Narratives and explanations during mealtime conversations in Norway and the U.S.

Abstract

Mealtimes reveal culturally specific ways of talking, and constitute opportunities for socialization of children into those ways. In 22 Norwegian families and 22 American families, matched for age and gender of preschoolaged child and for participant constellation, mealtimes were examined for the occurrence and type of narrative and explanatory talk. All indices suggested that the Norwegian families produced more narrative talk -in particular, talk about minor deviations from social scripts -whereas the American families produced more explanatory talk, particularly talk focused on explanations for physical events or for individual behaviors. When Norwegian families gave explanations, they were likely to be focused on social norms and deviations from them, like their narratives. The results are interpreted in relation to the Norwegian cultural values of mitigated collectivism, egalitarianism, homogeneity, and implicit social rules, in contrast to American values of individualism, diversity, and explicit formulation and transmission of civic values. (Socialization, culture, narrative, explanation, family, mealtimes, Norway, USA.)* In this article we consider children's acquisition of ways of speaking during family mealtime conversations in Norway and the US. The study of language socialization rests on two assumptions about ordinary talk: first, that it is a culturally organized feature of social life in every society, and second, that it is a major mechanism of socialization. In several recent studies, meals have been found to expose children to a wide range of culturally molded speech genres -

Opportunities knock: Mediation of peer-relations during meal-time in toddler groups

“…According to Hay (2006) the ability to communicate clear and understandable is important for the development of peer-relations. Aukrust and Snow (1998) emphasize that meals seem to create culturally specific ways of talking that constitutes opportunities for socialization of children. Bae (2009) focus implicit learning, the unplanned and not articulated, embedded in interactions between caretakers and children and between peers around the table.…”

Finishing the family meal. The interactional organisation of satiety

“…While a characteristic of much of the work on food and eating is that it neglects to examine mealtimes themselves, a converse pattern shows that much of the work on mealtimes does not explicitly focus on the food or eating practices therein (Aukrust & Snow, 1998;Pan, Perlmann, & Snow, 1999;Vuchinich, 1990). In the final part of our extended literature review, we consider the range of work on mealtime interaction, including research using conversation analysis, sociolinguistics and ethnography.…”

Handbook of Narrative Analysis

“…The field has long showed interest in family diversity through exploring family narratives across cultural or national groups; emblematic of this is Blum-Kulka's (1993, 1997) study of dinners among Jewish American, American Israeli, and Israeli families, and Aukrust's (2002) and Aukrust and Snow's (1998) comparison of American and Norwegian families. While not focused explicitly on family talk, ethnographic research compares the language of workingclass black and white communities in the Piedmont Carolinas and identifies narrative differences among the groups.…”

“…While socialization and sociability are co-occurring phenomena in interaction, studies of narratives in family contexts often stem from an interest in how children are socialized. Narrative discourse is but one form of family talk that achieves socialization (others include explanations, e.g., Aukrust and Snow 1998; directives, e.g., Blum-Kulka 1997; and referring term use, e.g., Gordon 2007a). However, as Georgakopoulou (2002: 33) explains, due to narrative's prominence in social life and its role in sensemaking (see , examining family narratives is "an ideal point of entry into the interactive, jointly achieved aspects of the socialization process.…”