Male-domination Occurs In Children's World? Views From Chinese Children's Mixed-sex Verbal Interactions

Issues of gender have concerned a lot of researches, which are mainly conducted from two aspects: 1) power existing between male and female; 2) how the power relation is created in and expressed through language. The existing studies have examined gender differential language uses of both adults and children and reached a consensus on the male-domination. However, with those theories and findings in mind, we may argue that the existing literature is not a cover-all description of the reality, and we will in this study test whether those accepted regularities would be observed in our data of mixed-sex communication among the Chinese children. Besides, we have to take the quality of mixed-sex peer interaction in account as we argue that little research is available on this topic, as is previously noted, most researchers examine children's peer groups distinguishing between girls' and boys' same-sex groups. As for the methodology, this study is carried out mainly as a qualitative study with a quantitative support based on the data collected from naturally occurring conversations among Chinese children. And the conceptual framework is an integration of several theories including "effective power", "the ambiguity and polysemy of power and solidarity", "speech act theory" and "power in discourse", considering Study 1 and Study 2's respective emphases and approaches.Bearing in mind the problems in the existing researches, we are to investigate the gender pattern and power relation between girls and boys by answering the following three questions, more specifically, whether there is evidence for "dominant" speech patterns among elementary school boys when paired with girls, or whether this "submissive" speech produced by girls with boys? How or in what ways does powerful participant exercise control over non-powerful participant? Do girls and boys behave all the same either in same- or mixed-sex peer groups?The present study divided into two sections, Study 1 and 2, examines in a sample of Chinese children (M age = 10 years old), the gender pattern and power relation between girls and boys. It is found that the male-domination is absent in mixed-sex interactions among Chinese children, and girls are more able to gain the upper hand over boys by analyzing their language uses in verbal interactions in Study 1 and girls' ability in achieving domination along with connection through employing conversational strategies in Study 2. The results indicate the significance of how society, family and school circumstances such as one-child policy, teacher-student interactions and family conditions such as parenting beliefs, attitudes and behaviors may affect children's gender development, and how the support that girls receive from teachers may be of considerable importance for their social adaptations such as peer relationships, leadership status, and other indexes of social competence, moreover, how girls' personal qualities such as higher verbal ability and sensitivity may facilitate their social interactions.