[Linganth] Re: Is "motherese" universal?

[Kathryn Woolard]

Since I haven't seen either the NYT report or the journal article,
I'm wary of contributing to this discussion - it feels uncomfortably
like the "Dame Edna" uproar of a while back. But Dean Falk gave a
colloquium in my department two years ago  on exactly this material
and thesis, so that's the basis of my comment here. At that talk, I
expressed  many of the same concerns you've all been discussing here.
It was apparent in our exchange that she (Dean Falk is a woman) had
never heard of or read Ochs and Schieffelin's work. (I think I
remember that she was relying primarily on a psycholinguist's review
of the literature for the claim that "we now know" that all societies
have motherese, despite some earlier reports to the contrary.)  After
the talk I told her how to spell O & S's names, mentioned the
principal refs. and urged her to look at them. Roy D'Andrade and
other audience members tackled Falk's conception of what language is
and the ethnocentric - actually egocentric, since she announced that
her view of universals of mothering was based on her own experience
as a mother -  ideas about childcare and childcarrying. It was an
extended, quite impassioned and very critical discussion, and,  as I
mentioned above, the relevant ling. anthro. refs. were urged upon
Falk. So it's not opportunity or awareness that's missing here.

A written comment to the journal seems likely to be in order. But
it's really important that those concerned about this argument  read
Falk's own article carefully. I recall that she  defines motherese in
terms of a very very few features ( I think  exaggerated intonation
contour was one of them, but I'm not sure), not  the register of
"babytalk" , e.g. as described by Ferguson or by Ochs &
Schieffelin/Heath for American middle-class whites. Falk's narrow
definition might actually fit brief early stages of mother-child
interaction in more societies than we are accustomed to talk about.
(do I have a vague recollection of Elinor Ochs reporting a fleeting
early infant stage in Samoa that looked more like this?)

Kit


>Good grief.  I'm just now reading all your missives and see, as Paul
>pointed out, that Falk clearly
>hasn't read anything in language socialization, on Samoa or PNG, or
>the critiques of universal baby
>talk.  We can't expect the press to be responsible [a NYT Science
>Times article last week also
>pointed to an evolutionary psychologist's defense of men marrying
>down, but that's another problem].
>
>Has anyone contacted Falk himself about this?  Should ling anth as a
>group set the record straight
>or at least pont out the unfounded premises of this study made in
>the name of anthropology?  So
>multiply flawed.
>
>Katherine
>
>==============Original message text===============
>On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 3:45:59 pm CST "Paul B. Garrett" wrote:
>
>
>samuels at anthro.umass.edu wrote:
>
>>
>>  One thing I can say - not in Falk's defense, but to offer the different
>>  context in which she is operating - is this: questions of whether
>>  bipdalism, and the morphological results of selection for
>  > bipedalism, were necessary precursors to the evolution of
>language is a much
>>  more important question in paleoanthropology than it is in linguistic
>>  anthropology. What can we contribute to that dialogue?
>
>I suspect that there's a lot that we can contribute.
>
>One puzzling thing is the assumption that these hairless early mothers were
>leaving their babies lying around on the ground (or in the crook of a tree, or
>wherever).  Quoting from the CNN article (and again, I acknowledge not having
>seen the scholarly article from which it derives):
>
>-----------
>
>...But Falk argues that "motherese" may have its origins in the need
>for mothers
>to maintain contact with their infants at a stage of evolution when a direct
>physical link was no longer possible.
>
>...While the offspring of primates can cling to their mother's hair
>and ride on
>her belly or back, human infants had to be carried everywhere by their
>increasingly hairless mothers.
>
>Since mothers would have to put their babies down while foraging for
>food, Falk
>suggests they could have started making noises to reassure them.
>
>Those that made the most successful sounds would have had a higher
>survival rate
>because it allowed them to gather more food and prevent their babies
>from making
>noises that might attract predators.
>
>...[says Falk,] "The missing puzzle piece was bipedalism. We stood up; we lost
>hair. It was then that babies could no longer hang on to their
>mothers. Mothers
>had to hang on to their babies. That was a eureka moment."
>
>--------------
>
>Not long ago, in a very brief email exchange that I had with Bambi Schieffelin
>about another popular press report on Falk's ideas--I think Bambi
>won't mind me
>mentioning this publicly, and expanding it a bit (I assume sole responsibility
>for my expansions)--she pointed out that in lots of contemporary
>groups, mothers
>hardly EVER put babies down.  They use netbags, cloth slings, etc. to keep the
>babies against their bodies, which leaves them free to move around and to use
>both hands.  (Even some "Western" parents have caught on to this
>idea...check for
>such technologies in the baby goods section of your local Kmart or Wal-Mart.)
>
>Or, of course, they can simply have someone else hold the baby for a little
>while--mother's sister, mother's mother, baby's older sibling,
>father, whomever.
>
>Falk is thinking about early hominids, of course.  But even if
>technologies like
>cloth slings and netbags were not yet available, is there any reason to assume
>that a mother would NOT have relied on some kind of relatively simple social
>arrangement with other adults (and/or older children) in order to
>avoid putting
>her infant down and leaving it vulnerable to predators?  (Surely this hairless
>early mother isn't out foraging all by herself?  And for whatever it's worth,
>don't some contemporary non-human primates manage to have these kinds of
>arrangements?)
>
>Paul
>
>
>
>
>===========End of original message text===========


--
Kathryn A. Woolard			kwoolard at ucsd.edu
Professor				Phone: (858) 534-4639
Department of Anthropology, 0532		Fax :     (858) 534-5946
UCSD
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0532