Chapter 6 Conclusion
6.2 Limitations and suggestions
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minimization, in prohibitions. Additionally, bald and minimization are two primary modifications in both control acts after examining the data at each of child’s four ages.
The mother’s power status is higher than that of the child’s, so it is appropriate for her to choose bald. The use of minimization obviously belongs to politeness. Therefore, politeness is embedded in the Mandarin mother’s regulatory language, and the maternal input will help the child to ultimately acquire pragmatic competence in politeness. This study also discovered two major kinds of semantic combinations. One is minimization and repetition. The other is minimization and justification. Finally, the results of contents for control acts show that competent action often occurs in
directives. As for prohibitions, appropriate behavior and caretaking are most related.
Based on our findings, the Mandarin mother seems to favor the direct, imperative form of regulatory language, and semantic bald or minimization forms.
6.2 Limitations and suggestions
Although we have gained some findings about the Mandarin maternal
regulatory language, there are still limitations in this study. First, the results derived from this study may be influenced by an issue of individual differences, but this study would certainly shed some light on the Mandarin maternal regulatory language.
Second, the child’s cognitive development at four ages all belongs to the
preoperational stage, so the findings may be limited in application. It is suggested that future studies may investigate children at other cognitive stages, in order to see if their parents’ regulatory language changes with the growth of the comprehension abilities of the children. Third, the present study only focused on a boy with his mother. The sample is not big enough, so more research should be done with a larger sample.
Fourth, future research may investigate that either directive or prohibition would be
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the most effective way to regulate children. Next, some studies also have found variations in the regulatory language of parents when speaking to either their sons or their daughters (e.g., Gleason, Ely, Perlmann, and Narasimhan, 1996), so future research also might examine the maternal regulatory language used with children of different genders. Last, the use of more direct forms may elicit more compliance from children (e.g., Schaffer and Crook, 1980), so future research may investigate the relationship between compliance rate and form.
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Transcribing symbols
(Adopted from MacWhinney, Brian. 1995. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.)
xxx unintelligible speech, not treated as a word xx unintelligible speech, treated as a word . period
? question
! exclamation
# pause
### extra long pause between words -: lengthening
+… trailing off
+^ quick uptake
[/] retracing without correction [//] retracing with correction
<> portion of utterances been overlapped [>][<] overlapping utterances +/. interruption
+, self-completion [= text] explanation
[=! text] paralinguistic material
%act: action tier
%sit: situation tier
%com: comments by investigator
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