20 research outputs found

    Gender in discourse behaviour in parent–child dyads: a literature review

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    This anonymously peer-reviewed theoretical contribution has three parts: a review of the substantial literature on gender and discourse in children and carers, discussion of methodological difficulties of relating input to uptake, and discussion of research designs that consider this caveat, thus providing a source of reference for researchers (developmental linguistics, gender linguistics) and suggestions for further research. A systematic overview of the much debated topic of gendered talk in parents/carers and emergence of gender differences in children’s styles presents comparative results from all large studies and two meta-analyses. The findings on parental gendered input are shown to be fragmented, sometimes contradictory. Regarding gender differences in children, however, findings show relative uniformity from age c.3,6 onwards, pointing to the need to investigate less mature speech. The author argues that more refined methods of data collection and analysis, used in other areas of child language development, are needed for this purpose

    A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Variations in Children's Language Use: Talkativeness, Affiliative Speech, and Assertive Speech.

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    Three sets of meta-analyses examined gender effects on children's language use. Each set of analyses considered an aspect of speech that is considered to be gender typed: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Statistically significant average effect sizes were obtained with all three language constructs. On average, girls were slightly more talkative and used more affiliative speech than did boys, whereas boys used more assertive speech than did girls. However, the average effect sizes were either negligible (talkativeness, d=0.11; assertive speech, d=0.11) or small (affiliative speech, d=0.26). Larger effect sizes were indicated for some language constructs depending on either the operational definition of the language measure, the method of recording, the child's age level, the interaction partner (adult or peer), group size, gender composition, observational setting, or type of activity. The results are interpreted in relation to social-developmental and social-constructionist approaches to gender; these views are presented as complementary--rather than competing--meta-theoretical viewpoints
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