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Journal of Language, Identity & Education
ISSN: 1534-8458 (Print) 1532-7701 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlie20
A Study of Reasoning Talk Between Australian
Chinese Mothers and Their Preschool Children:
What Messages Are Mothers Sending?
Jiangbo Hu & Jane Torr
To cite this article: Jiangbo Hu & Jane Torr (2016) A Study of Reasoning Talk Between Australian
Chinese Mothers and Their Preschool Children: What Messages Are Mothers Sending?, Journal of
Language, Identity & Education, 15:3, 180-193, DOI: 10.1080/15348458.2016.1169801
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2016.1169801
Published online: 13 May 2016.
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A Study of Reasoning Talk Between Australian Chinese Mothers
and Their Preschool Children: What Messages Are Mothers
Sending?
Jiangbo Hu and Jane Torr
Macquarie University
ABSTRACT
The everyday conversations that occur between mothers and children,
particularly those involving reasoning, are a major vehicle for the transmis-
sion of information and values to young children. This study explored the
manner in which five Australian Chinese mothers engaged in reasoning talk
with their preschool-aged children. A total of 83 instances of spontaneous
reasoning talk were identified and analysed according to the manner in
which the mothers justified their claims or statements, using Hasan’s rea-
soning structure framework to underpin the analysis. Both regulatory and
nonregulatory contexts were analysed. The analysis revealed that in regu-
latory contexts, where a child’s behaviour is being controlled (for example,
“eat up your dinner quickly”), mothers provided more socially based rea-
sons to justify their directives. In nonregulatory contexts, such as shared
reading, they used more logical reasoning based on universal laws of
nature. The findings suggest that the reasoning talk that takes place
between mothers and children provides a rich opportunity for mothers to
convey their values to their children, with implications for children’s learn-
ing across a number of domains.
KEYWORDS
Chinese children; Chinese
mothers; preschool;
reasoning talk
Introduction
Theeverydayconversationsthatoccurbetween parents and children play a powerful role in
socialising children into certain ways of thinking and behaving (Bernstein, 1987,2000; Duff,
2002;Fung&Chen,2001; Halliday, 1978,1993; Hart & Risley, 2003;He,2000;Heath,2012;
Painter, 1999;Snow,1993a;Yaden,1993). This is especially the case when parents provide reasons
and explain issues in response to their children’s questions and use language to justify their
regulation of their children’s behaviours. Through reasoning talk, parents convey their ideas,
attitudes, and beliefs about interpersonal relationships and the natural world (Callanan & Oakes,
1992; Callanan, Shrager, & Moore, 2009; Hasan, 2009;Walton,1990). As Hasan (2009)notes,
“Everyday reasoning comes effortlessly; that being the case, it must draw upon the speakers’
internalised view of what the world—physical and social—is like”(p. 340).
Parents’cultural background is a key factor in shaping the reasoning talk that occurs between
them and their children, because culture influences what information is considered important and
relevant and how that information will be passed on to children (Fung & Chen, 2001; Heath, 2012;
Ochs, 1993; Snow & Beals, 2006). Different cultures have different “ways of saying,”through which
meaning is expressed and social “reality”is constructed (Hasan, 1996). Parents of different cultures
create learning contexts through their reasoning talk that may significantly influence the develop-
ment of children’s thinking and social behaviours.
CONTACT Jiangbo Hu jiangbo.hu@students.mq.edu.au Institute of Early Childhood Education of Macquarie University,
Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia, 2109.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION
2016, VOL. 15, NO. 3, 180–193
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2016.1169801
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Research has shown that there is a relationship between reasoning talk, which habitually takes
place in the home context, and children’s potential for academic success at school. When children
regularly engage in logically grounded reasoning talk based on laws of nature with parents, they gain
experience in the types of scientific thinking valued at school. These children are more likely to be
advantaged in academic development (Callanan & Jipson, 2001; Callanan & Oakes, 1992; Kelemen,
Callanan, Casler, & Perez-Granandos, 2005; Scholnick & Wing, 1991; Snow & Beals, 2006).
Nevertheless, much reasoning talk is socially oriented rather than logically grounded and, thus,
may influence children’s understanding of social relationships (Hasan, 1992,2009). In many situa-
tions, parents provide reasons to explain issues or to regulate their children’s behaviours based on
social rules. For example, a Chinese mother tried to convince her daughter to dress in red for a
wedding by saying, “Only red please, because it is the right colour for a wedding”(red represents
good luck in Chinese culture). This mother justified her directive by recourse to a traditional
Chinese social rule, thus conveying social values within the community.
The analysis of the types of reasons parents give to their children during everyday conversations can
provide valuable information about the subtle messages conveyed by parents that will significantly
affect their children’s language, thinking, and behaviour. Yet little research has addressed this topic
directly and even less has focused on families from different cultural backgrounds. Hasan (1992,2009)
investigated the different types of reasoning talk that occurred between monolingual English-speaking
Australian mothers and their 3- to 4-year-old children during casual conversations at home. Hasan
found that parents’socioeconomic background was related to different patterns of reasoning talk.
