Thinking About Thinking: Learning How to Take Statements and Hold Beliefs

Speech act theory (Searle, 1969) is used to analyze the concepts for thinking about talk and thought—metalinguistic and metacognitive concepts—and the relations between them. We examine the relations between speech acts and their corresponding mental states and between speech acts linked in a discourse. We argue that interpreting the illocutionary force of another's speech act is parallel to determining the propositional attitude to one's own mental state. Thus, understanding how to take statements provides a model for how to hold beliefs. We then review what children learn about mental states and speech acts during their preschool years, and we consider what must be achieved in the school years. First, children have to learn how to interpret utterances and hold beliefs, and then they have to learn how to take objective statements as expressions of someone's belief. We conclude by considering how teachers might help children achieve these two ends.

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