The pragmatic function of child directed utterances in the at-home environment: The impact of maternal education

Abstract

Research focused on the pragmatic function of child-directed speech (CDS) has shown differences between socioeconomic groups (Hart y Risley 1995; Mastin et al. 2016). Since these studies were carried out in populations that differ socially, culturally and linguistically from the Argentinean population, the description of linguistic environment of different socioeconomic groups of Argentina may contribute to account for the variability in children's early linguistic experiences. This work intends to study the relationship between the socioeconomic status and the pragmatic function of the CDS considering children’s age and maternal education by analyzing 40 hours of audio recording in the homes of 20 children (8-20 months of age). Results showed that higher maternal education increases comments and reports probability and decreases directives probability. Results also showed that questions’ probability decreased with children’s age.