The Social-emotional Orientation of Mother-child Communication in African American Families

The language abilities of African American children have been linked to their poor school performance for several decades. With limited descriptive evidence about their learning language as an integrated system, African American children are still viewed as somehow acquiring an inadequate language. Moreover, the recent work in language socialisation has not been able to alter the tendency to approach the language skills of minority children from a restricted use or production deficiency perspective. The present study addressed these issues through a longitudinal/observational examination of the form, content, and use in the language development of three African American children within a low-structured communicative setting with their mothers. Descriptive findings indicated that, similar to Euro-American children, these African American children's language developed in length and semantic-syntactic relations. However, differences in the group patterns of semantic-syntactic relations did occur and reflected a style of communication identified as a social-emotional orientation. This orientation was also found in the mothers' pattern of language use. The cultural basis of the social-emotional orientation and its role in language learning are discussed.