European Journal of Psychology of Education 2006, Vol. XXI, nU, 453-466 2006, l.S.P.A.

'The clouds are alive because they fly in the air as if they were birds': A re-analysis of what children say and mean in clinical interviews in the work of Jean Piaget
Niklas Pramling Goteborg University, Sweden

This article is about the contributions children make in clinical interviews. This issue is studied by re-analysing a selection of the empirical excerpts used by Piaget in his seminal book The Child's Conception of the World. The focus is on how children use language non-literally, and especially on how they use meta-communicative markers ('as if, 'like', etc.) when communicating with the interviewer. Considered in relation to Piaget's own analysis, this alternative view has important consequences for how one understands the children 's answers, and, as a consequence, strikingly different pictures ofthe children 's abilities and competences emerge. In Piaget's analysis, the children are understood as revealing their 'conceptions' and as making claims about reality, for instance, that a watch like a human being 'knows' something, or that thoughts are actually 'in front of you' as some kind of physical entities when you think. In the alternative interpretation, suggested in this article, the children's answers can be read as attempts to communicate and to make themselves understood in a relevant manner. One of the means they use for achieving shared understandings is through meta-communicative markers. Read in this way, the children appear communicatively competent.

Introduction There is a lengthy and extensive research literature on children's understanding that originates in the work of Jean Piaget. For example, there has been much debate on the position of the child in the interview situation, what the child really understands, knows, and speaks about. Perhaps the most classic work in this line of research is Margaret Donaldson's (1978)
The research reported here has been funded by The Swedish Research Council through a grant to the Network for sociocultural studies (NSKS). I wish to thank professor Roger Saljo for his invaluable help with writing this article, including checking the empirical excerpts analysed against their French original wordings. I also wish to thank professor Michele Grossen for kindly translating the abstract to French.

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book Children's Minds. She showed how slightly redesigning the task or situation had decisive importance for what the child was able to achieve. The interview situation is highly sensitive. Donaldson's contributions were largely anticipated by Karsten Hundeide's (1977) book Piaget i kritisk lys [Piaget in Critical Light]. Among other things, he argued for a critical distinction between 'competence' and 'communicative orientation'. In terms of'communicative orientation', the child's answers could be considered not as outcomes of an inner mental structure, but as the way the child understands the question and the situation from out of certain premises. He also claimed that whether a 'problem' or a 'question' can be connected to a practical experience of the child or not, is decisive for what the child (and in general, people) can manage. Moreover, in a later text, Hundeide (1985, p. 310) argued for the importance - for analysts and participants alike - of "identifying the tacit assumptions or expectations that create and define the problem". What tends to be overlooked, he continues, is "the fact that problems only exist in relation to a background or expectations that are usually taken for granted" (loc. cit.). Hundeide's point is further that in order to arrive at 'the correct answer', one needs to be in the 'right' position. This means that in order to give the expected answer, one must 'see' the problem in a certain way, including, I would like to emphasise, to know in which terms to speak of the phenomenon under discussion. According to Hundeide's analysis of Piagetian type questions, "the experimenter is inviting the person [i.e., the child] to adopt a particular position from which the correct solution to the problem becomes unlikely" (p. 317; italics omitted). Hundeide (1985) in addition makes the point that the assumptions (and thus the position) of the child may be markedly different from the interviewer's point of view. Hence, the child's competence will to large extent be a question of how she is positioned in discourse. In contributing to this literature, I will argue that it is of interest and importance to study how the interlocutors give 'cues' or 'markers' to how they understand what they speak about, and, as I will argue, including at a meta-level their own way of speaking. More recently, Aronsson and Hundeide (2002, p. 174) re-examined children's responses to 'examination questions', and proposed that children's 'immature' answers could be seen "in terms of their sociability rather than in terms of their default qualities" . That is, they argue that the answers children give in, for example, Piagetian 'clinical interviews', instead as "mirror reflections of their spontaneous" and erroneous "thinking" (loc. cit.), could be seen in terms of a 'relational rationality'. According to the latter, the child's concern may not be to simply state facts and being logically consistent, but with "keeping social relations going" (p. 183): achieving mutual understanding, be a participant, and align with the interviewer. In a commentary to Aronsson and Hundeide's (2002) article. Wells (2002, p. 192) argues that a 'relational rationality' "is a sine qua non for conversation" at large "to proceed", and should thus not be seen as in opposition to a 'scientific rationality'. Instead he proposes that focus should be put on the purposes of the activities in which the 'evaluative questions' are posed to children. Wells (2002, p. 189) concludes, "children's inappropriate behavior might perhaps be better and more parsimoniously explained in terms of their incomplete grasp of the genre of conversation that is appropriate for the practice in which they are being asked to engage"; or alternatively, "that they have not yet achieved the stage of development at which the particular genre of question and answer assumed by these activities is typically mastered" (Wells, 2002, p. 191). In the background to these kinds of texts, one finds the question of what children are able to do, what their competences are. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to this literature, but by taking a different route, studying the manners in which children provide perspectives on what they are saying. The question asked is whether there are indications in the children's answers that imply that they are using language 'non-literally'. If they do use language in such a way, this would have serious implications for this line of research and the conclusions drawn about the children's understanding. Using language 'non-literally' When confronted with something unclear or for which we as yet lack a terminology, we

