Exploring Socioemotional Discourse in Parent-Child Conversations in the Us and China

The current study exists to describe how emotions are embedded into parent-child conversations, and how conversational patterns in both the United States and China reflect each country’s broader culture. In this way, the primary study goal was to examine the variability of familial interaction within Chinese and American cultures rather than to compare the two. Participants included parent-child dyads (N = 40) from China and the United States who were video-taped discussing a special event in the past and the future. The conversations were transcribed and coded to explore three issues: (1) individual differences between families in socioemotional discourse; (2) the variation in emotional references within conversations about past versus future events; and (3) the specific linguistic contexts (questions versus statements; child-centered versus non-child centered) in which emotions are referenced. Results indicated that emotions were referenced relatively infrequently during parent-child conversation. Utterances that referenced the past were more likely to contain emotion talk in the American sample; emotion talk was equally likely to occur in past versus future narratives within the the Chinese sample. In both samples, emotions were more prevalent in statements than questions, and the language associated with positive emotions referenced others more than the child. These findings reveal linguistic patterns in everyday day conversations cross-culturally and can serve as a foundation for exploring culturally-specific ways in which parents can facilitate their children’s socioemotional learning.