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The role of mothers and firstborn female siblings in teaching and encouraging language skills

University of British Columbia

Although mothers and siblings are prevalent sources of language for the learning child in Western cultures, their respective roles in influencing the rate or the course of language development have not been differentiated. Register analyses of siblings' speech have failed to discriminate between the linguistic input provided by siblings and by mothers. Using a speech act analysis of transcripts based on 19 hours of audiotapes and videotapes in a 2x2x2x2 mixed model design, this study discerned 28 significant differences (all p≤0.025) between mothers and firstborn female siblings (4-5 years old) as. conversational partners with 19 secondborn boys and 19 secondborn girls (2-3 years old) in playtime and puzzle sessions. The findings support the hypotheses that the mother-child interactions concentrate on language teaching and the demonstration of language learning, solidarity functions, and positive feedback, and that the sibling interactions are marked by a greater frequency of disagreements, prohibitions, indirect directives, and referential failure. Contrary to the stated hypotheses, mothers issued more orders and more negative corrections of truth value and behavior than the firstborn sisters. The findings indicate that there exist significant contrasts between mothers and firstborn female siblings as language socializers. The contrasts identified have considerable credence as major sources of variance in linguistic achievement. The study concludes that firstborn female preschool siblings are not as good as mothers in setting up optimal language-learning conditions for younger siblings.

Text

2010-03-18

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/22097

Education

University of British Columbia

Graduate