Abstract

PESSOA, Luciana  and  MOURA, Maria Lucia Seidl de. Pragmatic characteristics of maternal speech in mother-child dyads (five and twenty months old). Arq. bras. psicol. [online]. 2008, vol.60, n.1, pp.82-95. ISSN 1809-5267.

Assuming the social-pragmatic perspective, mother-infant linguistic interactions can be considered as one of the bases of the initial language development. This study aims to analyzing pragmatic characteristic maternal speech directed to children. Roman Jacobson’s model in which the following functions are distinguished was used. The instances of mothers of 45 mothers speech were identified, transcribed and analyzed, at two moments of the babies’development (five and twenty months). The affective and cognitive aspects of this speech have also been analyzed. The results had indicated a significant increase of the occurrence of the maternal emissions when the babies had twenty months. It was observed the predominance of the fathic function in both age levels. At five months it was observed a predominance of the affective aspects and at twenty months it was observed a predominance of the cognitive aspects. The results observed indicate that the communication with he baby is valued by the mother and shows transformations following the baby’s development. The study brings a contribution to the literature on maternal speech and initial development with data from a Brazilian context.

Keywords : Maternal speech; Dyad mother-infant; Linguistic development.

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