Semantic meanings of each gender

The following subsections will present and analyze all negation meanings each gender delivered (section 4.2.1), the single strategy and combination of strategies each gender utilized to deliver negation meanings (section 4.2.2).

4.2.1 Semantic meanings of each gender

Among 812 negations we identified in children’s data, 378 are from female’s data (46.6%), 434 are from male’s data (53.4%). See the following table for the distribution of each meaning.

Table 12. Children’s negation meanings of each gender Gender

* Difference between female and male is significant at p < .05.

** Difference between female and male is significant at p < .01.

*** Difference between female and male is significant at p < .001.

When a speaker offers an utterance, a verbal or nonverbal response is required from the hearer. Some of the responses are preferred, while others are dispreferred.

Several previous studies regarded denial and refusal as dispreferred responses (Levinson 1983, Pomerantz 1984, Wang 1998, and Wang 2007). As we mentioned in 4.1.3, denial, rejection, and prohibition are negations directed against the mother’s self-centered knowledge, wish, or movement. Thus, these categories are differentiated from other negation meanings in that they can be a threat to the face of their interlocutor.

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Among these three meanings, male children expressed their denial towards the mother’s proposition and their rejection to the mother’s request more than female children, while female children convey these relatively unwelcomed meanings to the perceiver significantly less than male children do, especially the meaning of denial.

Male children were found to be inclined to deny their mother for the sake of

opposition even when the topic was about obvious facts. Excerpt 1 on page 36 is one such example, and below is another one. The boy YOU showed her mother a type of puzzle he wanted to play with, but his mother maintained that he had already done that one last time. The child corrected his mother, stating it was the other two types of puzzle that he completed, but his mother was pretty sure about her memory and emphasized it again. After another round of denial, questioning, and denial, the circle did not stop until the mother was distracted by YOU’s brother and dropped her questioning.

Excerpt 20. (MOT: the mother, YOU: the male child)

*YOU: 我要拼這個 [% pointing to a picture on the cover of the game box].

I want to play with this puzzle.

*MOT: 你要拼那個.

You want to play with that puzzle.

*MOT: 啊你那個上次不是拼過了?

But I thought you completed that one last time.

*YOU: 沒有! 

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Note that this type of debate, arguing about certain facts that the mother was certain of, can easily be found in conversation between son and mother. In the other boy’s data, QIN’s mother even questioning his negative style of answer (你一定要說不嗎? ‘Do you have to say no all the time?’) While in female children’s data, denying facts that the mother was certain of was rare, and girls seemed to deliver their denial only when it was really based on something they believed in (instead of denying it because of one’s arbitrariness), and were able to provide a basis to convince their mother. On the other hand, female children were more willing to try understanding and interpreting their mother’s meaning, which also led to the query-denial circle that we have seen in the last excerpt being rarely seen in the conversation between female children and their mother. In the following excerpt, the mother and KUO was playing a doll dress up game. KUO chose a sailor suit that she thought to be nurse’s uniform to put on the doll, then her mother asked her if it’s a sailor suit. The girl denied it and told her mother that it’s a nurse’s uniform and her mother corrected her that it’s a sailor suit.

Instead of insisting on her original belief, which we can found in a number of examples from male children’s data, the girl asked her mother a question and let her mother having the opportunity to explain more. Even though the mother did not provide sufficient details for KUO, the girl tried to interpret it with her own guess (就 是要釣魚的 ‘So it’s for fishing.’)

Excerpt 21. (MOT: the mother, KUO: the female child)

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In the meaning of rejection, the difference between genders is significant only when p < .05, but we found the interacting style in mother-daughter conversation was slightly more cooperative than in mother-son conversation. Mother and son can run into lengthy mutual rejection (see excerpt 13 on page 50) sometimes, while mother and daughter seemed to be more capable of getting out of it. Below is an example of how mother and daughter worked together (consciously or unconsciously) to avoid

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mutual negation. At first the female child suggested watching the video of her dance performance, but the mother thought that it’s late at night and time for the girl to take a shower. Instead of saying no directly, the mother gave her permission to watch the video first but then clarified they would be watching it tomorrow. The girl and mother both insisted on the timing for watching the video at first, but the mother then quit giving countering moves and explained that it’s already late and it’s her shower time.

After that, the girl made a concession that she would watch it after she had taken a shower, and the mother took it. Though we don’t know if the mother really kept her promise at the end, we found more opportunities of negotiation in mother-daughter

negation than in mother-son negation.

Excerpt 22. (MOT: the mother, LEE: the female child)

*LEE: 看這個啦 -: [% bringing out a disk from the drawer].

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Among the rest of negation meanings, female children were found to convey their insufficiency of ability, encounter with disappearance of things, and insufficiency of knowledge significantly more often than males did. Both inability and epistemic negation are somehow an admission of one’s inability, and we found that male children did not easily take these words out of their mouth comparing to female children, especially to confess their own incompetence to do something physically.

