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Linguistic Roles of Mothers and Fathers in the Developmental Perspectives on Politeness:

Requests, Routines, and Turn-taking.

Word count: 3827

Janice Fung

20711603

Monash University, Clayton

Unit code: LIN3430

Due date: 3rd May, 2010

Unit coordinator: Dr. Anna Margetts

Class time: Mondays 11:00 – 13:00

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Table of contents

1 Introduction

1.1 Requests

1.2 Politeness routines

1.3 Turn-taking

1.4 Aims and rational

2 Methodologies

2.1 Material analyzed

2.2 Analysis procedures

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Requests 459

3.2 Politeness routines

3.3 Turn-taking

4 Conclusion

5 Appendices

6 References

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Brown and Levinson (1978) theorized politeness as being the underlying model for

all human public social interaction. The concept proposes two kinds of face: positive face

(the need to be admired) and negative face (the need of the freedom of action, to not be

imposed on). Politeness is defined as an expression of concern for the face needs of the

interlocutor, in avoidance of making face-threatening acts (Mao, 1994). The way in which a

face-threatening act is produced is determined by the understanding of three dimensions of

politeness: (a) the degree of imposition which the face-threatening act would present, (b)

the social distance between the speaker and interlocutor, and (c) the differential power

between the speaker and interlocutor (Snow, Perlmann, Gleason, and Hooshyar., 1990). It

is this understanding of complex social relations and human behaviour that is required in

order for politeness forms (greetings and salutations, conventional indirect apologies and

requests, please, excuse me, thank you) to be used in the correct and appropriate manner.

This raises the question of how children acquire this complex system with the input from

adults who are competent with politeness strategies; and how children elaborate this input

into a more complex and abstract systematic theory (Snow et. al., 1990).

Child interlocutors are limited in the social roles to which they are exposed, as they

operate in the familial context in which they have little power. It is through parent-talk at

home that children are first given lessons of the dimensions that underlie politeness. Parents

guide children into using conventional politeness forms by modeling and direct teaching.

They present to children a large variety of requests, directives, compliments, and

occasionally some insults; addressing the positive and negative face needs of their children

(Snow et. al., 1990). Men and women culturally differ in their use of politeness strategies

(Bellinger, 1982). There is a tendency for women to use more politeness conventions than

men (Holmes 1995, p. 1); however it cannot be simply stated that women are more polite

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than men, as the answer is a complex one. The perception of politeness is dependent on

how it is defined, and what norms of polite behavior are accepted in application to men and

women (Holmes 1995, p. 1). As previous research has found different politeness patterns in

men and women, it would be expected that mothers and fathers communicate to their

children with different linguistic conventions.

1.1 Requests

The convention of politeness is usually implicit. It is governed by pragmatic

awareness which is the understanding of the rules of effective communication. This

includes knowledge of the structure of language, social conventions, and the

conversational use that underlie effective language use. Linguists are interested in the

children’s development of pragmatic awareness, particularly in their use and

understanding of different forms of requests (Garton, 2009). Children tend to show a

preference for indirect forms of requests from an early age, although their

understanding of pragmatic conventions is premature (Garvey, 1975). Nevertheless,

parental use of indirect forms has been successful in the education of pragmatic rules to

their children; and children as young as 3 years of age are able to respond accordingly

to the different forms of social politeness conventions (Becker, 1988).

In accordance to the model of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson

(1987), such pragmatic conventions are regulated by the social convention of face

preservation. Hence requests for action or information can be presented in two forms,

direct or indirect. Requests that are presented indirectly permit the addressee to decline

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the request while preserving positive face wants of the addresser, and negative face

wants of the addressee (Garton, 2009). Requests are speech acts that express the

assumption of the speaker (S) for the hearer (H) to do the act (A), and the illocutionary

force of the request is determined by the linguistic devices applied to the utterance. For

the purpose of this study, the different forms of requests were categorized as follows

(Garvey, 1974):

1. Direct requests: Explicit utterances that are either imperative, e.g. Eat with your

fork not your hands (Appendix C, line 596) or may include a performative

marker, e.g. I’m asking you to eat with your fork not your hands.

