Maternal Speech to 4-month-old Infants in Two Cultures: Wolof and French

Abstract

The infant-directed speech of Wolof-speaking Senegalese mothers and French-speaking mothers living in Paris were compared to relate infant-directed communicative acts to the value system of the society to which the speaker belongs, and to describe the child’s place in those societies. Mother-infant linguistic interactions with 4-month-old infants were recorded (five dyads in the French group and four in the Wolof group). The discourse variables of the pragmatic and semantic categories in the mothers’ speech were analysed. The cross-cultural analysis included a comparison of the conventional versus shifted use of person markers by the mothers in the two cultures. The results demonstrated some features common to both groups, namely, a high percentage of expressive speech acts and the importance of affect-related statements. Some culture-specific emphases and tendencies were also noted. Whereas the French mothers’ conversational exchanges with their infants were dyadic in organisation and centred on the immediate physical environment, the Wolof mothers frequently expanded the dyadic framework to introduce third parties as conversational partners but talked very little about the immediate physical environment. Thus, it appears that cultural conceptions influence not only the content of mother-infant exchanges but also their participant structure.

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