Pragmatic aspects of mothers' speech: Consideration of context, child age, frequency of utterance, and attentional focus

Individual differences in child language acquisition have frequently been linked to stylistic variations in child-directed speech. In particular, the function, or pragmatic intent, of speech and the adult's timing of speech with regard to the child's attentional focus (joint attention) have been considered important and possibly influential dimensions of linguistic interactions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to address questions of stability and style of both maternal pragmatics and joint attentional characteristics in speech to 1-year-olds.; Subjects for this study were 20 infants, 10 girls and 10 boys, and their mothers. Nineteen of the infants were Caucasians, and one was of African-American descent. Dyads were videotaped when the infants were 13 and 21 months of age. Taping sessions took place in the infants' homes during a play session with a set of typical toys and again during bath time. Maternal utterances were coded for both pragmatic intent and focus of attention. Pragmatic categories reported in this paper include descriptions, behavioral directives, and attentional directives. Attentional focus was designated as "follow" when the utterance referred to an object, action, or attribute to which the child was currently attending. Otherwise, it was designated as "lead."; The analysis of covariance revealed systematic relationships between pragmatics and focus of attention, such that descriptions and behavioral directives, but not attentional directives, were more likely to follow rather than lead child attention. When pragmatic categories were examined with regard to attentional focus, significant variation across the play and bath settings was observed.; Negative correlations obtained for mothers' use of follow descriptions and lead behavioral directives suggest that these characteristics may represent important stylistic variations across mothers. Stability across both time and context was particularly strong for mothers' use of follow descriptions. However, because use of follow descriptions was more characteristic of a speech to girls than to boys, this study also raises the issue of direction of effect in maternal stylistic variation. Context effects described in this study also have serious implications for the generalizability of specific maternal speech characteristics obtained in only one context.