2. Indirect requests (Type 1): Implicit expressions with which the utterance makes

reference to one of the assumptions of the four sincerity conditions as follows:

a. S wants H to do A, e.g. I want you to use your fork.

b. S assumes H can do A, e.g. Can you use your fork?

c. S assumes H is willing to do A, e.g. Would you want to use your fork?

d. S assumes H will not do A in the absence of request, e.g. Will you use

your fork?

3. Indirect requests (Type 2): Implicit expressions with which the utterance does

not make reference to the sincerity conditions as stated above. Implications of

the participant status are embedded, and may also include the necessity of the

act. Indirect requests (Type 2) also include utterances that embed the content

that H will do A, but does not specify the target act that S wishes H to perform,

hence being posed as a ‘hint’ (Garvey, 1974), e.g. Bobby’s father (S) wants his

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daughter Jennifer (H) to watch the mess she is making over the dinner table (A).

Without explicitly asking the child to watch her etiquette, the father indicates his

desire by implying that H will do A in the following utterance, Jennifer, you

don’t want to spill it all over your lap (Appendix B, line 1852). This utterance is

an attempt from S to get H to do A.

Direct forms of requests are potentially more face-threatening as it carries a high degree

of imposition. They are usually directed downward in rank from interlocutors of high

power to low power. As fathers tend to phrase requests in direct forms more often than

mothers, this trend may be a linguistic indication of fathers’ usual authoritarian status in

the family (Bellinger, 1982). Type 2 implied indirect requests are more difficult to

understand than other forms of indirect requests, as they require the interlocutors to

have shared knowledge of concepts and assumptions. It is then that a complex message

can be communicated with minimal and sufficient words (Bellinger, 1982). Fathers are

less able than mothers in understanding children’s speech (Weist and Stebbins, 1977).

Although fathers make more use of Type 2 implied indirect requests, of which

meanings are more difficult to decipher, it does not imply that fathers are insensitive to

their children’s abilities of comprehension. Garvey (1975) conducted a study using the

Parent Awareness Measure, and found that fathers were equally able as mothers in

understanding the level of their children’s linguistic abilities. Furthermore, children as

young as four years old have demonstrated competence in interpreting and producing

Type 2 implied indirect requests (Garvey, 1975).

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1.2 Politeness routines

There are several differences in the use of politeness markers by mothers and

fathers (Snow et. al., 1990). In working class families, mothers generally tend to use

more politeness terms, such as thank, excuse, and please, than fathers. Furthermore,

mothers were found to engage in child-directed talk much more often than fathers. It

was suggested that this may be a reflection of the larger responsibility that mothers feel

they possess to display politeness and train children in politeness, even though they may

not necessarily be more polite themselves than fathers. Snow et. al. (1990) found that

over 80% of the use of politeness terms by parents is addressed to children. Parents

actively teach their children the constructs of politeness routines through explicit

instructions or provide models of polite behaviour. The pressure on parents to teach

politeness conventions begins very early in the child’s development. The pressure is

high to the extent that being truthful is of secondary value (Ladegaard, 2004). Greif and

Gleason (1980) conducted a study where children were offered with a gift from an

assistant. The assistant would greet the child with Hi, Thanks, and Goodbye. The

intention was to present to the child an opportunity to practice polite social routines,

and to observe the child’s ability to spontaneously produce politeness markers.

Prompting politeness markers by parents was very common. The study also reported

that there were no differences between mothers and fathers in their amount of

prompting boys and girls to show appropriate politeness. Results of the study revealed

that children aged 2-5 were very unlikely to autonomously engage in polite social

routines. In the circumstance that children do not spontaneously produce the correct

politeness routine, parents would often present the politeness routine themselves as

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model behaviour. mothers have been found to thank the assistants for the child’s gift

and say goodbye more than fathers (Ladegaard, 2004).

