Chapter 3 Methodology
3.3 Coding system
3.3.5 Coding system & Reliability
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3.3.5 Coding system & Reliability
Directives (1) Maternal control acts Prohibitions
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Imperative Direct Performative
Obligation statement (2) Syntactic directness Want statement
Conventionally indirect Non-conventionally indirect
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Minimization Politeness marker
Mitigation Communal orientation Tag question
Justification Bargain (3) Semantic modification Bald
Immediacy Aggravation Repetition Threat
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Competent action Cognitive/play Social regulation
(4) Content Appropriate behavior Use of objects Physical care Caretaking Monitoring
Figure 3. The four classifications of maternal regulatory language: Maternal control acts, Syntactic directness, Semantic modification, and Content
Sixty-minute transcriptions were selected to be coded by another Mandarin Chinese speaker. Cohen’s Kappa was used to estimate the inter-rater reliability of the coding transcripts. In the present study, the reliability for maternal control acts
reached 0.87, for syntactic directness reached 0.87, for semantic modification reached 0.84, and for content reached 0.92.
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Chapter 4 Results
In this chapter, we will seek to discover the distributions of two types of Mandarin maternal control acts (Section 4.1) and three distributions of syntactic directness (Section 4.2), semantic modification (Section 4.3), and content (Section 4.4) under two maternal control acts, namely directives and prohibitions.
4.1 Two types of Mandarin maternal control acts
Two types of control acts investigated in this study refer to directives and prohibitions. Table 1 displays the frequency of directives and prohibitions after analyzing maternal utterances to H at four ages.
Table 1
The frequency of directives and prohibitions by H’s ages
Directives Prohibitions Total
Age N. (%) N. (%) N. (%)
2;1 91 (81.3) 21 (18.8) 112 (100.1)
2;7 52 (77.6) 15 (22.4) 67 (100)
3;1 65 (75.6) 21 (24.4) 86 (100)
3;7 36 (69.2) 16 (30.8) 52 (100)
Total 244 (77) 73 (23) 317 (100)
As shown in Table 1, the data identified includes 317 control acts, of which, 244 are directives and 73 are prohibitions. The number of the directives is more than
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three times that of the prohibitions. Thus, directives comprise most of the maternal control acts. This finding is correspondent with that of Schaffer and Crook’s (1979) study where the majority of maternal controls belonged to directives rather than prohibitions. Kuczynski and Kochanska (1995) might explain the results. They propose that directives rather than prohibitions are considered to be beneficial maternal control acts. Therefore, the mother chooses to use more directives rather than prohibitions to regulate her child.
As for directives, in the previous chapter it was mentioned that directives are used by the speaker to get the hearer to perform an act. According to the results listed in Table 1, the mother was found to employ 244 directives. Among 244 directives, 91 directives (81.3%) were identified at 2;1, 52 directives (77.6%) at 2;7, 65 directives (75.6%) at 3;1, and 36 directives (69.2%) at 3;7. The results show that the frequency of directives decreases with H’s ages. Example (1) is extracted from H at 2;1 to illustrate the use of directives.
(1) M is asking H to drink water.
Example (1) displays three directives in Lines 1, 3, and 4. The mother asked the child to drink water (Line 1). Then, she regulated the child’s orientation to be closer to the cup (see Line 3). As soon as the child drank some water, she further ordered him to hold the cup by himself. This example clearly shows how the mother gave three directives to get the child to perform the act.
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The other type of control acts discussed in this study is prohibitions. Prohibitions are used by the speaker to get the hearer to stop, avoid, inhibit or prevent undesirable behaviors. Among 73 prohibitions observed in Table 1, there were 21 prohibitions (18.8%) at 2;1, 15 (22.4%) at 2;7, 21 (24.4%) at 3;1, and 16 (30.8%) at 3;7. The results show that the frequency of prohibitions increases with H’s ages. It seems that the results show developmental patterns. The frequency of directives decreases with the child’s ages. On the other hand, the frequency of prohibitions increases. Example (2) from H at 3;7 shows the use of maternal prohibitions.