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speak of it in other, more familiar, terms. This general principle goes for individual leaming as well as for collective knowledge formation in science (Keller, 2002). To make sense of phenomena in this manner means to use language in a 'transferred' or 'non-literal' sense. This means that terms are used to speak about something else than what they normally or conventionally apply to. In fact, this is our basic way of making sense of our worid. This is a way for learners to extend their knowledge on the basis of what they already know. One way for the analyst to conceptualize how we conceive of something in terms of something partly else and more familiar, is to say that we make sense of and communicate about our world through metaphoric relations (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). That we do so is perhaps most easily seen when learners are confronted with abstract and/or complex phenomena, which typically is the case with scientific knowledge. Two brief examples would be children trying to make sense of the ozone layer in terms of a 'blanket' (Cameron, 2002) and scientists explaining genetics in terms such as 'code', 'letters', and 'translation' (Knudsen, 2003). However, in a leaming perspective, this way of making sense opens up for intricate communicative and cognitive difficulties. If using something to convey and communicate something else, the learner needs to identify for others as well as for herself, the relation between one and the other. This is to say that qualifying one's way of speaking becomes important. To qualify one's own utterances can be done in a variety of ways. The present analysis will focus on one such way, the use of verbal markers (Goatly, 1997), such as 'similar to', 'a kind of, 'like', 'as if, 'as it were'. To use these kinds of expressions is here seen as marking out that one's communication is not meant as a reality claim, but as saying that what is being spoken about could, given certain qualifications, be spoken about in terms of these other words which literally or conventionally do not apply. In the present article, the phenomena that the children are asked about eoncem scientific phenomena (e.g., where rain comes from). The empirical material for the analysis consists of the abundance of excerpts of children's reasoning reported by Piaget in his book The Child's Conception of the world. All the empirical excerpts in Piaget's book have been gone through systematically, focusing on instances where the children (a) qualify their utterances, and (b) use language non-literally. The article is structured in the following way. Transcription and translation of the children's answers are briefly considered. Then follows an analysis of sections where the children qualify their answers in different ways. This is followed by analyses of other instances where the children appear to use language 'non-literally'. Finally, the implications of the findings for our view of children's abilities and competences are discussed. Transcription and translation In analysing the empirical excerpts, the English translation has been used as text. This may in itself be a problem that it is important to be aware of Every translation is a kind of transformation (cf Eco, 2001; see also, Schaffner, 2004); and what is changed in a translation may be precisely the metaphorical quality of the utterance'. To make sure that the analytical points made are not an effect of the translation, the analysed excerpts have been checked against the original French text (Piaget, 1926/1938). Information given in the transcriptions should be read as follows. (5; 7) means 5 years, 7 month old ehild. The words in italics are the child's, and the rest are the researcher's words. "All the words quoted are exactly as they were spoken. Inverted commas mark the beginning and end of a conversation in which no omission has been made" (Piaget, 1926/1951, p. 39). How transcription was done is not reported in the book. But I build my analysis on the transcriptions that exist, which are the same ones that Piaget himself makes his analysis on. A more detailed transcription might possibly have pointed even more to how the children mark out their communication, as I will argue that they do. A re-analysis of Piaget's empirical material

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"The subject of this investigation", Piaget (1926/1951) writes at the beginning of his book The Child's Conception ofthe World, "is as follows: What conceptions ofthe world does the child naturally form at the different stages of its development?" (p. 1). The book may be seen as a work on how children's reasoning differs from that of adults'. One way of looking at Piaget's contribution is to say that he, rather than simply regarding children's answers as wrong, realized that their expressions could be analysed as reasonable from certain premises and experiences^. Thus, a central idea in Piaget is that it is possible to make sense of children's attempts at making sense. This is a realization that was to have importance for psychology and education (Beilin, 1992; cf Bmner, 1997). The Child's Conception ofthe World deals with children's understanding of a variety of phenomena, for example: thought, dreams, rain, and even reality as such. Piaget's work is tremendously rich (not least in excerpts from children's reasoning, explaining, describing), but also therefore under-analysed^; and for the present concem, not analysed in terms of how the children qualify their answers.

Children qualifying their answers through meta-comniunicative markers Piaget outlines his technique for interviewing children as follows. "The child is asked: 'Do you know what it means to think of something?"' (p. 37). This is in my view an incredibly difficult question for anyone to answer, not just for a young child. However, "[w]hatever the answer may be, the meaning behind the words is what matters" (p. 38), Piaget continues. So what do the children reply to such a question? The following is one example:
TANN (8) thinks with his "mind". "What is the mind? // is someone who isn 'I like we are, who hasn 't skin and hasn 't bones, and who is like air which we ean't see", (p. 53)

The child speaks about the phenomenon of mind in anthropomorphic terms ('it is someone'), and 'vv/jo is like' (air), but 'isn't like we are'. Thus it is like something else (a person; air) but unlike in other respects. In this way, 'mind' is spoken about in terms of its likeness and differences to something else that is familiar. By using meta-communicative markers (such as, 'is like'), the child qualifies his own reasoning. He thereby clarifies that he communicates about something in terms of something else. This is a very impressive undertaking, in this case, for a child of eight years. However, this excerpt is interpreted by Piaget as a case of the child identifying thought with air. In Piaget's interpretation the child therefore makes a reality claim about thought. In the analysis there is no evidence that this feature of using markers in the children's reasoning are considered. A second excerpt is also very interesting from the present point of view:
Vise (11; 1): "Where is thought? - In the head. - If someone opened your head, would he see your thought? - No. - Could he touch it? - No. - Feel it as if it was air? - No... etc.". Then: "What is a dream? -It's a thought. - What do you dream with? - With the head. Are the eyes open or shut? - Shut. - Where is the dream whilst you are dreaming? - In the head. - Not in front of you? - /('s as if(\) you could see it. - Is there anj^hing in front of you when you dream? - No, nothing. What is inside the head? - Thoughts. Is it the eyes which see something inside the head? -Wo", (p. 54; exclamation mark, Piaget's)

