| Summary: | The article seeks to examine the different forms of testing that the methodologies of social science research use to account for the life experiences of young children. First, it is about showing the symbolic violence that children can be confronted with, in particular those from families in very precarious situations, when it comes to assessing their language skills, as research Enfances de classe, on social inequalities between young children, directed by Bernard Lahire, does. Secondly, by taking up the content of the data published in this work, at the level of interactions between interviewer (adult) and interviewee (child), we study how children’s resistance to being put to the test in this investigation relies heavily on their body, including its weaknesses, when their language resources do not allow them to have the last word with regard to researchers. Finally, we show that other methodological devices can be brought into play to promote children’s expression and take their points of view seriously. Such devices strive to open up possibilities beyond adult-centered norms and expectations, while asking to relate this children’s speech to its social conditions of production.
|
|---|