Parents from professional backgrounds were more likely to use reasoning that could be regarded as
logically grounded than parents from nonprofessional backgrounds. According to Hasan (1992),
logically grounded reasoning draws on the laws of nature for justification. Such reasoning resembles
the type of scientific reasoning discussed earlier, an example of which can be seen in the following
maternal directive to a young child: “Don’t touch that, it’shot”(Hasan, 2009, p. 341). It is a fact of
nature that hot surfaces will burn children’s hands. Mothers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
were more likely to give reasons for their directives that were based on the power and authority
inherent in their position as parents, as exemplified in Hasan’s example, “Do that again and I’ll whack
you”(p. 341).
Hasan’s findings are relevant for both researchers and educators because they show that parents
from different backgrounds do have different patterns of reasoning talk that influence children
diversely. The present study has been designed to explore reasoning talk in Chinese families, one of
the largest ethnic groups in contemporary Australia (Australian Government Department of
Immigration and Border Protection [AGDIBP], 2013). By gaining an understanding of the types
of reasoning talk experienced by Chinese children during spontaneous daily conversations with their
parents, the study can potentially contribute a unique insight into the attitudes, values, and beliefs of
Chinese parents and the home oral language experiences of Chinese children. Such information can
increase early childhood educators’potential to support these children’s language and overall
development while enhancing cross-cultural understanding.
Much of our current knowledge about the home language experiences of Chinese children living
in Western countries has been based on data collected through interviews, questionnaires, and
surveys (Lieber, Fung, & Leung, 2006) rather than through analysis of actual Chinese parent-child
verbal interactions. Several studies have shown that many traditional values are emphasized by
Chinese parents, such as the pursuit of academic excellence, respect for and obedience to parents and
other authorities, self-restraint, and the concept of shame (Chao, 1994; Gorman, 1998;Guo, 2006;Li
& Wang, 2004; Lieber et al., 2006). Researchers often claim that Chinese parents prefer more-formal,
direct teaching practices, exerting a high level of parental control as well as a high level of demand
for the support of their children’s development (Chen, Chen, & Zheng, 2012). Such studies depend
on parents’conscious awareness of their beliefs and attitudes and their ability to articulate their
views and on the researchers’subsequent interpretations of those expressed views and attitudes.
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Ethnographers and sociolinguists, however, have investigated how Chinese children are encultu-
rated into traditional Chinese values via “the joint participation of members and novices in the
recurrent semiotically mediated daily interactions, acts, and activities, solidly grounded in their
emerging contexts”(Fung & Chen, 2001, pp. 421–422). Through meticulous and painstaking analysis
of adult-child language at home or school, several studies have shed light on the manner in which
culture is instantiated during everyday activities and practices (He, 2000; Hua, 2008). Hua (2008), for
example, analysed the manner in which code-switching is deployed during negotiation of conflict in
Chinese diasporic families in the United Kingdom.
The present study follows the sociolinguistic research direction and aims to contribute to the
study of interaction between Chinese parents and their children from the perspective of logical and
social reasoning talk. It is based on the analysis of the spontaneous reasoning talk that occurs during
everyday interactions between parents and children in the home context and seeks to understand the
messages conveyed by Chinese mothers to their young children in the home. Specifically, this study
aims to address the following question: What messages do Chinese mothers send out to their
preschool-aged children through different types of reasoning talk in the home context?
Framework of reasoning talk used in this study
This study drew on the framework proposed by Hasan (1992,2009) to describe the generic structure
of reasoning talk in everyday conversations between parents and young children. She identified four
steps in reasoning. The first step is referred to as a claim, which is typically expressed as a statement
or a command. The second step is referred to as the reason. Here the speaker provides the reason
that serves to justify the preceding statement or command with reference to the specific instance or
situation that is the focus of the claim. It is usually tied to the here-and-now context in which the
reasoning talk is taking place. The third step in the reasoning chain is referred to as the principle.It
provides further support or validation for the reason(s) posited in the second step, moving from the
specific case or situation that is the focus of the conversation to a more general and widely accepted
principle underpinning the reason. The final step in the structure of reasoning is referred to as the
grounding. The grounding specifies the ultimate authority on which the principle is based. It is the
final step because no further argument or justification is possible. The grounding may be based on a
physical law of nature or a social rule. These four steps—claim, reason, principle, and grounding—
form the chain of reasoning. The following example of a mother’s explanation to her child displays
the four steps: “Now you can’t laugh about his name when he comes, right? Because people’s names
are important to them, right? And people don’t like others laughing about their names. . . we do
think it’s funny though, don’t we?”(Hasan, 2009, p. 334). Hasan (2009) analysed the structure of this
example in the following way:
Claim: Don’t laugh at Mr B’s name.
