Evidence for the Specialness of the "Baby Talk" Register

Abstract

Ninety-one high school students watched, heard, and/or read communications addressed to children, adults, foreigners, or mentally retarded adults, and rated the speakers along 10 dimensions, including friendliness, concern, competence, and dominance. Stimulus materials portrayed only the speakers; hence, subjects had no information about the type of listener who was being addressed. Factor analyses of the 10 ratings made of the communications addressed to each of the four listener types revealed, in addition to a warmth factor, a controllingness factor, and a tension factor, a special "baby talk" factor. That is, judgments of communications addressed to children, made on a variety of different dimensions, were more highly related to each other than to the same judgments made about the communications addressed to the three other kinds of listeners. Particular listener characteristics that might elicit special communicative styles were discussed. It was speculated that sensitivity to subtle linguistic variations might predict important personal and interpersonal outcomes.

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