This article explores the social and cognitive implications of sibling caregiving among the Zinacantec Maya of Mexico and the Wolof of Senegal. Ethnographic video data of sibling caregiving interactions were collected, focusing on children ages three to 13 years interacting with their two‐year‐old siblings. Sibling relations in both cultures reflect a system of multiage play, the children's sensitivity to age and gender hierarchies, and the older siblings'role as teachers of their younger siblings. Differences in the two groups include more verbal exchanges and wordplay with the two‐year‐old Wolof children and more overt efforts by older Zinacantec siblings to incorporate the two year olds into their group activity. The data indicate an overall pattern of cultural transmission by which older siblings teach younger ones in the context of caring for them. The pattern is nuanced by each group's social organization and rules for social interaction, exhibited in the children's play.
A large number of studies conducted in a European or North American setting have shown that siblings and preschool-age children offer the young child a less responsive language model than the mother does. By looking at the participation of young Wolof children from Senegal in dialogical interaction with an adult or an older child, the present study was aimed at drawing up a table of the situations that give rise to the first conversational activities of Wolof children, and at analysing the support provided to the child by adults and older siblings. Ten children between the ages of 21 and 27 months were observed in interaction with an adult and/or an older sibling (ranging in age between 3 years 6 months and 10 years) in their usual life environment. An essential characteristic of this environment is the existence of polyadic communication. In this polyadic setting, the adult appears to impel the child into joint action and multi-party dialogue. While older children address toddlers mainly with requests for action, in certain socially codified interactions they prompt the young one to enter into the dialogue. In play situations, however, it is the younger one who manages to introduce or reintroduce topics and whose verbal initiatives are largely taken up by older children.The present observations of interactions between older and younger children suggest that child-to-child speech plays an important role here in the development of communication in the young language learner. * I would like to thank Diogal Ndiaye and Ndeye Ncnnc Fall for their Wolof translation and Vivian Waltz for hcr help with the English.
The infant-directed speech of Wolof-speaking Senegalese mothers and French-speaking mothers living in Paris were compared to relate infantdirected communicative acts to the value system of the society to which the speaker belongs, and to describe the child's place in those societies. Motherinfant linguistic interactions with 4-month-old infants were recorded ( ve dyads in the French group and four in the Wolof group). The discourse variables of the pragmatic and semantic categories in the mothers' speech were analysed. The cross-cultural analysis included a comparison of the conventional versus shifted use of person markers by the mothers in the two cultures. The results demonstrated some features common to both groups, namely, a high percentage of expressive speech acts and the importance of affect-related statements. Some culture-speci c emphases and tendencies were also noted. Whereas the French mothers' conversation al exchanges with their infants were dyadic in organisation and centred on the immediate physical environment, the Wolof mothers frequently expanded the dyadic framework to introduce third parties as conversation al partners but talked very little about the immediate physical environment. Thus, it appears that cultural conceptions in uence not only the content of mother-infant exchanges but also their participant structure.By studying a well-speci ed social and interactional situation-"dialogues" between mothers and their babies-in two different cultural contexts
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