Reasons: People’s names are important to them.
People do not like others laughing about their name.
Principle: One respects others’feelings.
Grounding: This is a social requirement.
In everyday talk, it is common for speakers to limit their reasoning conversations to claim and
reason only, as in the above example, while the underlying principle and grounding that support and
validate the reason may remain implicit. This was the case with the majority of examples of mother-
child reasoning talk in the present study. In other words, the majority of mothers’reasoning talk
included the explicit verbalisation of the claim and reason only, with the principle and grounding left
implicit. There were only a few instances in which mothers explicitly expressed the principle
underpinning their reasoning talk.
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Hasan (1992,2009) noted that in the chain of reasoning talk, it is the grounding that provides the
validation on which the legitimacy of the whole chain is based. She identifies two types of mutually
exclusive grounding, logical and social. Logical grounding is based on the logic of cause and effect
and the physical laws of the natural world. For example, a parent may direct her child to put down a
glass by explaining, “If you drop the glass on the concrete, it will break.”Natural laws have
unchallengeable authority and that makes logical reasoning talk particularly powerful.
Social grounding, on the other hand, may be classified according to two dimensions. The first
dimension refers to the “creator”of the social rules. Social rules may be ratified on the basis of social
conventions pertaining to individual families (local) or communities (communal) or they may be
institutionally based (institutional). These three types of social rules, or grounding (local, communal
or institutional), are mutually exclusive.
The second dimension refers to the nature of the relationship foregrounded in the speaker’s
reasoning talk, which may be either cooperative or coercive in nature (i.e., employing threats, bribes,
or blackmail). According to Hasan’s framework, each of the three types of social rules (local,
communal, or institutional) may be validated in either a cooperative or a coercive manner.
Cooperative reasoning emphasises the importance of harmonious relationships between people.
Coercive reasoning typically involves threats, bribes, and blackmail. This aspect of reasoning talk
foregrounds the authority of the parent as the creator of the rules.
Therefore, social reasoning involves the intersection of both the scope of the social grounding
(local, communal, or institutional) and the nature of the relationship being constructed (cooperative
or coercive) through the talk. In other words, a grounding could potentially be both local and
coercive. For the purposes of the present analysis, however, we have employed a modified version of
Hasan’s(2009) framework, classifying mothers’reasoning talk on a basis of 6 types of grounding as
set out in Table 1.
Hasan’s framework has the advantage of illuminating the underlying values, principles, and
justifications that are often indirectly conveyed during parent-child interactions in the home.
Method
Participants
Criteria for participation were that the motherswere all first-generation immigrants from
mainland China whose children were between age three and five years at the time of the
study. Since the mid-1990s, the majority of Chinese immigrants settling in Australia have been
from mainland China (Australian Government Department of Immigration and Border
Protection, 2013). The newly arrived mainland Chinese families have gradually formed the
“mainstream”of the Chinese community in Australia. Focusing on this group of Chinese
Table 1. Types of grounding identified in mother-child interactions.
Type of grounding Basis for grounding Example of principles
Logical Logic and the physical laws of nature Glass will break if dropped on a hard surface.
Social: Institutional Rules ratified by social institutions, which tend to carry
legal authority
Children are required to attend school when
they reach six years of age.
Social: Local Rules restricted to small group contexts, such as those
introduced by parents in their families
Children must get up at 6 a.m. every morning
in this house.
Social: Communal Rules shared by large groups of people, such as members
of an ethnic community
Brides dress in red at Chinese weddings.
Social: Cooperative Rules emphasise the maintenance of harmonious
relationships between people
Food should be offered to others before
helping oneself.
Social: Coercive Rules take the form of threats, bribes and/or emotional
blackmail
Children will be punished for a bad exam result
by loss of a treat or privilege.
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families is in line with this trend. The participantswereapproachedviathedirectorsofseveral
early childhood centres by the first author, who is an Australian Chinese person with close
connections to the Chinese community in Sydney, Australia. Informed consent was obtained as
required by the ethics committee of the university where the researchers work. Five Chinese
mothers and their children were recruited. Table 2 sets out the demographic details of the
participants.
Data collection
This study is a part of a larger project that investigates Chinese parents’language views and practices.
The first researcher visited each family on four or five occasions to collect data through interviews,
nonparticipant observations, and physical artefacts. On the third visit, the family interactions were
recorded for 4 to 6 hours using a small unobtrusive video camera. The data for the present study
were the video clips collected during the third visit, by which time the first researcher had established
a rapport with the families, and they felt comfortable being filmed. Filming commenced after the
children arrived home from preschool in the afternoon and concluded after the children’s bedtime
stories just before sleep. In this way, the language used during a number of different interactional
contexts was captured, including afternoon tea, dinner, free play, and shared reading. Also, hand-
written field notes were taken and observations were conducted to supplement the video recordings
and to note additional contextual details. The mothers and children all used their home language,
Chinese, most of the time when interacting at home.
