Interactional and cultural shaping of appetite: Children's talk about food taste during meal and snack time in Japanese preschool

This paper employs multimodal conversation analysis to explore young children's talk about food in Japanese preschools during meal and snack time. Based on video-recordings of naturally occurring interaction in two preschools, it focuses on four episodes in which children initiated assessments of food taste to teachers or peers. The analysis examines the communicative resources (e.g., lexicon, gaze, gesture) that children deploy in setting-up, initiating, carrying out, and closing down assessment activities; the ways that recipients respond; and how children respond when they do not receive uptake. Analysis of peer interaction, a sub-set of the current analysis, reveals how assessment activities can be a site of (dis)agreement, negotiation, and even conflict. The paper builds on prior work on interaction and socialization into food taste, stance, and relationships in ways that provide a deeper understanding of assessments of food taste in preschool and children's participation in commensal activities.