A linguistic discourse analysis of the study of parental ethnotheories is proposed in
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cultural environment, but the ways ideas are formulated in language itself can be
understood as expressing cultural codes. In order to identify these cultural codes,
we analysed interviews with mothers from independent and interdependent cultural
contexts and looked for specific differences in the content and linguistic markers
found in these personal narratives. We studied interviews with mothers from: two
typically independent cultural communities (middle-class mothers from Los Angeles,
USA, and Berlin, Germany); one typical interdependent cultural community (West
African Nso farmers); and a cultural community that is believed to combine
independent and interdependent orientations (middle-class urban Nso). The styles and
analysis enabled us to discover the cultural embodiment of ethnotheories in terms of
characteristic linguistic markers associated with independent and interdependent
parenting environments. The close association between style and content in the
narratives sheds further light on children’s early socialization environments.
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