Data analysis
The data were imported into the Source level of NVivo 9 software. The video clips were checked by
the first author who is bilingual in Mandarin and English. Dialogues containing reasoning talk
initiated by either the mothers or the children were identified by determining whether causal
connections were either explicitly stated or implied by the speakers. For example, one mother’s
prohibition in response to her daughter’s request for a drink of orange juice was, “definitely no juice,
juice has a colour.”The second sentence provided the reason for the refusal contained in the first
sentence; however, the causal conjunction because to indicate the relationship between these two
sentences is implied but not explicitly stated. In everyday talk, speakers frequently give reasons
without using specific reasoning words.
The identified reasoning dialogues were then transcribed verbatim in Mandarin and translated
into English. A total of 83 mother-initiated reasoning dialogues were identified across the five
families. In total, this comprised over 1,000 clauses. Each dialogue was analysed in terms of its
claim, reason, principle, and grounding. The grounding in each dialogue was then categorized
according to Hasan’s(1992,2009) framework as discussed earlier. In Nodes of NVivo 9 software,
files representing the different types of grounding were created. The reasoning dialogues between
mother and child were then coded and dropped into the relevant files. Examples of the six different
types of grounding (as set out in Table 1) used by mothers to justify or validate their statements or
commands are set out below, including the children’s contributions to the reasoning texts.
Table 2. Mothers’and children’s demographic information.
Parents’
names Age
Years of residence in
Australia
Educational
background Occupation Children’s names Gender Age Siblings
Ann 35 6 Master’s degree Accountant Elli Female 3.9 0
Helena 34 5 Bachelor’s degree Accountant Emma & Imogen Female 3.7 Twin sister
Judy 32 7 Master’s degree Unemployed Lucas Male 4.5 0
Jenny 40 14 College diploma Unemployed Jacky Male 4.8 One sister
Lily 32 9 Master’s degree Accountant Riana Female 4.9 0
Note. All names are pseudonyms.
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Example 1. Logical grounding
During dinner time, mother Ann saw her daughter Elli (3.9 years old) take several tissues out of the
box and play with them.
Ann: Don’t play with the tissues. You are wasting paper.
Elli: (continues playing with tissues)
Ann: You know paper is made of trees?
Elli: How is paper made out of trees?
Ann: What does Tongtong’s dad do?
Elli: Chopping trees
Ann: Yes, he chops trees down and then smashes them into tiny chips.
Elli: Then pats them flat and then puts white things on.
Ann: Yes, that’s close, pretty close. They smash trees into “wood juice”and add some other
ingredients and then spread them out to dry like this (using hand gestures). So paper is
made out of wood. To protect trees, you should not waste paper.
Elli: Ok, it’s little bit “wrong”(i.e., playing with tissues). Duoduo (her good friend) likes to put
grass in her mouth (implying that other children do “wrong”things as well).
(Elli then stops playing with the tissues and changes the topic.)
Claim: Don’t play with tissues.
Reason: You are wasting paper.
Paper is made of trees.
Principle: Wasting tissues is wasting paper.
Wasting paper is wasting trees.
Grounding: A logical truth of the laws of nature.
Elli recognised the logic of her mother’s argument even though she may not have really understood
the relationship between paper, trees, and the environment. She admitted that she was “alittlebit”wrong
to play with tissues and then used a friend’s more silly behaviour to distract her mother’s attention.
Example 2. Social: Institutional grounding
Elli (3.9 years old) discovered that her father was going out after dinner and she wanted him to stay
home. The following conversation occurred as a result.
Elli: Dad stay!
Mother: No, dad needs to go out to play.
Father: I will go out to play.
Elli: Oh . . . then I want to go to preschool! (i.e., where I can play too)
Mother: How can you? Your preschool is locked at night and on the weekend.
Elli: No, I want to go preschool.
Grandmother: We’ll stay at home and do something interesting together.
Elli: What’s the interesting thing?
Claim: You cannot go to preschool.
Reason: Your preschool is locked at night and on the weekend.
Principle: Preschool service is not available at night and on the weekend.
Grounding: Rules of certain educational organizations.
In this case Elli sensed that her parents were joking with her, so she joked back using a type of
reasoning text of her own: If dad can go out to play, then I can also go out to play at preschool. Elli
was not able to provide a response to her mother’s subsequent reason explaining why she could not
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return to preschool, so she simply reiterated her claim. At this point her grandmother intervened
and distracted her attention with other activities.
Example 3. Social: Local grounding
Lucas (4.5 years old) saw the researcher’svideo camera and wanted to play with it. His mother Judy
did not want him to touch it.
Lucas: I want that (pointing to the video camera).
Judy: What?
Lucas: I want that.
Judy: What is that? Tell me the name of that. What do you call it? No one knows what you mean if
you just say “that.”I don’t understand.
Lucas: Camera.