(2) M asks H not to pick up the video recorder.
%sit: H touches Ya-ting’s video recorder.
The mother ordered the child not to pick up the equipment in Line 1. In Line 2, she provided a reason for him to keep away from the video recorder. She warned him not to touch the equipment. If he touched the equipment, it would get broken. The mother stopped the child from touching the equipment.
4.2 Syntactic directness
As mentioned in the previous chapter, syntactic directness is divided into direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect by measuring how explicitly the structure of a sentence indicates that it is a control act. After analyzing the data for examples of maternal syntactic directness in addressing H, the data identified includes 266 direct, 43 conventionally indirect, and eight non-conventionally indirect usages under the two types of control acts.
4.2.1 The three types of syntactic directness in directives
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We will examine how the mother uses syntactic forms in directives. Table 2 presents the three types of syntactic directness in directives by H’s ages.
Table 2
The three types of syntactic directness in directives by H’s ages
Direct (IMP: imperative, PER: performative, OS: obligation statement, WS: want statement)
According to the results in Table 2, the mother employed 244 directives. Among them, direct occupied 203 (83.2%), conventionally indirect 38 (15.6%), and
non-conventionally indirect three (1.2%). The frequency for direct is more than five times the frequency for conventionally indirect and more than 60 times that for non-conventionally indirect. Therefore, the result suggests that the highest frequency of occurrence in the syntactic directness belongs to direct. The results conform to Blum-Kulka’s (1990) finding of a high frequency of direct forms. Blum-Kulka indicates that intimacy, efficiency, and asymmetrical power relations between parents and children lead to the high frequency of the use of direct forms. Thus, the mother’s power status results in the application of direct usage at a much higher rate than that of conventionally indirect or non-conventional usage in our results. The following discussions will investigate the use of the three forms of syntactic directness at each of the child’s ages.
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As for the direct, the sub-categories include imperative, performatives, obligation statements, and want statements. According to the use of imperatives in Table 2, the frequencies of each time are 79 (86.6%) at 2;1, 40 (76.9%) at 2;7, 57 (87.7%) at 3;1, and 26 (72.2%) at 3;7. The imperative occurred highly at all four of the child’s ages, over 70 % of all usages at each age. Among direct usages, the use of imperatives comprises nearly the entire number of usages and only one utterance is a want statement. We observed that no tokens of performative or obligation statements were found in the maternal usages of direct forms.
In our study, the imperative is used with the most frequency of the direct forms.
One of the examples of the use of the imperative in directives is observed in Example (3) when H was at 2;7.
%sit: H stands on the sofa and looks through the window.
H: Ok.
M: Ok. Please come down.
Example (3) demonstrates the application of the imperative to express the prohibition in Line 1 and of the imperative to express the directive in Line 4. The mother asked the child not to stand on the sofa (Line 1) and received the compliance hao ‘Ok’ from the child in Line 3. His mother asked him to come down in Line 4.
Example (4) shows the only instance of the use of a want statement by the
mother when H was as 2;1. The want statement appearing in Line 1 is to ask H to give the mother a yellow car. H repeated the mother’s utterance in Line 2 and started to look for the object the mother wanted. This kind of form of direct want statement is
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only used at a low frequency in maternal usages, and only one example appears in our data. The usages of syntactic direct in either directives or prohibitions are imperative.
(4) M and H are playing cars.
%sit: H searches for one and finally finds a yellow car.
M: Great. It’s a yellow car. Thank you.
After discussing the direct form of syntactic directness, we will investigate conventionally indirect form in directives. The category of conventionally indirect form of syntactic directness includes language where the speaker asks the addressee’s ability or willingness to induce the addressee’s compliance. The language in the indirect category is produced in the form of questions. According to the results in Table 2, the frequencies of conventionally indirect form are 11 (12.1%) at 2;1, 12 (23.1%) at 2;7, five (7.7%) at 3;1, and 10 (27.8%) at 3;7. The mother uses this kind of conventionally indirect form at all four ages. Example (5) shows that the mother wants H to eat by using a conventionally indirect form at H 3;7.
