This study of parent-infant interactions at home analyzes early reading with picture books. Drawing upon psychology, linguistics and anthropology it provides a wide ranging account of the conversational rules of reading dialogues, semantic knowledge and picture book reading, narrative and the construction and expression of the infant unconscious. This should provide a valuable account to academics and practitioners concerned with early language acquisition.

Why have both pop and politics in Britain become the preserve of an unrepresentative elite? From chav-pop pantomimes to retro-chauvinist landfill indie, the bland, homogenous and compromised nature of the current 'alternative' sector reflects the interests of a similarly complacent and privileged political establishment. In particular, political and media policing of female social and sexual autonomy, through the neglected but significant gendered dimensions of the discourse surrounding chavs, has been accompanied by a similar restriction and regulation of the expression of working-class...