communicative style

nationality

American

occupation / innovator as

member of the Ohio House of Representatives

politician

is the way language is used and understood in a particular culture.

s communicative style... that is, 'the way language is used and understoodin a particular culture' (Clancy 1986: 213... also Clancy 1999). Clancy wasinterested to see how children are socialized to command the strategies ofindirection and intuitive understanding that characterize Japanese communicativestyle. In working with two-year-old children and their mothers,she discovered that these skills were acquired through early socializationroutines in which mothers, among other practices, (a) juxtaposed indirectexpressions (e.g. 'It's already good') with direct ones ('No!'), thusconveying the idea that various forms of expression could be functionallyequivalent... (b) attributed speech to others who had not actually spoken,thereby indicating to children how they should read non-verbal behaviour...(c) appealed to the imagined reactions of hito, 'other people', whoare supposedly always watching and evaluating the child's behaviour... and(d) used strongly affect-laden adjectives like 'scary' or 'frightening' to describea child's (mis)behaviour, making it clear that such behaviour is sociallyunacceptable and shameful. These kinds of communicative interactionssensitized children to subtle interactional expectations which in adult interactionsare not expressed explicitly. They also encouraged children toacquire the specific anxieties and fears (such as the fear of the disapprovalof hito) that undergird Japanese communicative style. (Cameron and Kulick 120)

Patricia Clancy

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Patricia Clancy