1.3 Turn-taking

Speech by mothers directed at children acquiring language seems to contain

many of the characteristics that consider it to be the ideal form of speech for teaching

language (Rondal, 1980). Maternal speech tends to be simplified and well-formed with

less disfluencies, contain repetitiveness, and have utterance boundaries clearly marked

by pauses. Furthermore, its style appears to change in concordance with the developing

linguistic capabilities of children. Mothers seem to accordingly adjust their utterances,

prosody, and paralinguistic features in length, structural, and semantic complexity.

Mothers are particularly talented at understanding children’s utterances. In comparison,

fathers are less able to understand the precise meanings of children’s speech, and they

are not better able to understand children’s speech than other unrelated adults (Weist

and Stebbins, 1977). Although fathers’ speech also develops simultaneously with the

developing linguistic competence of their children, the simplifications of their child-

directed speech is not the same as those in maternal speech (Rondal, 1980). A study

conducted by Gleason (1975) reported that the language of fathers and male day-care

teachers displays the same basic communicative features as the language of mothers’,

however to a lesser extent. Many similarities and differences can be found in comparing

the speech of mothers and fathers addressed to children. Rondal (1980) suggests that

mothers produce more speaker changes or engage in more turn-taking than fathers. It

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has also been found that fathers produce more requests addressed to children for

clarification, than mothers do. This may be an indication of the fathers’ lesser ability to

understand children’s speech; or that fathers are more curious to know of their

children’s thoughts, hence they may be more demanding than the mothers as to how

much verbal elaboration they expect from their children.

Research by McLaughlin et al. (1983) reported that mothers seem to ask fewer

questions to children of lower linguistic ability, and more questions to children of more

advanced linguistic ability. Thus providing further evidence to Rondal’s (1980)

hypothesis that maternal speech develops simultaneously with the children’s developing

linguistic competence. McLaughlin et. al. (1983) also suggested that this was not true of

fathers to modify their language use for the children; however research by Rondal

(1980) argued the opposite, with suggestions that fathers are simply serving different

linguistic lessons to the child.

1.4 Aims and rational

It is a widely accepted notion that many expressions and conventions of

politeness are more apparent in women speech styles than in men’s (Ladegaard, 2004).

Therefore the question is raised of when and how this gender difference is developed in

the language of young children. Greif & Gleason (1980) propose that by the age of 4,

children have strong stereotypical ideas of how different people talk. Bellinger (1982)

explains that early primary school children are already able to associate more directive

speech with males, and more indirect speech with females. Furthermore, studies by

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Gleason (1987) proposed strong correlations between children’s language and that of

their same-sex parent. It was found that by the age of 4 years, children displayed a

preference to use the same linguistic patterns as their same-sex parent (Ladegaard,

2004).

The purpose of the present study was to examine the linguistic roles of mothers

and fathers in children’s developmental perspectives on politeness. The linguistic

features of maternal and paternal child-directed speech were compared. Furthermore,

the different perspectives on politeness that children may gain through maternal and

paternal linguistic interactions were explored. Lastly, the ways in which linguistic roles

of mothers and fathers serve different needs of their children’s developmental

perspectives on gendered speech and politeness patterns were investigated.

2 Methodologies

2.1 Material analyzed

The analyzed transcripts were of the Gleason corpus obtained from the archives of

the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES; MacWhinney, 2000). The

participants were from middle-class families in 1976, from the greater area of Boston,

USA; and were recruited from nursery schools and similar networks. The children were

placed in three laboratory sessions to be audio recorded: (a) with the mother, (b) with the

father, and (c) at the dinner table with both parents. During the sessions with a single

parent, activities consisted of (a) playing with a toy car, (b) reading a picture book, and (c)

playing store. The sample for the present study consisted of 10 children aged 2;1.4 to 5;2.7

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(5 boys and 5 girls: Andy, Bobby, Eddie, Frank, Martin, Helen, Isadora, Katie, Olivia, and

Nanette), and included the transcripts from the mother-child and father-child laboratory

sessions.