It is interesting how the child clarifies that 'it is as if (you could see it, but you cannot). The child reasons about, in this case, thoughts 'as if.., but not...', stating likeness and difference to something else, and also qualifies his way of speaking. Note also how the researcher uses 'as if in one of his questions ('as if it was air?'), though the child is here unable to or 'prevented' from further explicating in what ways this is 'not', while being 'as if. However, these features of the child's reasoning are not included in Piaget's analysis (even if he points to this by his exclamation mark). The excerpt is interpreted as (1) showing a child able to situate thought in the head, and distinguish thought as immaterial and as distinct from 'air' and 'voice', (2) distinguish words and names from things, and (3) to situate dreams in the head. Piaget, in all brevity, talks about 'as if reasoning as between "being and seeming" (p. 115). However, he does not follow up on the importance of 'as if forms of reasoning for

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children's leaming and knowing. This will be elaborated in the discussion (see, below). In this excerpt, by explicitly reasoning 'as if, the child makes evident that he uses something to communicate about something else. In my view and terms, the child is communicating that what he says is not intended as a reality claim. In the chapter on 'meteorology' the following two explanations of children in terms of 'is like' or is 'as if take place:
DUCR (8 1/2): [...] the clouds are alive "because they fly in the air as if they were birds, but they go veryfast", (p. 302f.)

This excerpt is rather ambiguous if seen in the terms of the present analysis, in both 'because' and 'as if being used by the child. In my view, 'because' could be seen as motivating how the clouds could be spoken of as alive, while 'as if clarifies that they are in fact not so. However, neither of these words is attended to in the analysis. The excerpt is not interpreted by Piaget at all. It only appears in a section of the book on 'artificialism' in the child's thinking.
CEN (8; 6): "Do you know where clouds come from? - Steam. - What is steam? - It's Uke smoke. Where does steam come from? From water when it's boiling or nearly boiling". "Where does the steam of the clouds come from? - Wheti you cook the sotip. - Does cooking the soup make the clouds? - The steam goes out and it takes water with it", (p. 303)

The child says about steam, that 'it's like smoke'. From a rather concrete experience, the cooking of a soup, and a simple observation, he talks about where clouds come from. The child is thus able to get these two domains of experience (cooking a soup, and that the sky is sometimes filled with clouds) together in a single explanation. Departing from something familiar and observed, the child could from the analyst's point of view be seen as expanding his knowledge to begin to make sense of or speak about other phenomena. At the same time, he meta-communicates that he does so, and that his saying therefore is not by himself, nor should it by the communicative partner be taken literally. In Piaget's analysis the qualification that the child in my reading makes with the word 'like' is not attended to. Instead the excerpt is interpreted by Piaget in terms of 'artificialism'. Hence, as can be seen throughout the analysis, these qualifications that the children do in their answers tend to be disregarded. The children are understood as making reality claims. However, these markers are in a communicative perspective of significant Importance, as will be argued in the discussion. I interpret the markers that the children use as communicating a meta-understanding. Behind this lays a more general issue, if children also in other cases may be using language non-literally, even if they do not mark it. Reasoning by analogy, or using language non-literally In the chapter on 'the child's notion of thought', Piaget argues that for the child thought is material, that it is 'air', and "that it also is regarded as actually a part of the external world" (p. 46):
RON (7 'A): "Can one see thought? - Yes. - How? - Jn front ofyou. - Where? There (50 cms away) or right over there? - /(doesn 't make any difference. The wind makes the grass move and you see it moving. That is thinking", (p. 46)

In my view, two things are here worth considering. First, that the child says that 'it doesn't make any difference' where thought is, could be understood as he does not intend what he says to be taken literally but only as a matter of speaking. Second, saying that thinking is 'the wind in the grass' need not be interpreted as the child actually thinking that thought is material and external. It could alternatively be interpreted as the child reasoning by analogy (i.e., thinking is like the wind in being transient and difficult to 'get hold o f ) . However, in the interpretation neither of these possibilities are considered. The answer by the child is interpreted as showing what the child really thinks is the case. Interesting to note is also how the interviewer uses analogy to explain the question to the

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child. For example, if having asked the child "Do you know what it means to think of something?" (p. 37), the child "has not grasped the idea", then, Piaget explains, "the matter must be further explained" (loc. cit.). He does this by saying to the child that "'When you walk, you walk with the feet; well then, when you think, what do you think with?'" (p. 37f.). In communicating with the child the interviewer shows an awareness of making something understandable by speaking of it analogically in terms of something else. That children may also reply in this manner tends not to be considered in the analyses. In the chapter on 'the notion of thought', the following exchange takes place:
RATT (8; 10) [...] "Have words got strength? - Yes. - Tell me a word which has strength? The wind. - Why has the word 'wind' got strength? - Because it goes quickiy. - Is it the word or the wind which goes quickly? The wind. Tell tne a word which has strength. When you give something a kick. - Is that a word? - No. - Tell me a word which has strength - ". (p. 45)

