L’ÉVOLUTION DE LA COMPÉTENCE PRAGMATIQUE CHEZ DES ENFANTS FRANCOPHONES ALGÉRIENS : ACQUISITION DES RÈGLES DE POLITESSE LINGUISTIQUE
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE IN FRANCOPHONE ALGERIAN CHILDREN: ACQUISITION OF THE RULES OF LINGUISTIC POLITENESS

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the development of pragmatic competence in Algerian French-speaking children aged three to five years through the acquisition of linguistic politeness rules. It offers two main theoretical contributions. First, it applies Kerbrat-Orecchioni’s extended interactional model, jointly integrating Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) and Face Flattering Acts (FFAs). This approach provides a more comprehensive account of politeness as a relational and co-constructed practice than the classical Brown and Levinson model, which focuses exclusively on threat mitigation. Second, the study proposes an original developmental distinction between reproductive politeness – characterized by the imitation of socialized forms, limited to specific act types and centered on the child’s own intentions – and adaptive politeness – marked by the diversification of mitigation strategies, their extension to multiple act types, and a growing awareness of the interlocutor’s face. The analysis is based on a longitudinal corpus of sixteen natural interactions involving the same six preschool children (three girls and three boys) recorded in a private school in Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria, at ages three and five. The interactions were transcribed according to the ICOR conventions and analyzed using combined qualitative and quantitative methods (inter-rater agreement: 91%, Cohen’s kappa = 0.86). Results show that at age three, unmitigated FTAs strongly predominate (78.55%, N = 303), mitigation is rare (9.24%) and restricted mainly to orders, while FFAs remain marginal (12.21%) and largely indirect. At age five, unmitigated FTAs decrease significantly (59.15%, N = 306), mitigated FTAs double (19.60%), and FFAs increase to 21.25%, becoming more explicit and autonomous. Children also diversify their mitigation strategies (modalizers, apologies, justifications) and extend them to new threatening acts (refusals, interruptions, prohibitions). These findings, interpreted in light of theory of mind development (Premack & Woodruff, 1978; Veneziano, 2015), provide original empirical data on pragmatic acquisition in a plurilingual Algerian context and open promising perspectives for future comparative research.

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