2.2 Analysis procedures

In computing data on the use of request forms (see Table 1a, 1b, 1c), four sets of

transcripts were divided into two equal groups according to the child’s age and gender (age

2 years, and age 4 years). With the transcripts for each group, frequencies of requests

produced by mothers and fathers were manually counted separately and the proportions of

the used requests forms (direct and indirect) were calculated. The same two groups of

transcripts were used to analyze the development of parent’s child-directed speech in

accordance to their children’s linguistic ability. A computerized lexical search was

separately applied to the utterances of mothers and fathers. The total number of questions

over the denominator of the total number of utterances produced was calculated (see Table

4).

In analyzing the use of politeness terms (see Table 2), procedures of the CLAN

(Child Language Analysis) programs available through CHILDES were used to examine

the computerized data. Separate lexical searches was applied to the transcripts of the home

interactions to count the occurrences of politeness forms (including would, could, should,

please, excuse, thank you, hello, and goodbye) in the utterances of mothers and fathers.

Furthermore, automated CHILDES procedures were used to compute the number of

utterances per speaker to serve as a denominator; thus obtaining relative frequencies to

compare mothers and fathers in their use of politeness forms. The same procedure was used

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to record and compare the frequencies of utterances produced by mothers and fathers in

child-directed speech (see Table 3).

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Requests

Referring to the summarized results in Table 1 below, it was evident in all the

corpora analyzed that both mothers and fathers produced more indirect than direct

requests in child-directed speech; however, the proportion of produced indirect requests

was larger for mothers.

Table 1a: A comparison between mothers and fathers, the average proportion of requests

produced indirectly and directly in child-directed speech.

Request Form Mothers Fathers

Direct 38.29% 43.23%

Indirect (Type 1) 56.0% 41.29%

Indirect (Type 2) 5.71% 15.48%

Indirect total 61.71% 56.77%

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Findings from the current study suggested that mothers generally produced more

indirect requests than fathers. Results (Table 1a) revealed an average proportion of 61.71%

indirect requests produced by mothers, in comparison to 56.77% by fathers. Conversely,

fathers tended to phrase requests as directives; with an average proportion of 43.23% direct

requests produced by fathers, in comparison to 38.29% by mothers. As can be seen in

Table 1a, the findings were consistent with the claim by Bellinger (1982) that in

comparison with mothers, fathers are more likely to produce requests in either direct form,

e.g. Sit over here! (Appendix 19, line 545), or as indirect ‘hints’, i.e. Type 2 Indirect

requests, e.g. Nanette, that’s going to get very messy (Appendix 19, line 1366); and that

mothers are more likely than fathers to phrase requests as transparent indirect forms, i.e.

Type 1 Indirect requests, e.g. Alright, why don’t you turn this with your hand? (Appendix:

5, line 498).

The current study compared mothers and fathers in their production of request

forms addressed to children of two different age groups. The younger age group (2;1.2 to

2;6.23) represented children of lower linguistic maturity. Correspondingly, the older age

group (4;11.1 to 5;2.7) represented children of higher linguistic maturity.

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Table 1b: A comparison between the average proportions of requests produced indirectly

and directly by mothers and fathers, to children of different linguistic abilities.

Mothers Fathers

Younger Older Younger Older

Direct requests 29.33% 45.0% 34.19% 47.52%

Indirect requests

(Type 1 &2)

70.67% 55.0% 64.81% 52.47%

The results of the current study indicated that both mothers and fathers showed

similar patterns of change in producing request forms to younger and older children. Both

parents showed an increase of direct forms presented to older children, as well as a decrease

of indirect requests. This pattern is possibly due to the relatively lesser burden of teaching

older children politeness forms, as it can be assumed that their linguistic ability could

demonstrate competence in politeness. These results are consistent with the findings of

Rondal (1980) that the child-directed speech of fathers develops simultaneously with

children’s speech.

Escalera (2009) exerts that the difference between male and female speech patterns is a

cultural difference. Young boys and girls are segregated in play groups; therefore they are

socialized differently and develop different conversational, social, and intellectual norms

and values (Maltz and Borker, 1983). Previous research has shown that girls are generally

more cooperative in speech, and use collaborative positive reciprocity. In contrast, boys are

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more likely to use negative reciprocity and disrupt the narrative (Escalera, 2009). Hence it

would be easy to expect that parents socialize with young girls and boys differently, and

possibly present more politeness forms towards female children. To test this assumption,

the present study further compared mothers and fathers in their pattern of request making

addressed to boys and girls separately, and also to children of different linguistic abilities,

i.e. age.

Table 1c: A comparison between addressing male and female children, the average

proportion of requests produced indirectly and directly by mothers and fathers.

Direct requests Indirect requests (Type 1 & 2)

Child gender Boys Girls Boys Girls

Mothers 34.21% 41.41% 65.79% 58.59%

Fathers 45.67% 28.30% 54.32% 59.46%

Total 40.13% 34.63% 59.87% 58.96%

As can be observed in Table 1c, there were no major discrepancies found between

mothers and fathers in the proportion of request forms addressed to male and female

children. The proportion of indirect requests addressed to boys (59.87%) was almost equal

to that of girls (58.96%). Thus the previous assumption that parents socialize with girls and

boys differently was not fully supported. Research by Bellinger (1982) revealed no

significant disparities in the differential treatment of boys and girls in the types of requests

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used. However, the results of the current study revealed an interesting pattern in which

fathers tended to use more direct requests with boys, and mothers with girls. These findings

may possibility indication that same-sex parent-child relationships are more intimate, hence

allowing a higher tolerance for direct requests. This also may be a reflection of the role of

gender segregation in the personal identity formation of children and their acquisition of

gendered speech. However, these findings lack in external validity as the proposition was

drawn on a relatively small sample of children. It is apparent that future extensive research

is needed on the gender-differences in parent-child interactions to address the complexity of

these relationships.

3.2 Politeness routines

In the current study, the use of politeness forms was compared between mothers

and fathers:

Table 2: Mothers’ and fathers’ proportion of utterances with use of politeness forms

(would, should, could, may, please, thank/ta, excuse, hi/hello, goodbye/bye) in child-

directed speech.

Child Mothers Fathers

Boys 5.53% 1.92%

Girls 4.98% 3.12%

Total 5.22% 2.58%

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In support for the findings of Greif and Gleason (1980), the results of the present

study (Table 2) found that child-directed speech of mothers tend to present with more

politeness forms (5.22%) than that of fathers (2.58%). Ladegaard (2004) asserts that parents

do not insist girls to be more polite than boys. However, results of the present study imply

that fathers may present more politeness forms to females rather than males. However the

small sample size may deem the data too small for significant percentage computed from a

inferences to be drawn. In explanation to the differences in the linguistic behaviour of

mothers and fathers, the results may reflect the differential distribution of power in society

(Zimmerman and West, 1987). Deuchar (1988) suggests that powerless individuals have

more pressure to be polite. Hence women who are subordinate to men are more likely to be

linguistically polite. Thus the current results confirm the assumptions that the speech of

women is more polite than that of men’s. Mothers and fathers serve as different models of

gendered linguistic behaviour; therefore children imitating the same-sex parent may have a

stronger influence on politeness acquisition, as opposed to the differential treatment of boys

and girls (Ladegaard, 2004).