Judy: No, this is a camera (she indicates the camera in her hand). That is not. That is called a video
camera. You cannot have it if you don’t know its name. That’s the reason.
(Lucas bows his head, looking down at the floor silently. After a while, he takes the video camera
behind Judy’s back.)
Claim: You cannot have the object (the video camera).
Reason: You don’t know what it’s called.
Principle: Unless you know the name of an object you can’t have it.
Grounding: Mother’s local (idiosyncratic) rule.
Lucas did not know the name of the video camera, so he was unable to obey the “rule”invented by his
mother in order to handle it. He therefore adopted the alternative strategy of waiting until she was not
looking in order to achieve his goal.
Example 4. Social: Communal grounding
Mother Lily and her daughter Riana (4.9 years old) were talking about a character in a TV series
based on a traditional Chinese story.
Lily: What do you think of Dongyong? (the character in the story)
Riana: He is a good man.
Lily: In the end, Dongyong became a “Zai Xiang.”Do, you know what that is?
Riana: No
Lily: A “Zai Xiang”is like a prime minister, second only to the King. The King is the number one,
and “Zai Xiang”is the number two, as Dongyong is a good man.
Riana: Mm.
(Riana nodded head. They continued the talk about the story.)
Claim: Dongyong became a “Zai Xiang”(an important role in a kingdom).
Reason: He is a good man.
Principle: A good person deserves a high position in the kingdom.
Grounding: A traditional Chinese rule equating moral value with social position.
Riana appeared to accept her mother’s reasoning, according to which moral virtue is a require-
ment for those in leadership positions. They proceeded with the story.
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Example 5. Social: Cooperative grounding
Twins Emma and Imogen (3.7 years old) were eating pizza when their grandmother came to the
table and took a slice. Emma screamed in protest, which prompted her mother Helena to respond in
the following way.
Helena: Please don’t do that. That is very impolite. Are you the only one who is allowed to eat and
other people are not allowed? Shouldn’t adults be allowed to eat food too?
Emma: No.
Helena: No? Then shall we die without eating any food?
Emma: Give dad some pizza.
Helena: Give some to dad? Then shall two of us (mother and grandmother) starve to death?
(Emma pointed to her mother, indicating that she could also eat some pizza. Helena reminded
her that she had missed her grandmother. Emma didn’t reply, but lowered her eyes and quickly ate
some pizza.)
Claim: Do not scream at your grandmother for taking the pizza.
Reason: That is very impolite.
Adults also want and need to eat food.
Principle: Children should be polite to the older generation.
All people need to eat food to live.
Grounding: Good manners and the need to share resources (cooperative) are necessary for harmo-
nious relationships.
Laws of nature (logical)
Emma found it difficult to share her favourite food. She accepted her mother’s reason and offered
the pizza to her father (who had bought it) and then to her mother. She nevertheless remained
reluctant to share the pizza with her grandmother. Her subsequent behaviour (lowered eyes, focus on
eating) suggested that she accepted the legitimacy of her mother’s principle and grounding and
experienced shame when her mother pointed out her incorrect behaviour. Fung and Chen (2001)
and Fung (1999) have elaborated on the social and linguistic structure of shaming in Taiwanese
families. Although not focused specifically on reasoning talk, their research sheds light on the
manner in which such interactions contribute to the moral socialisation of young Chinese children.
Example 6. Social: Coercive grounding–threat
Mother Jenny was frustrated at the behaviour of her son Justin (4.8 years old) and his younger sister
at dinnertime. Unless she literally hand fed them, the children moved around the room and took up
to an hour to eat their dinner. The following dialogue took place towards the end of the meal.
Jenny: Hurry up. You won’t have any more food if you eat what you have too slowly. Tomorrow I
will buy a clock. If the clock starts to make the sound “ding,”that means you must finish
eating. No more food. OK?
Justin: Yes.
Jenny: From tomorrow, you have to eat by yourself without me having to feed you. You won’t have
anything to eat if you want to be fed, nothing, no ice cream, no chocolate. No yummy food!
Justin: I want rainbow ice cream. I like it.
(Justin came to Jenny and opened his mouth for another spoonful of food, thus complying with
her request for him to finish dinner quickly, but not with her request that he eat independently.)
Claim: Eat your food quickly and without me feeding you.
Reason: You won’t have anything to eat if you eat too slowly.
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You won’t be given delicious food to eat if you don’t eat independently.
Principle: It is important for people to eat quickly and independently.
Grounding: Lack of compliance with rules will result in punishment.
Justin responded to Jenny’s threat of withholding his favourite food by obeying his mother, using
both verbal and nonverbal language. He chose to comply with her claim in order to avoid an
unpleasant consequence (loss of his favourite food).
Findings
The grounding used by mothers in their reasoning talk
All the mothers engaged in reasoning talk with their children, but they differed in terms of the extent
of the reasoning talk and the types of grounding they offered to validate their reasoning.
