Behaviour regulation in the family context in Estonia and Sweden

Boel De Geer and Tiia Tulviste

The aim of the study is to compare the regulatory speech used by parents and children in three different groups: Swedes in Sweden, and Estonians in Estonia and Sweden. 54 families with children of 9-13 were videotaped during mealtime. All regulatory speech aimed at controlling behaviour was identified and coded according to sentence form used for regulation as well as outcome (response). Estonians in Estonia used behaviour directives most frequently, and favoured the direct imperative form of regulatory language over declaratives and questions used by Estonians and Swedes in Sweden. Although the outcomes of regulation were mainly compliance in all groups, Estonian children living in Sweden complied significantly less than Swedish children. The results also show that Estonian children in Sweden have been influenced by the Swedish preference for regulating by declaratives and questions, using more questions and fewer imperatives than their mothers.

Quick links
A browser-friendly version of this article is not yet available. View PDF
Andersen, Elaine Slosberg
(1990) Speaking with style: The sociolinguistic skills of children. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Becker, Judith
(1982) Children’s strategic use of requests to mark and manipulate social status. In Stan Kuczaj II, (ed.), Language Development Vol 2: Language, Thought and Culture. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., pp. 1-35.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1988) The success of parents’ indirect techniques for teaching their preschoolers pragmatic skills. First Language 8: 173-181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1990) Processes in the acquisition of pragmatic competence. In Gina Conti-Ramsden, & Catherine Snow (eds.), Children’s Language 7. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., pp. 7-24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bellinger, D
(1979) Changes in the explicitness of mothers’ directives as children age. Journal of Child Language 18: 41-49.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
(1997) Dinner talk. Cultural patterns of sociability and socialization in family discourse. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, & Catherine E. Snow
(1992) Developing autonomy for tellers, tales, and telling in family narrative events. Journal of Narrative and Life History 2.3: 187-217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daun, Å
(1991) Individualism and collectivity among Swedes. Ethnos 56.3-4: 165-172. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Geer, Boel, Tiia Tulviste, Luule Mizera, & Marja-Terttu Tryggvason
in press) Socialization in communication: Pragmatic socialization during dinnertime in Estonian, Finnish and Swedish families. Journal of Pragmatics.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
(1990) He-Said-She-Said. Talk as social organization among black children. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halle, T., & M. Shatz
(1994) Mothers’ social regulatory language to young children in family settings. First Language 14: 83-104. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heath, S.B
(1983) Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  BoP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Junefelt, Karin, & Tiia Tulviste
(1997) Regulation and praise in American, Estonian and Swedish mother-child interaction. Mind, Culture and Activity 4.1: 24-33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1998) American, Estonian and Swedish mothers’ regulation of their children’s discourse construction. In M. Lyra, & J. Valsiner (eds.), Construction of psychological processes in interpersonal communication. pp. 137-154.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kivik, Piibi-Kai
(1998) What silence says: Communicative style and identity. Trames 2.52/47.1: 66-90.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kulick, Don
(1990) Having head and showing knowledge. Department of Anthropology: Stockholm University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kagitçibasi, Ç
(1996) Family and human development across cultures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McDonald, Lynda, & Diana Pien
(1982) Mother conversational behaviour as a function of interactional intent. Journal of Child Language 9: 337-358. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Narusk, Anu, & Lea Pulkkinen
(1994) Parental relationship and adolescents’ conceptions of their interaction with significant others. European Journal of Psychology of Education 9: 203-213. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
(1988) Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1996) Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In John Gumperz, & Stephen Levinson (eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 407-437.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pan, B.A., A. Imbens-Bailey, K Winner, & C. Snow
(1996) Communicative intents expressed by parents in interaction with young children. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 42: 248-267.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pontecorvo, C
(1998)  Discourse and socialization in families . Paper presented at the fourth Congress of the International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory, Århus, Denmark.
Schneiderman, M.H
(1983) Do what I mean, not what I say! Changes in mothers action-directives to young children. Journal of Child Language 10: 357-367. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shieffelin, Bambi, & Elinor Ochs
(1986) Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah
(1981) Indirectness in discourse: Ethnicity as conversational style. Discourse Processes 4: 221-238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tulviste, Tiia, & Margit Raudsepp
(1997) The conversational style of Estonian mothers. First Language 17: 151-163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tulviste, Tiia
(2000) Socialization at meals. A comparison of American and Estonian mother-adolescent interaction. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 13.5: 537-556. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Welles-Nyström, Barbara
(1996) Scenes from a marriage: Equality ideology in Swedish family policy, maternal ethnotheories, and practice. In Sarah Harkness, & Charles M. Super (eds.), Parents’ cultural belief systems: Their origins, expressions, and consequences. New York: Guilford, pp. 192-214.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
 
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue