Socialization in communication: pragmatic socialization during dinnertime in Estonian, Finnish and Swedish families

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics 2002-12, Vol.34 (12), p.1757-1786
• Main Authors: Geer, Boel De, Tulviste, Tiia, Mizera, Luule, Tryggvason, Marja-Terttu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communication; Cross-cultural comparison; Directness; Discourse; Estonia; Family; Family discourse; Family relations; Family socialization; Finland; HUMANIORA och RELIGIONSVETENSKAP; HUMANITIES and RELIGION; Languages and linguistics; Linguistic subjects; Lingvistikämnen; Metapragmatic comments; Pragmatic socialization; Pragmatics; Socialization; Språkvetenskap; Sweden
• ISSN: 0378-2166; 1879-1387; 1879-1387
• DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00059-5

In conversation with children, parents use language in order to convey norms and rules governing linguistic, social and cultural behavior. This study examines the use of one of the linguistic tools of socialization in family discourse, the comment. A comment is an utterance with explicit or implicit aim to influence a conversational partner to behave or speak in a certain way. One hundred families were videorecorded during mealtime, 20 each of: Estonians in Estonia, Finns in Finland, Swedes in Sweden, Estonians and Finns in Sweden. Recordings were analyzed according to the comments’ focus: non-linguistic (table manners, moral and ethics, prudential norms or other behavior) or linguistic behavior (turn regulation, maxim violations or metalinguistic comments), form: sentence type, time and directness, outcome: compliance, agreement, resistance etc., as well as speaker and addressee. The results show that Estonians and Finns talk less but make more comments than Swedes. There are also differences between groups concerning the comments’ focus. Swedish families made considerably more comments on moral and ethical behavior. Swedes made more use of declaratives than of any other sentence type and also made more comments which referred to a general time, whereas Estonians and Finns commented more on table manners, used more imperatives and referred to the here-and-now situation. Further, Swedish children commented and negotiated parents’ comments more than children in the other groups.