Except 22 and 23 are examples when male and female children came across the inability scenario. In excerpt 23, the boy QIN was trying to bring a toy off the shelf, then the mother found his attempt and asked him if he possesses the ability to do that.

The boy then provided a supporting reason of his capability of reaching it, at the same time, kept trying in vain. At the end of this inability scenario, the mother brought this fact out in the open.

Excerpt 23. (MOT: the mother, QIN: the male child)

*MOT: 拿得下來嗎?

‘ Can you bring the toy down? ’

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*QIN: /ei/ -: [% attempting to grab the toy but failed].

*MOT: 我看你拿不下來吧 [% walking towards QIN to offer help].

‘ I think it’s out of your reach. ’

Male children always tried to solve a physical challenge by themselves before they ask for their mother’s help, and sometimes they won’t reveal their inability even when it is obvious to see they failed in any attempt. In contrast, female children always utter their incapability of doing something freely and mostly without trying beforehand most of the time. In excerpt 24, the girl LEE was folding clothes with her mother. During the housework session, she kept drawing out clothes from the pile of unfolded ones, and then immediately announced that she is incapable of folding it without any attempt. After several times her mother discovered this pattern and pointed it out (你每一件都要拿給我然後都說不會摺 ‘ You always give me every clothes you picked up then claim you can’t fold it.’ )

Excerpt 24. (MOT: the mother, LEE: the female child)

*LEE: 長袖的我就不會了.

‘ As for long-sleeved clothes, I don’t know how to fold it. ’ [Ellipsis]

*LEE: 像舞蹈衣我就不會摺了.

‘ I don’t know how to fold dancing costumes. ’ [Ellipsis]

*LEE: 媽咪這種的我不會摺.

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‘ You always give me every clothes you picked up then claim you can’t fold it. ’

The tendency that male children were more willing to try and take the risk of failure was also found in the meaning of epistemic negation. As we mentioned in 4. 1.

1, the mother always gives hints to channel the child to the correct answer when the child admitted not possessing certain knowledge. The female example on page 39 showed that after the mother gave the girl LEE four hints about the answer, the girl still did not make any guess until the mother revealed the answer. The following excerpt is a similar scenario in mother-son conversation. The son was building a toy pigpen for piggy, and the mother guessed the reason why the boy put a toy tree next to the pigpen was to provide a shade for the piggy. But it seemed to be wrong since the boy immediately asked why it would not be hot if there’s a tree. Then the mother asked her son to think about the question he asked a while ago, but the son said he doesn’t know. Next, the mother asked the boy to imagine how it feels to stay under a tree in strong sunlight, trying to put him in the place and let him understand the function of trees at that scene. The boy did understand it wouldn’t be hot, but he did not explain the function of the tree. Then the mother led him to think what could be blocked by the leaves of tree. Though the answer of QIN did not fulfill his mother’s expectation that the tree blocked the sunlight and heat for the piggy, we can still see the mother’s thought-provoking questions worked better with male children in these excerpts.

Excerpt 25. (MOT: the mother, QIN: the male son)

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‘ If the sunlight is strong, what would it be like to stay under a tree? ‘

*QIN: 就不會熱了.

‘ Then it won’t be that hot. ‘

*MOT: 對 # 因為樹葉擋住什麼了?

‘ Right, because leaves help to block…? ‘

*QIN: 你的家.

‘ Your home. ‘

The difference between female and male children’s nonexistence was significant when p < .01. The amount of nonexistence was the fewest among other negation meanings, thus the different usage between genders is hard to infer. Nevertheless, we found that male children seemed to be less likely to express nonexistence for no function. They may express 在哪裡? ‘ Where is it? ’ after their mother pointed out the existence of something but they could not find it or 沒有在這裡 ‘ It’s not here ’ when their mother asked them to hand her something. But self-initiated and

non-functional nonexistence was only found in female children’s speech. For example, female children would report 襯衫沒了 ‘ No more shirts ‘ when she was folding clothes with her mother or 全部用完了 ‘ It (the yellow sand) is used up ‘ after she poured out all yellow sand from the bag in the color sand painting session. We did not find any such reporting speech in male children’s speech. Such speech seemed to be talking to oneself and required no response from the interlocutor, and the mother did not reply to any of them in our data. While gender differences were found in

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nonexistence, non-occurrence showed no difference between genders statistically.

In a previous study investigating children’s language use in pretend play, it is verified that male children use prohibition five times more than female children did (Sachs, 1987). Though in our data, prohibition in male children’s data occurred slightly more than with female children, the statistics showed no difference among boys and girls.

Among these negation meanings, the amount of denial and inability showed the largest disparity between female and male, and the gap between genders was also wide in nonexistence. Besides, male children expressed more rejection than female children while female children expressed more epistemic negation than male children.

As for prohibition and non-occurrence, no gender differences were found based on statistics.