Table 3 sets out the different types of grounding produced by each mother in her reasoning talk,
followed by the number as a percentage of the total number of groundings produced by each mother.
The last row provides the total number and percentage of each type of grounding in the cohort as a
whole. This manner of representing the data provides a snapshot of the patterns of reasoning produced
by the mothers over a four- to six-hour period across a range of contexts such as mealtime, play, and
shared reading. It is acknowledged that such information cannot be used to make generalisations about
the mothers’habitual patterns of reasoning nor of the manner in which their reasoning talk may
change in other contexts and on other occasions. Nevertheless, the quantities set out in Table 3 enable
us to gain an overview of the range of groundings used and the differences between mothers.
The table shows that the five mothers differed in terms of the basis on which they validated their
reasoning. Ann was the only mother whose reasons were more often supported by logical grounding
(n= 13; 61.9%) than social grounding. Ann tended to ask her daughter, Elli, questions and then
provided explanations with logically grounded reasons. For example, during shared reading, Ann
pointed to a page and asked, “What did Frog see from far away?”Elli answered, “Mouse, Hare,
Piglet, and Duckling.”Ann then explained, “The Mouse is behind Frog. Frog saw Hare, Piglet, and
Ducking. He went out to play with Mouse, so how could he see Mouse at the gate of his home?”This
kind of reasoning dialogue occurred frequently throughout the story.
The other four mothers produced more socially grounded reasons compared with logically
grounded reasons. However, they differed in the extent to which they drew on social groundings
to support their reasoning talk. Jenny and Judy produced the largest number of socially grounded
reasons in their talk (n= 6 and n= 15, respectively), which constituted approximately 79% of their
total reasoning.
Table 3. Types of grounding used in reasoning talk.
Social
Logical Local Communal Institutional Cooperative Coercive Total
Ann 13
61.9%
1
4.7%
1
4.7%
3
14.3%
3
14.3%
021
100%
Helena 6
40.0%
3
20.0%
2
13.3%
04
26.7%
015
100%
Judy 5
21.7%
11
47.8%
1
4.3%
03
13.0%
3
13.0%
23
100%
Lily 7
36.8%
06
31.6%
1
5.3%
5
26.3%
019
100%
Jenny 3
21.4%
2
14.3%
1
7.1%
1
7.1%
2
14.3%
5
35.7%
14
100%
Total 34
37.0%
17
18.5%
11
12.0%
5
5.4%
17
18.5%
8
8.7%
92
100%
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The five mothers also differed in the nature of the social reasoning they produced. Judy produced the
largest number of groundings based on local reasons for their validation (n= 11, 49%). For example, she
tried to stop her son, Michael, from playing with a tripod that belonged to their guest by saying “What’sthe
point of playing with that tripod? You don’t have a camera on it.”The underlying principle of this sentence
was “a tripod should not be played with unless there is a camera on it,”a rule created by her alone.
Jenny produced more reasoning talk that was coercive in nature (n= 5) than the other mothers,
which accounted for almost 25% of her reasoning. For instance, she refused to allow her son, Jacky,
to play with toy cars on the floor because Jacky enjoyed crashing his sister’s cars, which triggered his
sister screaming. She told Jacky that crashing cars is dangerous. She said “an ambulance will come
and policemen will come. They (policemen) will then arrest you. Do you understand? ”In general,
however, coercive reasoning was less common than the other types, with 3 of the mothers not using
any coercive groundings at all (Ann, Helena, and Lily).
Lily produced relatively more groundings that were communal in nature compared with the other
mothers. This was partly due to contextual factors. A television program Lily was watching with her
daughter depicted a traditional Chinese story, which stimulated a discussion about communal rules
and responsibilities, during which Lily explained aspects of the social organisation of ancient Chinese
culture (Kings, Prime Ministers, and Zai Xiang) to her daughter. Although the mothers differed in
the ways described above, the mothers were similar in the number of occurrences of grounding
based on social cooperative reasoning.
Contexts in which different types of reasoning talk occurred
In this section we focus in more detail on patterns of reasoning talk that occurred in different contexts.
Specifically, we focused on two contexts: regulatory and nonregulatory. In regulatory contexts, the
reasoning talk was used by the mothers to regulate and control their children’s behaviour as can be
seen in the following example. When Helena tried to stop her daughter, Emma, from kicking the leg of
the table during dinnertime, she said, “Don’t kick the table. You will fall if you kick like that.”Such
contexts have been shown to be relevant to the social positioning of families as there is an association
between the manner in which parents control their children’s behaviour and children’ssubsequent
development of language, literacy, and overall academic achievement (Bernstein, 1987,2000;Hart&
Risley, 2003; Hasan, 2009; Heath, 1986,2012). Regulatory language, particularly directives, plays a key
role in the socialisation of young Chinese children. He (2000) points out that
the term ‘taking care of children’in Chinese literally means to direct/lead the child (daihaizi). From the
beginning of life, Chinese children are asked to be guai (obedient) and to tinghua (literally, listen to words,
meaning to obey (adults’)) direction. (p. 120)
In nonregulatory contexts, the mothers tended to use reasoning talk to respond to children’s
questions and to explain aspects of life as encountered during everyday talk, shared reading of
picture books, and shared viewing of television programs. For example, Jenny explained to her son
why some boats are able to move without being propelled by rowers. She said, “Those boats can
move automatically. They have engines, you know.”Table 4 displays the types of reasoning talk in
these two contexts.