According to the interpretation, "Ratt was unable to understand that it is things and not words that have strength" (p. 45). However, to ask a child whether 'words have got strength' is, in my view, a rather strange question. The child's use of 'because' could be seen as an indication of the child trying to motivate how one could speak of words in terms of strength, rather than the child being unable to make the distinction between words and things. Read in this way, 'because' could signal an 'as i r mode of reasoning. However, the reasoning is ambiguous. As Aronsson and Hundeide (2002, p. 179; see also their example 2 where the child actually uses 'because') among others have observed, "children willingly tend to answer bizarre questions". To qualify these answers by using 'because' may be one way of doing this without actually believing that things really are in the way one speaks. Henee, 'because' may be used as a way of making sense of these questions, of making the questions sensible. I will retum to this issue in a later section of this article. Thinking and knowing, saying and meaning Closely related to the theme of the present article is the distinction between saying and meaning. To make this distinction is a way of marking out a 'gap' between how one speaks and what is claimed. In this sense it is relevant to the present analysis and will therefore here in all brevity be considered. The following example is, in my view, illustrative of the child using language non-literally, but also seems to imply the child managing the distinction between saying and meaning. The exchange is taken from the chapter on meteorology. More specifically, the fomiation of rain is spoken about: MOC (8): "Where does the raiti comefrom?- The sky. - What is it? - Water. - How is it made? - The cioiids. - How? Because they jump. The ciouds jump and then the rain comes. - What do you mean by saying they jump? - / mean that they burst", (p. 314) In my view, the child here makes clear that he is aware that he uses language non-literally ('jump', 'I mean that...'). He also shows that he manages the distinction between what he says and what he means. If he did not realise this difference, he would reasonably reply by repeating what he already said, or said that this is what they do. That the child manages this distinction is not commented upon in the analysis. Instead, for Moc and the other children cited in this case, "therefore the clouds move about intentionally to wherever rain is necessary and transform themselves into water" (p. 314). Consider also the following example from the chapter on 'the notion of thought': SCHI (6) [...] "What is memory? - When you remember something. - How do you
remember? - /(suddeniy comes into the mind (revient dans notre ame). When you 've been told something it comes into your mind, then it goes out and then it comes back. It goes out? Where does it go to? - Into the sky. - Do you really believe that? - Yes. I don V know, but it's what I think (ce queje crois)". (p. 45)

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That memories 'go out' and 'come back' is interpreted literally. However, I would like to argue the possibility of an alternative interpretation. That the child in his answer contrasts the two words 'know' and 'think' may be significant as a marker to how the child understands his own utterance. Writing on this very distinction, Dewey (1910/1997, p. 9) argues that: "To say '1 think so' implies that I do not as yet know so". Hence, to say that 'I think so' implies a tentativeness. It could be read as a marker pointing out that the child is unsure, that the child has difficulties with coming to terms with what is being asked of him. So whether the child actually claims that memory is an entity 'coming' and 'going' is open to debate. IVhat is it, or what is it like? In writing about how to understand the children's answers that thought is air, wind, etc., Piaget considers adult influence. Maybe the "children have been told of a soul or a mind which is invisible like the air, and they have concluded that thinking is by means of the air" (p. 47; my italics). Some of the children's answers could probably be understood in this way, he concludes. But why not conclude that the child likewise as the adult considers or speaks of, for example, thought, as being like, for example, air? This question re-emerges in the interviews with the children. In the same chapter on the notion of thought, this example is found:
KAUF (8; 8, a girl) thinks with her memory. "Memory is something in the head which makes us think. - What do you think this memory is like? - /(is a little square of skin, rather ovai, and inside there are stories {tes histoires). - What are they like? - They are written on thejlesh. - What with? - Pencil. - Who wrote them? - God. before I was born, he put them there", (p. 52)

The interviewer asks the child what she 'thinks tnemory is like'. The child's answer however is treated as claiming what memory 'is', which, in my view, is a rather different matter. It is possible that the child notes the 'like' of the question and consequently compares it to something else, concrete, in making a narrative (of an agent, in this case God, doing something). In the analysis in the book, two points are made: (1) that the child does not distinguish between thought and matter, and (2) that the child is mistaken as to the origin of her knowledge in thinking that her knowledge is innate. Consider in addition one more brief example of the use of the word 'like', taken from the chapter on the child's notion of dreams:
HORN (5; 3): "You know what it is to dream? - Yes. It's when you see peopie. - Where is the dream? In the smoke {la fumee). What smoke? - The smoke tiiat comes from the bedclothes. - Where do the dreams eome from? - From here (pointing to his stomach). Then how is it that they are in the bedclothes while you are dreaming? - Because you hiow it's like thai", (p. 106)

This example is interpreted as illustrating a child being intermediate between two stages of development in starting to cast off the idea of an extemai origin for dreams. In my view, the child's last phrase could be of significant importance in understanding what the child is saying. To say that 'it's like that' is qualitatively different from saying that 'it is so' or 'that's how it is.' On the formation of rain, the following exchange occurs, illustrative of the child reasoning in terms of'likeness': SCHI (7; 4) said that the clouds comefrommist: "What is the mist made of? Water.
Like the water in the tap? - No. it's water like when you perspire. It's not quite water when you perspire, it's like water. Where does this water come from? / think it comes from being hot. So that it ought to be heat that makes the clouds come... - How is that? What heat does it eome from? - /(comes from the sun. Where does the water come from that is heated by the sun? - From the sun itself. What is the sun made of? - Fire, I think. When it's too hot, it's tike when your iiands are too hot. the sun perspires, and that makes tiie clouds cover it", (p. 316)

The children, as here exemplified by Schi, "seem spontaneously to regard the clouds as 'heat' or 'wetness' or 'perspiration', and the rain" consequently "explains itself (p. 316),

