaudible} got on in on the mattress

Teacher: but what did you get out of sharing, Lou, that’s the question {inaudible}

Lou: well {inaudible}

Teacher: so I can see you shared lots of things but:: // what was the point of it all?

Lou: it was nice // and uh when uh we when I got home // I was I was happy

Teacher: you were happy // right so the point was it made you happy

OBJECTIVES Our aim is to show and describe the speci� city of children’s reasoning

during the P4C activity.

DATADuring three years experimentation, we collected data in classes from

6 to 14 years old children in France. We have kept 19 videos of 1h.

METHODS To analyze the special character of P4C we adopted

The theory of speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969)

The interlocutory logic (Trognon, 1999)

The philosophy of pragmatism (Rorty, 1979)

We proceed to the linguistic analysis of videos' transcriptions and

annotations using those three theories. Our tool is ELAN Linguistic

Annotator software.

CONCLUSION The description of collec-

tive reasoning construc-

tion called philosopheme

is an important advance-

ment in children reaso-

ning comprehension.

The children capacity

of abstract thinking is

earlier than the most of

language acquisition

theories advanced. Inde-

pendently of children’s

age, even if the reaso-

ning results are different,

the same type of philo-

sophemes exists.

References :Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things

with Words. Cambridge: Paperback.

Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and Curri-

culum. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in

Education. New York: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press. Rorty, R. (1979). Philoso-

phy and the Mirror of Nature. New Jer-

sey: Princeton University Press. Searle,

J. R. (1969). Speech Acts. An essay

in the philosophy of language. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trognon, A. (1999). Eléments d’ana-

lyse interlocutoire. In M. Gilly, J. P. Roux,

& A. Trognon (Eds.), Apprendre dans

l’interaction (pp. 67–92). Nancy, Aix-

en-Provence: Presses Universitaires.

The Sixth International Conference ofthe German Cognitive Linguistics

September 30 to October 2, 2014 at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

TRUEcourageTRUEcourageTRUE

HAPPINESSTRUEHAPPINESSTRUE

deathcouragedeathcourage

GODcourageGODcouragelove

couragelovecourage

RESULTS

FLASHto downloadthe poster

Gabriela Fiema,Université Blaise Pascal,

Clermont-Ferrand, Francegabriela.� ema@univ-bpclermont.fr

http://philosophemes.univ-bpclermont.fr/

n This cognitive process can be constructed in different ways. So that we can have four main philosopheme’s types:

- conceptual philosopheme;

- assimilative philosopheme;

- cumulative philosopheme;

- embedded philosopheme.

Which one of them could be accomplished (contains

a concept) or not accomplished (without a concept).

The � rst character refers to the process of linguistic

construction. The second one refers to the results.

why is it good to SHARE?

what’s the point of sharing?

CUMULATIVE PHILOSOPHEME

Teacher Pupils

sharing is good

sharing = to be kind

sharing = to EXCHANGE

sharing = to avoid to be bored

sharing the game and the bad with a friend at her home

it makes happy

LEND the things when the friend come at my home

it’s good to share cos’ it’s polite

sharing games = discover new games

REFERENTS

LEND

EXCHANGE

Concept’s STAGESMIND’S OBJECTSWhat use is sharing?

PHILOSOPHEME is composed with referent, mind’s object and

concept, each one results from the common reasoning and inte-

raction during P4C.

REFERENT is the representation of an experience, something in the world

that is referred to by a linguistic sign. A given referent can refer to different

representations. These representations will be brought together during the

interlocution. A shared referent arises from explicit sharing (repeat or syno-

nym), which sets, over a certain number of speaking turns, the referential

basis for the collectively produced discourse.

Example: What is the point of sharing?

MIND’S OBJECT is an attempt to carry the discussion forward starting from

a shared referent. The ideas that are produced will form the material from

which the referent will give rise to a concept.

Example: Sharing makes happy

STAGE is materialised through a mind’s object that in� uences how the

reasoning is collectively constructed. The mind’s object is taken up several

times in the discussion and validated or invalidated by the interlocutors.

Example: Sharing = exchanging

CONCEPT is the result of the collective construction of the meaning of a

shared referent through the production of mind’s objects.

Example: Sharing = lending

The regularities exist in the philosophi-cal children’s conversations that we called

philosophemes. A philosopheme is a philosophi-cally conclusive piece of reasoning that delimits a conceptual � eld considered as having reached a su� cient degree of completion. It is characte-rised by a shared attempt to advance the de� nition of the shared referent through the interplay of ideas, and to tend towards truth. Thus the speech

acts that occur, in addition to their informative purpose, serve to validate or to invalidate, tosupport or to challenge.The philosopheme is constructed around a concept; it exploits ideas forming a chain of dis-cursive entities that are extensions of the starting referent. The philosopheme comprises argumen-tation and abstract reasoning. It is characterised by lexical shifts, repeated lexical items and new

lexical items. The philosopheme is a collective discursive construction that corresponds to a pro-cess that can translate “highs” and “lows” in the reasoning. A “high” is when a philosopheme is in action, and brings out ideas and conceptualisation.A “low” is when the philosophical reasoning comes to an end.