3.3 Turn-taking

Holmes (1995, p. 1) asserted that during conversations, men tend to dominate the

conversational floor while women use more turn-taking. Men use language as a means of

conveying information regardless of the emotional implications, whereas women use

language to establish, foster, and develop personal relationships. Thus women would tend

to use more questions and linguistic politeness terms than men. In the current study,

mothers and fathers were compared in their quantity of speech:

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Table 3: The average proportion of utterances produced by mothers and fathers during

one-on-one interactions with their children.

Child’s gender Mothers Fathers

Boys 76.08% 71.55%

Girls 72.88% 66.07%

Average 74.48% 68.81%

The current study obtained results reflective of the claims of Holmes (1995, p. 1) as

mothers of the corpora obtained a higher proportion of child-directed utterances (74.48%)

than fathers (68.81%). Gleason (1975) suggested that fathers produce less speaker turns

because they may be more demanding than mothers for the verbal elaboration they expect

from their child. Research by McLaughlin et. al. (1983) reported that although the speech

of fathers is shorter in utterance length, they tend to be lexically diverse. Thus it can be

assumed that mothers are more adept than fathers at teaching children the politeness

convention of turn-taking, and using the conversational floor with consideration of other

speakers.

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The corpora were analyzed for the average number of questions produced by mothers and

fathers in child-directed speech:

Table 4: Average proportion of questions produced by mothers and fathers during one-on-

one interactions with their children of two age groups.

Age group of children Mothers Fathers

Younger (2;1.2 to 2;6.23) 64.44% 39.39%

Older (4;11.1 to 5;2.7) 33.36% 37.53%

Results found that mothers asked younger children more questions (64.44%) than to older

children (33.36%). This was contradictive to the findings of McLaughlin et. al. (1983) that

suggested mothers would ask fewer questions to younger children. However this

incongruence may be due to the possibility that mothers may talk more to younger children

than to older children. Hence further elaborate research will need to be conducted to be able

to draw significant inferences.

4 Conclusion

This study is limited in providing significant evidence as the sample size was

relatively small. Furthermore, much of the data was analyzed using manual calculations;

hence it is not guaranteed that all evidential data was included in the analysis. Future

studies would benefit from a larger sample size and a computerized or automated data

analyses in order to improve external validity and increase significance. Future studies may

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also elaborate on parental use of compliments and insults in child-directed speech, and

explore the ways in which parents explicitly address the face needs of their children. This

would provide deeper insight in the ways in which politeness conventions are presented to

children.

The current study found that not only are the speech styles of both parents

simplified to cater to children’s limited linguistic ability, there are many other underlying

differences of mothers’ and fathers’ speech that help the child acquire different aspects of

politeness.

Mothers are more explicit in educating children in politeness conventions. They

tend to be more polite; are typically longer in utterance with more turn-taking

opportunities; make more prompts and corrections; and use more indirect than direct

requests, thus teaching children to be considerate of the face needs of others. In contrast,

fathers tend to phrase requests in direct and implied indirect form. Their use of implied

indirect forms may provide logical challenges to children, thus encouraging children to

develop their logical thinking. Although fathers talk less than mothers, their speech is

overall more lexically diverse, hence demanding children to talk more to explore their own

linguistic competence. The findings support Bellinger’s (1982) notion that fathers avidly

challenge children by providing more complex information. Therefore father provide

information for children to understand the application of politeness conventions in a

broader context beyond the home. Furthermore, it is noted that the child’s modeling of their

parents’ politeness behavior children may be a strong mechanism in learning politeness

behavior, as well as gendered politeness styles.

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In conclusion, mothers and fathers are equally contributive to their children’s

acquisition of politeness conventions. They play different social roles and provide different

linguistic experiences to cater to the different needs of children’s linguistic development

and politeness acquisition. This study defies the misconception that fathers contribute less

to children’s acquisition of politeness convention, and encourages both mothers and fathers

to interact with their children to provide balanced exposure to the different styles of child-

directed speech.

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5 Appendices

(Please refer to Word.doc file “Appendices 1-20 (Father-Child &Mother-Child)”

electronically submitted via MUSO.)

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