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according to the interpretation. What is not considered in the interpretation is the abundance of markers used not only by the interviewer but also, and especially, by the child. Note, for example, how the child answers that 'it's not quite' but that 'it's like'. The child also says that 'I think' twice, which could signal an uncertainty (i.e., marking out that this is not necessarily how things are), not a simple claim of a fact (see further on the use of the word 'think' above). Because and as if In the chapter on the child's notion of dreams, some, for the present analysis, interesting exchanges can be found. For example:
KENN (7 1/2): [...] "When you dream of school, where is the dream? - At schooi. because it's as if you were at school. Is the dream really at school or is it only as if it were at school? - /(is at schooi. - Really and truly? - Ato". (p. 114)

This is interpreted as the child actually thinking that the dream of school is at school, and also showing that the child understands dreams as extemai to him. The markers used by the child are not considered in the interpretation. However, 'because' and 'it's as if could be seen as marking out that this is not really the case, but it could be seen in this way 'because' it is as if it were so. However, neither interpretation is entirely convincing and the child is selfcontradictory in his answers. Also to question the child's answer ('really and truly?') disqualifies the previous answer given by the child, making it necessary to change the answer (cf. Aronsson & Hundeide, 2002). In the same chapter, on the notion of thought, these two examples are also reported: BOLICH (11; 10): "If you dream that you are dressed, you see a picture. Where is it? -I'm
dressed like other peopie. then it (the picture) is in my head, but you'd think (!) it was in front of you", (p. 119; exclamation mark, Piaget's) CELL (10; 7) also says: "/( seems as if I see it (the house) in front of me, but it's in my head", (p. 119)

These examples are given as illustrations of children having ceased to materialise dreams. Piaget also writes that: "Such expressions as 'you think that', 'it seems as if, 'it's as if, to describe the seemingly extemai nature of the dream, are new and very characteristic of this stage" (p. 119) of development. However, nothing more is made of this observation. Questioning the child about 'the sky', an interesting exchange takes place in which the child uses a variety of markers to signal that his answers should not be interpreted literally:
GAVA (8 1/2): "What is the sky made of? - It's a sort of cloud that comes. - How? - The steam from the boats goes up to the sky and then it makes a great blue streak. Is the sky hard or not? - It's like a kind of earth. - Made of what? - // 's tike earth which has lots of littie hoies; and then there are the clouds, they go through the little holes, then when it rains, the rain fails through the littie hoies. - How did it begin? ... - When there was earth, that perhaps made houses, and then there was smoke, and that made the sky", (p. 289)

This is interpreted as illustrating how "the matter of which the sky is made" is "dependent on human activity" (pp. 288-289). The prevalence of markers in Gava's reasoning ('sort of, 'like', 'kind of, 'perhaps') is not commented upon or considered in the analysis. In a similar vein, in the same chapter, speaking about 'the night', the following exchange takes place:
ZWA (9): "What is night? Where does it come from? - Because it's as if it's going to rain, it becomes dark. - What is the darkness? - It's the night. - Where does it come from? - /( comes from the clouds", (p. 294)

For the child at this stage of development "night is thus big black cloud or black air" (p. 294). The analogy used by the child, 'because it's as if it's going to rain' is not commented on. To large extent the use of markers in the children's answers are not considered in the

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interpretations. In a few cases, the children's markers are pointed to (by occasional exclamation marks, and as seen after Bouch and Cell above), but no further point is made of this use as communicating a meta-knowledge in the children, and the implications this may hold for leaming. Reasoning through and about the metaphors of language This section will look at the use of the metaphors that are inscribed(!) in our language and how the children (as well as the rest of us) speak about certain phenomena in these terms. In the chapter on 'the origins of child animism', the following reasoning is reported:
HAD (6): "Can the sun do whatever it likes? - Yes. because it's aione with the moon. - And the clouds? - Yes. because they are aione with the other ciouds", etc. The meaning of these words is sufficiently clear from the following answer: "Can you do whatever you like? Yes, because my mother sometimes iets me", (p. 227)

In Piaget's terms, the excerpt illustrates how the child "endows all objects with freedom of movement for the reason that they are 'alone', that is to say that no one commands them nor supervises what they do" (p. 227). This may be, but notice how the initial question is phrased. It implies that the sun is an agent, capable of 'doing' something; and consequently, the child's answer may be seen as only following in line, or with the by the questioner established frame of reference, of how to talk about these phenomena. Thus, the child also animates. But once again, this makes it problematic to take the child's answer as an indication of what the child thinks is the case. This points to the fact that an interview and its answers need to be analysed as a practice, as jointly-achieved 'temporarily sufficient intersubjectivity' to speak with Rommetveit (1974). In the terms of the present article, the metaphorical quality of the children's 'conceptions' ought to be considered as contingent upon a certain frame of reference, not as revealing which concepts or metaphors the child has herself, and then when asked communicates as sending according to a conduit metaphor (Reddy, 1993). If the researcher had initiated a different metaphorical framework than the one above, the child might very likely had reasoned according to that instead. The child's answers could be seen as an attempt at 'collaborating' with the interviewer in creating a narrative. This line of reasoning is further compatible with Aronsson and Hundeide's (2002, p. 181) argument about the child aligning with the interlocutor. One way of aligning with the interviewer is "by responding to a bizarre question rather than questioning the premises of the question" (cf. Hundeide, 1985). The use of the word 'because' could at times, as I have already argued, be one way of dealing with this difficulty for the child. Piaget studies how the child "will regard as living and conscious a large number of objects which are for us inert" (p. 169), i.e., 'animism'. In the chapter on 'consciousness attributed to things' in children, the following exchange between the interviewer and a child takes place:
SART (12 Vi): [...] "Does a watch know anything? - Yes, because it tells us the time. - Why does it know? - Because it's the hands which show us the time", etc. (!) (pp. 180-181; exclamation mark, Piaget's)

