As strange as it may seem, motherese is a technical term in the field of child language development. For many years, a mother’s role in the development of her child has been researched to determine its significance.
What have we learned about mother as a teacher? We now know that a mother’s speech is sensitively related to what her child is doing and saying on a moment-to-moment basis. Mother pays very close attention to what her child is looking at or playing with and then makes her speech simpler or more complex based on what he understands.
From the time of infancy, mother is trying to get her child to respond. Mother acts as a continuous listener as she interprets a broad range of infant behaviors as communicative.
It is very typical to see a mother talking to her infant and describing his actions when he sneezes, yawns or burps. By acting as a listener, mother puts the baby in the role of a speaker. For the infant to function as a speaker, he must learn when the conversational turn has been passed to him.
Mother teaches this by taking very long pauses between her utterances. In addition, mother also greatly exaggerates her pitch, her gestures and her vowels which not only attract the infant but also keeps his attention. She exaggerates the length of each word and speaks with extreme high and low pitch changes.
It is very humorous to watch adults when they talk to babies. Not only do they say things that the baby obviously does not understand (“Did you have a nice nap?” or “What did you do today?”) but their exaggerated speech just sounds ridiculous. In fact, most adults will acknowledge that if they spoke to adults the way they speak to young children, they would sound very silly. However, everyone seems to know and do it anyway.
The adult rules are suspended when speaking to young language learners. The child rules are: Keep your speech short and simple. Look at the child directly when you speak to him. Do not assume that he understands what you are saying.
Talk about what he is playing with. Look at what he is looking at. If you want to know if he understands you - watch his actions. Talk about the “here and now” not about yesterday or tomorrow. Slowly add new information. If your speech is too complex, you will lose his attention.
As early as three months, mother and infant engage in a sequence of looking behaviors, sounds and gestures, which later become the foundation for adult conversational speech. Therefore, mother-infant conversations are learning experiences. Conversational exchanges during early childhood develop the framework for the most important aspect of human development - communication. Mothers are wonderful teachers because they watch their infants. They modify their speech style to encourage interaction. They read their child’s behavior very carefully and they work very hard to get a response. They stay focused on their child’s ability to understand and to interact.
Research has shown that a mother’s speech is related to what her infant is doing approximately 68 percent of the time. Just think about what that means. Have you had a conversation lately with anyone who has paid attention to you 68 percent of the time - probably not. So, mother’s language or motherese is instructionally very rich. Mother is a natural language teacher who is greatly underrated and underappreciated!
Ellenmorris Tiegerman, Ph.D. is a Founder and Executive Director of the School for Language and Communication Development.