Table 4. Types of grounding used in reasoning talk in regulatory and nonregulatory contexts.
Regulatory Nonregulatory
Mother Logical Social Logical Social
Ann 3 8 10 0
Helena 3 7 3 2
Judy 5 18 0 0
Lily 4 8 3 4
Jenny 1 11 2 0
Total 16 52 18 6
68 24
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The findings set out in Table 4 show that mothers’reasoning talk in regulatory contexts occurred almost
threetimesasfrequentlyasinnonregulatorycontextswhentheywereendeavouringtocontrolsomeaspect
of their child’sbehaviour(n= 68). Furthermore, within the context of regulatory talk, all the mothers used
many more socially oriented groundings than logically oriented groundings to justify and validate their
directives. This suggests that the mothers habitually endeavour to control their children’sbehaviourby
focusing on the social implications of their actions and by emphasising the importance of adhering to
social, communal, and cooperative rules to achieve harmonious relationships with others.
In nonregulatory contexts, which tend to occur during activities such as shared reading and everyday
casual conversation, the mothers in general produced more logical than social groundings to validate
and justify their reasoning talk and explanations. Helena and Lily did, however, produce some social
groundings in nonregulatory contexts (n=2andn= 4, respectively) because the picture book or
television story they were discussing was a traditional Chinese morality tale, which foregrounded the
social implications of the characters’decisions. For example, Helena, at the end of the tale, summarised
what she had just read to her twin girls, Emma and Imogen, by saying, “Why did this boy help the girl?
This boy remembered that when he was tired and thirsty, the girl helped and encouraged him by giving
him a glass of water. So it’s his turn to help this girl now. We need to remember who helped us.”Judy
was the only mother who did not engage in any reasoning talk in nonregulatory contexts. She only ever
engaged in reasoning talk when controlling her son’s behaviour. Even during activities such as shared
reading, Judy’s reasoning talk was confined to directives for her son to sit up properly and focus on the
book. Interestingly, as indicated in Table 3, Judy also produced the most local groundings of any of the
other mothers (n= 11, 48% of all her reasoning talk). As noted above, local groundings occur when
speakers justify their reasons by recourse to rules that pertain only to individual families rather than to
the wider community of which they are members. It is difficult to posit an explanation for Judy’s verbal
behaviour. Such patterns of language use are sometimes related to maternal education and social
positioning. While Judy has a postgraduate university qualification, she has not experienced employ-
ment outside the home, which may have limited her experience of logical reasoning, the requirement for
her to justify her own actions, and her awareness of broader communal and institutional requirements.
Alternatively, personality factors may be involved. Such explanations must remain speculative, however,
given the research aims and findings.
Discussion
This study was designed to investigate the types of reasoning employed by Australian Chinese
mothers when interacting with their children in the naturalistic setting of the home. The study
sought to understand what messages were implicitly or explicitly conveyed to children through talk
and how messages were conveyed.
The extent to which mothers engage in logically grounded reasoning talk has implications for
their children’s subsequent academic achievement at school, as this kind of talk at home is seen to
increase children’s scientific knowledge and capacity to reach accurate conclusions based on evi-
dence (Callanan & Oakes, 1992; Callanan et al., 2009; Snow, 1993b). All of the mothers engaged to
some extent in logically grounded reasoning talk, which provided the children with the opportunity
to experience this type of language, which can potentially support their scientific knowledge and
logical thinking. Several large-scale studies have noted that such logically grounded reasoning talk is
related to maternal education and professional autonomy (Hart & Risley, 2003; Hasan, 1996; Heath,
2012). Interestingly, the three mothers who were employed in demanding professional positions
(Ann, Helena, and Lily) engaged in more logically oriented reasoning talk with their children than
did the mothers who were unemployed (Judy and Jenny). However, the reasons for this difference
between mothers are unclear at this stage. Further research is necessary to explore whether or not
this finding is a part of more general pattern in the community.
It is noticeable that Jenny is the mother who produced the fewest logical groundings but who used the
greatest number of social-coercive groundings. Jenny had received the least formal education of the five
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mothers and had no working experience in her 14 years of living in Australia. This finding seems to
support Hasan’s(2009) observation that nonprofessional mothers in general are more likely to give
reasons based on coercive power. Judy, the other nonprofessional mother in our study, also grounded her
reasoning by recourse to social-local rules. Given the importance of the language addressed to children in
the early years, further research is needed to shed light on possible relationships between type of
reasoning, maternal education, and employment status within the Chinese diaspora.
