Review article
Gender Differences in Pre-school Children’s Communication
Marijana Sivrić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar
Aneta Aničić
; Mostar
Abstract
“Boys and girls grow up in different worlds, but we think we’re in the
same one, so we judge each other’s behavior by the standards of our
own.“ (Tannen, 1990)
According to Tannen, the key difference between these two communities,
i.e. male and female, is power on the male side and solidarity on the
female side. The paper aims at relating Tannen’s theory to the communication
strategies of pre-school children (three to six years old) from
several Mostar kindergartens. The research carried out for this purpose
tries to explain language behavior of girls and boys during children’s interaction
in the same-sex groups as well as in the mixed-sex groups and
to elaborate on the nature of two different gender cultures, their origins,
and examples on how gender-related cultural norms affect language.
Children of this age have just begun integration into their own subculture
within a culture – men’s or women’s. They are, as far as their gender
is concerned, still a, so called, tabula rasa which is yet to be filled with
the rules of each subculture.
Keywords
gender; communication; genderlect; cross-cultural; subculture; identity
Hrčak ID:
218159
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2014.
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