(5) M asks H to eat something.
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In Example (5), the mother asked the child whether he wanted to eat boiled dumplings or not (Line 1). The child expressed that he didn’t want to eat any (Line 2).
The mother was eager to know what exactly the child wanted to eat in Line 4. In Line 5, the child clearly expressed he didn’t want to eat anything. This example shows the mother using the questions to ask the child to eat something.
The third type of syntactic directness which we will discuss is
non-conventionally indirect form. The illocutionary intent is not overtly expressed in a non-conventionally indirect form. The desired action is not named and the form is not imperative. In Table 2, we can see that the numbers of tokens for the use of the non-conventionally indirect form in directives are much less than for the other two.
Only three (4.6%) at H 3;1 are observed. Example (6) is extracted from H at 3;1 to illustrate the use of non-conventionally indirect form in directives.
(6) M asks H to bring the cards to her. include examples of the non-conventionally indirect form of directive. In Line 1, the mother mentioned that there was another card inside without explicitly mentioning the
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desired act. The mother found the child did not comply, so she uttered imperative form in Line 3 and 4. Line 5 and 6 are utterances to provide clues for her child to be aware of her mother’s desired act of bringing the card.
4.2.2 The three types of syntactic directness in prohibitions
We will examine how the mother uses syntactic forms in prohibitions and discover the distribution in this Section. Table 3 shows the three types of syntactic directness in prohibitions by H’s ages.
Table 3
The three types of syntactic directness in prohibitions by H’s ages
Direct (IMP: imperative, PER: performative, OS: obligation statement, WS: want statement)
According to the results in Table 3, the mother employed 73 prohibitions. Among them, the direct form occupied 63 (86.3%), the conventionally indirect five (6.8%), and the non-conventionally indirect five (6.8%). The frequency of the use of direct form is more than 14 times of that of the frequency of the conventionally indirect and the non-conventionally indirect forms. Therefore, the result suggests that the highest frequency of occurrence in the category of syntactic directness is direct.
As for the direct form, the sub-categories include imperative, performatives,
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obligation statements, and want statements. The frequencies of the use of imperatives at each age in Table 3 are 18 (85.7%) at 2;1, 13 (86.7%) at 2;7, 16 (76.2%) at 3;1, and 16 (100%) at 3;7. The use of the imperative occurred at a high frequency at all four of the child’s ages, over 75 % of all usages at each age. In the Mandarin-speaking
mother’s prohibitions, the highest frequency of occurrence in the direct usages is of the imperative. Among direct usages, the Mandarin mother is likely to use the
syntactic imperative form to make the child avoid performing a certain behavior or to stop him or her from doing an undesired action. Example (7) is extracted from H at 2;7 to display the use of direct to warn the child. The mother and her child were playing with a bamboo dragonfly. The mother warned the child not to fall down.
(7) M and H are playing with a bamboo dragonfly.
1. %sit: H 把竹蜻蜓拿給媽媽.
Æ 2. M: 你不要跌碰碰喔.
%sit: H gives the bamboo dragonfly to his mother.
M: Don’t fall down.
The second syntactic directness which we will discuss is conventionally indirect in prohibitions. According to the results in Table 3, the frequencies of conventionally indirect are zero at 2;1, two (13.3%) at 2;7, three (14.3%) at 3;1, and zero at 3;7.
Conventionally indirect form is not frequently used in prohibitions and does not occur at H’s four ages. Example (8) is extracted from the data for H at 3;1, and we observe that the mother gets her child to stop running by using the conventionally indirect form.
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%sit: H ignored his mother’s warning and still ran.