Note how this reasoning by the child seems so reasonable due to the metaphors inscribed(!) in our very language, our way of speaking of a clock: 'it teils us the time', and it much like a human being - has 'hands'" that 'show the time'. An anthropomorphic perspective (a metaphorical quality) lays already in the very language we use to speak of, in this particular case, a clock and time. Thus the child's reasoning may additionally be seen as showing a child having appropriated the cultural metaphors whereby we speak of this. Viewed in this way, the child appears competent, rather than - although not explicitly talked of such by Piaget - as incompetent. Consider also, in relation to children saying the moon is alive; and expressions we have as 'the man in the moon', 'mother earth', etc. We have an anthropomorphism inscribed in our (English) language in terms of which we speak about various phenomena.

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In this excerpt, as in some of the previous ones as well, the child uses the word 'because'. One way of understanding the function played by this word in these conversations, is to see it as 'balancing' the, in a sense absurd, questions with still being able to answer them in some way. 'Because' works in creating cohesion, i.e., it backs up or motivates what is already implied in the questions or in the conventional way of speaking of these phenomena in our culture, in our language. In this way, 'because' could be seen as indicating that the child, at least for the moment, accepts the ternis in which to speak of the phenomenon in question. In my view, the child is trying to answer the question as if it were a reasonable one. This particular excerpt, and others not included here, are interpreted by Piaget as showing children regarding anything that moves (by voluntary effort) as conscious. Piaget thus claims that the children make reality claims by speaking in this way. However, the children's answers could, alternatively, be understood as discursive claims, in which case they should not be interpreted literally. Interesting to note is that Piaget himself at a later point in the book actually briefly touches upon the issue of the animism inherent in the language surrounding the children. He writes that "language always lags in its aptitude for expression. That is to say, when speaking in images we are always compelled to draw on forms of expression that we have really outgrown" (p. 248). And further that It is therefore not to be wondered at that the child takes literally personifications of language (such as the French "le soleil se couche"), finalistic expressions (such as "the river is flowing to get to the lake"), anthropomorphic or artificialist expressions (such as "the heat is making the water boil", "the steam is trying to escape") and even quasi-magical expressions (such as "the clouds/orete// rain"). Adult language provides the very conditions necessary to foster the child's animism and this the more so, since generally speaking the child takes all metaphors literally - it looks to see "a broken arm" tumble on to the ground, whilst the phrase "go to the devil" constituted, for a child of 9 of our acquaintance, the proof that the devil is not far off. (p. 248f.) But what does it mean to say that these are 'expressions that we have really outgrown'? Though usually not taken literally, we still use them, these are the ways we speak and make sense of these phenomena in our culture. How the metaphors are taken in different situations, for different purposes, is another question. However, Piaget concludes, language is not the cause of child animism: "It is not the child which is moulded by language; it is the language which is already childish" (p. 249). Alternatively, it could be said that our language has a metaphorical quality (Goatly, 1997), and that we leam where and when an expression should be taken literally or metaphorically. And also that our words have a history with a metaphorical basis (Leary, 1990), and that the metaphoricalness with time, as it is coming to be taken for granted, tends to be lost into literalness. In summing up the findings and arguments of the analysis, it was seen that the children themselves use meta-communicative markers in their answers. This observation, I have taken to indicate that the child realizes that her way of speaking is not 'literal'. The markers the children use can be seen as expressing awareness that they speak in terms of analogies or similes. Hence, the markers children use are interpreted by me as signalling a meta-understanding. Behind this question is also the more general issue if or to what extent children also in other cases use language non-literally, even if they do not mark it. An implication of this alternative interpretation is that Piaget's conclusions about the children's understandings are questioned. Since the children qualify their answers in the manners studied, what they say could be seen as indicating problems they have in the interview situation of how to communicate about difficult matters. Whereas in Piaget's analysis the children are seen as making reality claims, in my analysis the children are seen as making discursive claims.