While many differences existed between the mothers, they all produced a similar number of social-
cooperative groundings in their reasoning talk. This finding suggests that this group of Chinese mothers
values harmony in relationships between people and attempts to induct their children into this value
system. This finding resonates with some of the research relating to Chinese parental ideologies, which
suggests that Chinese parents hold some traditional values that derive from Confucian ideology (He,
2000;Li&Wang,2004). In Confucian terms, one of the main objectives in educating the young is to
cultivate the characteristics of restraint and compliance in order to maintain harmonious relationships
with other people. Children are encouraged to develop inner qualities such as being cooperative and
respecting rules to become contributors to families and societies in the future (He, 2000; Li & Wang,
2004). This study has suggested one way in which these Chinese parents’ideologies are embedded in
their daily conversations and passed on to their children in a subtle way.
This study indicates that coercive grounding occurs infrequently or is completely absent in some
mothers’reasoning talk. This finding suggests that Chinese parents who hold traditional values should
not be stereotyped as always using authority when educating their children. For example, Lily displayed
many traditional communal values through her reasoning talk, but she never used coercive power to
demand compliance in regulatory contexts. This finding is supported by some recent research that found
that some Chinese parents tend to use open and flexible strategies when interacting with their children
(Costign & Koryzma, 2011;Li,2001).
The differences in the occurrence of reasoning talk between regulatory and nonregulatory
contexts demonstrate how different contexts may trigger different types of reasoning. For example,
the topic of table manners tended to trigger regulatory reasoning talk, and the conversations relating
to television programs tended to trigger nonregulatory reasoning talk about the meanings expressed
in the film. All the mothers engaged in more reasoning talk when trying to regulate their children’s
behaviours. This may have been due to the fact that preschool-aged children are developing their
sense of autonomy and initiative (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998). Also, they become more
settled into preschool where they are encouraged to be more independent and make decisions about
their behaviour away from their parents’direct supervision. Their increasing independence may
result in conflicts with parents, thus leading to more use of regulatory reasoning talk to regulate
behaviour. The fact that mothers frequently used social grounding in regulatory contexts indicates
that these mothers have the desire to direct their children’s behaviour in line with social rules and
within the system of relationships between people that they value. This again supports the research
that claims Chinese parents highly value social rules and connections (Guo, 2006; Li, 2001).
Language has a function that does not fully rely on the speaker’s sense of use. It is in a deep sense of
permitting speakers to create a social reality interacting with other factors (Hasan, 2009). When mothers
engage in logical reasoning with their children, they are invoking the fixed and unalterable laws of nature,
which cannot be mandated or changed by societies or individuals. When mothers engage in social
reasoning, whether that be local, communal, cooperative, or coercive, the power of parental or higher
human authority is visible and foregrounded. The mothers might not know what grounding they stood on
or what power they employed when trying to reason their claims, but their perceptions were embedded in
the text of their reasoning talk with these factors, influencing their children unconsciously.
Implications and conclusion
This study has several implications for early childhood educators. Firstly, just as parents may not be
consciously aware of the groundings underpinning their reasoning talk with children, the reasoning
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talk produced by early childhood educators may have a powerful effect on children’s attitudes and
values in subtle and often unconscious ways. By focusing on the types of reasoning talk they engage
in, educators can reflect on their own attitudes and values and gain insights into the quality of their
verbal interactions with children in the classroom. They can point out to children the underlying
principles or grounding when providing reasons to explain issues or regulate behaviours. For
example, an educator may regulate a child’s behaviour by saying, “We don’t run in the classroom
because many people are inside and the space is not big enough. If you run in a small space with
many people around, you will easily bump into somebody and hurt yourself and other people.”In
this way, educators can explicate the principle based on a logical grounding to validate their
directives, which may help children gain a full understanding of the reasoning behind the regulation
of the action. Children simultaneously gain experience in the types of reasoning language, which is
vital to language and literacy development throughout the school age ranges.
Secondly, the study suggests that different contexts may “trigger”different types of reasoning talk,
social or logical. As children need experience with both types of reasoning, educators may reflect on
their use of language in regulatory and nonregulatory contexts in which reasoning typically occurs.
Thirdly, the study suggests that, by listening to the reasoning talk of parents as they interact with
their children, educators may gain increased cross-cultural understanding of the attitudes, values,
and beliefs held by Chinese parents (and those of other cultural groups). To conclude, it is hoped
that this study may encourage both parents and early childhood educators to consider the central
importance of the language they use when they engage in reasoning talk with young children.
Limitation
The data for this study were collected from a small number of Chinese families and the dialogues
analysed were videorecorded on just one day during the observation period. More observational data
are needed for future research on reasoning talk as it occurs in different ethnic communities.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the parents and children who participated in this research.
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