A silent Finn, a silent Finno–Ugric, or a silent Nordic? A comparative study of Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mother–adolescent interactions

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare some verbal characteristics of family interaction in the stereotypically tongue-tied Nordic region of the Western world. To this end we compared mothers' and early adolescents' talkativeness and monologuing and mothers' conversational dominance emerging in real-life video recordings in Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mono- and bilingual families. All these nations have been characterized by previous research as “silent” and less talkative than other nations. The present study found that the Swedish mothers living in Sweden were talkative, as were the adolescents from Swedish monolingual and Swedish–Estonian bilingual families. In all measures of the amount of speech the mothers and adolescents from monolingual Estonian and Finnish families did not differ. According to our results, little talk seems to be characteristic of Finno–Ugric people, and the rate may be decreasing over time under the influence of a more talk-oriented cultural context.

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