Discussion and conclusions

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The children qualify their answers by using different meta-communicative markers (cf Goatly, 1997), such as: 'it's like...', '... isn't like...', and 'it's as if..'. In one sense, as seen in the analysis, Piaget notices some of these qualifications, but he still does not consider this in his analysis. These markers, as seen in the perspective of the present analysis, signal that an utterance should not be taken as saying how something is, but as a way of meta-communicating something. If one looks at the empirical data one can hence see how the children qualify their answers. This is further interesting in relation to the frequent observation in the research literature, that children tend to answer even an 'absurd' question without questioning the premise of the question (e.g., Hundeide, 1985; Schubauer-Leoni & Grossen, 1993). In my view, the children also at times, as seen in examples above, use 'because' in trying to answer a question as if it were a reasonable one. Hence, they in a sense mark out that they do not intend their answers to be interpreted literally as simply stating a fact. The present analysis points to something of great interest, 1 think, in regard to Piaget's own analysis. If seen as a communicative problem for the children trying to narrate something, one view of the children results; if one instead ascribes the children conceptions, a very different picture emerges of the children's abilities and competences. Speaking in terms of 'as if in my view shows a relational sensitivity in the children. As I see it, it marks an awareness that making oneself understood to someone else may require a communicative adjustment. This is in line with Aronsson and Hundeide's (2002) reading of children's answers in terms of a 'relational rationality.' To mark out one's own communication in the manners seen in the analysis, is important, for one, since it shows an awareness in the children of what they need to say in order to make sense to someone else. Such an awareness of the means for communicating is further important for being able to manage the forms of institutional schooling. "What is going to be required for success in our educational system is that he [i.e., the pupil] should leam to turn language and thought in upon themselves. He must become able to direct his own thought processes in a thoughtful manner", Donaldson (1978, p. 88f) argues. A critical point in school socialization, it may be added, is to leam to not only, as it were, 'see through' language, but also to see language (discursive tools, representational systems, premises, narratives, etc.) as such, and to know when to speak in a certain manner and terms. Written language (literacy) obviously facilitates this leaming, to leam to reason not only with language, but also about language (Nelson, 1996; Olson, 1994). Decisive for what the child is able to say, Hundeide (1977) argues, is from out of which premises the child understands the question (and whether these premises are the same as for the experimenter). When the children reason in the 'as if manner, I argue, they themselves mark out, meta-communicate, a fundamental premise, i.e., that phenomenon (X) is not (really) phenomenon (Y), but that it to some extent (by qualifying) can be made sense of or communicated about in these terms. To make this apparent shows a rather advanced communicative insight in these children. They appear communicatively competent in ways that Piaget's analysis does not accredit them. I have here argued for the importance of 'as if reasoning in the perspective of communicative competence. But to reason 'as i f can also be looked at in another developmental sense. In his extensive elaboration of the concept, philosopher of science Hans Vaihinger (1924/2001, p. xli) claims that to reason 'as if, i.e., in terms of "the consciouslyfalse" (what one knows is not really the case) "plays an enormous part in science, in worldphilosophies and in life". This is a pervasive mode of thinking, usually done in terms of abstractions, analogies, and metaphors. In scientific knowledge formation as in individual leaming, the task is often to try to come to an understanding of what we as yet lack a language for. Faced with this task, Keller (2002, p. 118) argues, scientists "need to invent words, expressions, forms of speech that can indicate or point to phenomena for which they have no literal descriptors". In lack of an 'adequate' terminology, metaphors may be employed. These 'fictions' (i.e., ways of speaking about something in terms of something else that it cannot literally be), Vaihinger (1924/2001) further reasons, are fundamental in bringing order into, and understanding, reality. And these 'fictions' (in being contradictory, literally false) are not something to try to make away with, in attempting to think only logically (non-contradictory).

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writes Vaihinger. If I, as an iliustration of how I understand tiiis, give tiie example of 'metaphor': In metaphor something is spoken of as if it were something eise, wherefore a metaphor by iogical necessity always in a sense is self-contradictory. However, this does not belittle its functioning and importance in reasoning; on the contrary, it is preciseiy in the bringing together of incompatibles that the basis for the usefulness of a metaphor can be argued to lay. In more recent years, departing from 'as if as characteristic of children's play, Josephs (1998, p. 180) has claimed that: "From an ontogenetic developmental perspective" it could be argued that an "as-if mode of approaching and making sense of the world is not inferior or immature, but is rather an important characteristic of human development across all age groups". In Josephs' account, as I read her, the relation between 'what is' (as-is) and 'what could be' seen as (as-if) provides something of an 'opening' for a dynamic piay in development, or, with Vygotsky (1978), a 'zone of proximal development'. To reason in terms of'as if could be seen as the learner relating and making relevant her experiences and knowledge in trying to come to terms with something unbeknown or unclear. Through this act, a 'space' containing these different domains of knowledge is eonstituted, 'within' which a teacher or a more competent peer could help the learner elaborate her reasoning about how these domains relate, in likeness and difference. Hence, the 'as if reasoning of the children shows their ability to meta-communicate, but may also work in opening up a 'room' for dialogue, making possible further leaming.

Notes
' Looking at the two books by Piaget that are known in English translations as The Origins of Intelligence in Children, and The Construction of Reality in the Child, respectively, in relation to their Fretich originals, Jurczak (1997, p. 312) found "three signifieant kinds of changes: (1) a substantial portion of biological metaphors have been altered in favor of more mechanistic ones; (2) some of Piaget's metaphors are eliminated altogether; and (3) a frequently used term having a long history of philosophical usage is rendered in mechanistic late twentieth century terms". The changes in the translations, Jurczak (1997, pp. 312-313) argues, are subtle, and might not 'really' be 'wrong' (depending, of course, on one's stance on the importance of metaphor; and with the question of on what 'level' one wishes to be able to understand a text; my comment), but stiM "one might claim that the cumulative difference made by multiple alterations significantly alters understanding ofthe text in English". The texts seem to have been somewhat transformed in their terminology, to make them more in aeeord with the ideals of scientific discourse of their time. Which in its tum falls back on his qualitative methodology of studying children trying to make sense, somewhat on their own terms, rather than tested in, in advanced determined ways, according to certain criteria. However, it might be argued, it is not the child's own terms in at least one sense here. In what terms to speak must be interactively achieved in the interviews, but the researcher as the one asking the questions has the communicative power to lead the conversation, i.e., to decide on what terms one should speak (see in analyses of excerpts below how the children follow in line with a frame of reference established by the questioner). This should not be read as a critique of Piaget. Every empirical material is, in at least one sense, 'under-analysed'. To elaim otherwise would presume that an empirical material can be 'totally emptied' of meaning, so to speak. But every text can always be re-contextualiscd from other premises, analytical positions, theories. Every analysis aims at clarifying a certain research question, and it is this question that the analyst should be able to aecount for and be eritically evaluated in relation to. It is always possible to do a different analysis. Whether an alternative analysis is as 'valid', or eontribute any additional insight, in relation to the empirical material will have to be a question for debate in each individual case. Hence, I do not claim to explain or provide more of, or more eorreet, an analysis than Piaget, only to contribute with an alternative analysis, making something different visible.