In Line 1, the mother asked her child not to run by using a conventionally indirect form. Although the child answered that he could not run, he still continued running. Thus, the mother used another conventionally indirect form in Line 3 to warn him not to run. This example shows the mother makes use of conventionally indirect forms to achieve the intention of prohibition.
The third syntactic directness which we will discuss is the use of the
non-conventionally indirect form in prohibitions. In Table 3, the frequencies of the use of the non-conventionally indirect form are three (14.3%) at 2;1, zero at 2;7, two (9.5%) at 3;1, and zero at 3;7. The non-conventionally indirect form is not frequently used in prohibitions and does not occur at all of the four ages. Example (9) is
extracted from the data for H at 2;1, and we can see how the mother modifies the non-conventionally indirect form into the direct form to prohibit the child from performing a behavior.
(9) H wants to draw on his contact book.
%sit: H continues to look for books or pieces of paper on which to draw.
In Example (9), the mother repeated the same non-conventionally indirect form
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three times (Line1, Line 2, and Line 3). Halle and Shatz (1994) mention that mothers may think that their children are not attentive, so they repeat contiguous utterances. In Line 4, the mother changed the hint into a direct imperative sentence form buyao hua
‘don’t draw’. After comparing Lines 1 to 3 with Line 4, it can be seen that the literal and referential meanings of the sentence form buyao hua ‘don’t draw’ (Line 4) explicitly indicate the mother’s intention to prohibit the child’s behavior than Lines 1 to 3 without directly mentioning the prohibited behavior. Therefore, the sequence from Line 1 to Line 4 increases the degree of explicitness in the expression of maternal intention. This is consistent with Sachs’s (1980) observation that the sequence of a mothers’ repetitions of directives is from less explicit to more explicit.
Also, Schneiderman (1983) considers that the sequence from implied action to
explicit action reflects the function of enhancing children’s compliance. The sequence from implied action to explicit action can be observed in Line 5. After the mother explicitly uttered buyao hua ‘don’t draw’, the child followed the direction and tried to find another book or piece of paper on which to draw.
4.2.3 Summary
This finding suggests that the first priority in choosing a syntactic form is to use the imperative. Therefore, the imperative is the preferred sentence type for use in regulating the child’s behavior by the Mandarin mother in this study. As mentioned Blum-Kulka’s (1990) explanations of intimacy, efficiency, and the asymmetrical power relationship between parents and children lead to a high frequency of the use of direct forms. Gao (1999) claims that the most effective and appropriate way to
influence a child’s behavior in Chinese is considered to be through the use of
imperatives, but that is considered the least efficient way by users of English. Based
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on our data, the Mandarin mother used the imperative to regulate the child’s behavior in the directives and the prohibitions, so the mother may think that the use of the imperative was effective.
4.3 Semantic modification
In this Section, we will display the various semantic modifications that the mother adopted under directives (Section 4.3.1) and prohibitions (Section 4.3.2), respectively.
Because there would be possibly more than one kind of mitigation or aggravation modification in one utterance, another combination type was created to further analyze the major combinations of semantic modification (Section 4.3.3). After analyzing the use of maternal semantic modifications in addressing H, the data identified includes 102 mitigation, 139 bald, 42 aggravation, and 34 combination usages in two types of control acts.
4.3.1 The semantic modification in directives
We will examine how the mother uses semantic modifications in directives.
Table 4 shows the four types of semantic modification in directives by H’s ages.
According to the results in Table 4, 244 semantic modifications were found in
directives. Among them, there were 68 (27.9%) instances of mitigation, 117 (48%) of bald, 36 (14.8%) of aggravation, and 23 (9.4%) of combination. The frequency of the use of bald is much more than that of mitigation, aggravation, and combination.
Therefore, the result suggests that the highest frequency of semantic modification in directives belongs to the bald.
