DILBILIM ARASTIRMALARI, vol.32, no.1, pp.5-16, 2021 (Scopus)
In the present study, the content of private speech that Turkish
monolingual children produced was investigated. Data were obtained from 28
children between the ages of 3;1 and 5;7 in three age groups while they were
playing with a wooden toy house and its figures. The content categories of
Winsler et al. (2003) were used in this study with a slight alteration in one of
the categories due to the nature of the data. The results obtained in this study
presented both similarities and differences with the existing literature. Children
in all age groups produced the highest amount of private speech in Description
of the Environment and Task category. There were no private speech utterances
in Motivational/Evaluative Statements in children’s private speech. The results
suggest that planning, problem solving and self-regulatory functions of private
speech are represented in its content. In addition, linguistic and pragmatic
features of social speech are observed in the content and language of private
speech. Keywords: Private speech, planning, self-regulation, functions of language