References
Aronsson, K., & Hundeide, K. (2002). Relational rationality and children's interview responses. Human Development, 450), 174-186. Beilin, H. (1992). Piaget's enduring contribution to developmental psychology. Developmental Psycholog)', 28(2), 191204. Bruner, J.S. (1997). Celebrating divergence: Piaget and Vygotsky. Human Development, 40(2), 63-73.

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Cameron, L. (2002). Metaphors in the leaming of science: A discourse focus. British Educational Research Journal, 28(5), 673-688. Dewey, J. (1997). How we think. Mineola, NY: Dover. (Original work published 1910). Donaldson, M. (1978). Children's minds. Glasgow, Scotland: Collins. Eco, U. (2001). Experiences in translation (A. McEwen, Trans.). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Goatly, A. (1997). The language of metaphors. London: Routledge. Hundeide, K. (1977). Piaget i kritisk lys [Piaget in critical light]. Oslo, Norway: Cappelen. Hundeide, K. (1985). The tacit background of children's judgments. In J.V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 306-322). New York: Cambridge University Press. Josephs, I.E. (1998). Constructing one's self in the city ofthe silent: Dialogue, symbols, and the role of'as-if in selfdevelopment. Human Development, 41(3), 180-195. Jurczak, P.M. (1997). The language and metaphor of Jean Piaget. Educational Psychology Review, 9(3), 311-318. Keller, E.F. (2002). Making sense of life: Explaining biological development with models, metaphors, and machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Knudsen, S. (2003). Seientifie metaphors going public. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(S), 1247-1263. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Leary, D.E. (1990). Psyche's muse: The role of metaphor in the history of psychology. In D.E. Leary (Ed.), Metaphors in the history of psychology (pp. 1-78). New York: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development: The emergence of the mediated mind. New York: Cambridge University Press. Olson, D.R. (1994). The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Piaget, J. (1938). La representation du monde chez I'enfant (Nouvelle edition). Paris: Alcan. (Original work published 1926). Piaget, J. (1951). The child's conception ofthe world (J. Tomlinson & A. Tomlinson, Trans.). Savage, MD: Littlefteld Adams. (Original work published 1926). Reddy, M.J. (1993). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame eonflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 164-201). New York: Cambridge University Press. Rommetveit, R. (1974). On message structure: A framework for the study of language and communication. London: Wiley. Schaffner, C. (2004). Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(1), 1253-1269. Schubauer-Leoni, M.L., & Grossen, M. (1993). Negotiating the meaning of questions in didactic and experimental contracts. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 8(4), 451-471. Vaihinger, H. (2001). The philosophy of "as if: A system of the theoretical, practical, and religious fictions of mankind (6th rev. ed., CK. Ogden, Trans.). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1924). Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Seribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wells, G. (2002). Responding in interviews and tests: Children leaming to participate in the activity of evaluation [Commentary]. Human Development, 45(3), 187-193.

Portant sur les contributions verbales des enfants au cours d 'entretiens cliniques menes dans des epreuves operatoires piagetiennes, cet article propose une reanalyse d'un ensemble d'extraits d'entretiens

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rapportes par Piaget dans son fameux livre "La representation du monde chez I'enfant". On se centre sur I'utilisation non litterale du langage par les enfants et on examine plus speciftquement la maniere dont ils utilisent des marqueurs metacommunicatifs ("comme si", "comme ", etc.) lorsqu 'ils s 'adressent a I 'interviewer. Confrontee a celle de Piaget luimeme, I 'analyse presentee ici a d 'importantes consequences sur la maniere dont les reponses de I 'enfant peuvent etre interpretees. II en emerge done des images extremement differentes des capacites et des competences de I 'enfant. Selon I 'analyse de Piaget, le discours de I 'enfant revele ses "conceptions" et consiste en un certain nombre d'assertions sur le reel, par exemple le fait qu 'une montre, tout comme un etre humain, "sait" quelque chose ou que, lorsqu'on pense, les pensees sont veritablement "en face de soi" comme le seraient des objets physiques. Selon I 'interpretation proposee dans cet article, les reponses de I 'enfant sont des tentatives de communiquer et de se faire comprendre de maniere pertinente. L 'un des moyens qu 'il utiliserait pour parvenir a cette intercomprehension se ferait alors au travers de I'utilisation de marqueurs metacommunicatifs. Vus sous cet angle, les enfants semblent ainsi competents a la communication.

Key words: As if, Children, Meta-communication, Metaphor, Piaget.

Received: October 2005 Revision received: January 2006

Niklas Pramling. Depattmetit of Education, Goteborg University, Box 300, SE-405 30 Goteborg, Sweden; E-mail: Niklas.Pramling(gped.gu.se; Web site: www.ped.gu.se/kollegier/SCS/index.htm
Current theme of research: The role of metaphor in leaming and knowledge formation, meta-cognition and representation. Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education: Pramling, N. (2006). Minding metaphors: Using figurative language in learning to represent (Goteborg Studies in Educational Scienees, 238). Goteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.