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The semantic modification in directives by H’s ages
Mitigation Bald Aggravation Combination Total Age Type N (%) Type N (%) Type N (%) Type N (%) N (%) (MIN: minimization, POL: politeness marker, COM: communal orientation, TAG: tag question, JUS: justification, BAR: bargain, IMM: immediacy, REP: repetition, THR: threat)
As shown in Table 4, bald (58.2%) and repetition (15.4%) are the two most extensively used semantic modifications at 2;1, but bald and minimization are mostly conveyed at the other three ages. There are two possible explanations to explain the reason why repetition occurs much more at 2;1 instead of at the other three ages.
Firstly, the mother might use repetition to increase the probability of compliance especially when the child fails to obey (Newport, H. Gleitman, & L. R. Gleitman, 1977; Schaffer & Crook, 1980). Secondly, the mother may think the child is not attentive, so she would repeat contiguous utterances to get the child’s attention (Halle
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& Shatz, 1994). Thus, the child’s compliance and attention would influence the mother’s use of repetition.
The bald occupied the most frequency at each of the four ages. The frequencies at each age are 53 (58.2%) at 2;1, 24 (46.2%) at 2;7, 26 (40%) at 3;1, and 14 (38.9%) at 3;7. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the bald is without mitigation or
aggravation. One of the examples of the use of the bald is observed in Example (10) when H was at 2;1.
Example (10) demonstrates the application of the bald to express the directive in Line 1. Line 2 is a repetition of Line 1 to ask H to sing, but Line 2 adds immediacy kuai ‘hurriedly’ to enhance H’s compliance.
Since repetition (15.4%) at 2;1 is another mostly used semantic modification, Example (11) shows an instance of maternal uses of repetition at H 2;1. H seems not to be attentive to his mother, so his mother repeats twice (Line 4 and Line 5) after original utterance (Line 2).
(11) M asks H to drink water.
%sit: H keeps looking at the yellow car in his hand.
M: Eddie, do you want to drink water?
%sit: M moves to the sofa and touches H’s head.
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M: Eddie, do you want to drink water?
M: ha -: do you want to drink water?
%sit: M touches H, and it seems to get H’s attention.
H: Drink water.
Minimization is another widely used semantic modification by H at 2;7, 3;1, and 3;7. The frequencies of each time are 5 (9.6%) at 2;7, 21 (32.3%) at 3;1, and 13 (36.1%) at 3;7. Example (12) is extracted from H at 3;7 to illustrate the use of minimization. The mother asked the child to eat a few boiled dumplings in Line 4 by using minimization yidian ‘a few’.
(12) M asks H to eat a few boiled dumplings.
1. H: 媽你要吃水餃.
2. H: 我也要吃水餃.
3. %sit: H 跑向客廳.
Æ 4. M: 你最好吃一點.
H: Mom, you want to eat boiled dumplings.
H: I also want to eat boiled dumplings.
%sit: H runs to the living room.
M: You’d better eat a few boiled dumplings.
4.3.2 The semantic modification in prohibitions
We will examine how the mother uses semantic modifications in prohibitions and discover the distribution in this Section. The four types of semantic modification in prohibitions by H’s ages are presented in Table 5.
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The semantic modification in prohibitions by H’s ages
Mitigation Bald Aggravation Combination Total Age Type N (%) Type N (%) Type N (%) Type N (%) N (%) (MIN: minimization, POL: politeness marker, COM: communal orientation, TAG: tag question, JUS: justification, BAR: bargain, IMM: immediacy, REP: repetition, THR: threat)
According to the results in Table 5, there are 73 semantic modifications in the category of prohibitions. Among them, there were 34 (46.6%) instances of mitigation, 22 (30.1%) of bald, 6 (8.2%) of aggravation, and 11 (15.1%) of combination. The
According to the results in Table 5, there are 73 semantic modifications in the category of prohibitions. Among them, there were 34 (46.6%) instances of mitigation, 22 (30.1%) of bald, 6 (8.2%) of aggravation, and 11 (15.1%) of combination. The