A descriptive case study reports and examines a five-year-old Finnish child's attainment of English language and communication skills during his first eight months in the United States, within a pragmatic theoretical framework, focusing on the various functions of utterances. The child's language usage is divided into social and egocentric speech and analyzed for communicative intention. The social, control, expressive, and informative modes of usage within those speech categories are distinguished and illustrated. The role of egocentric speech was found to have the most potential for further study, since it seems to reveal the secrets of the child's mind. (MSE)