Conversational styles of mothers with different value priorities: Comparing Estonian mothers in Estonia and Sweden

Abstract

The present study’s aim was to compare the conversational style and value preferences of mothers in Estonian families living in Estonia and Sweden. Early adolescent children (10 to 13 years old) and their mothers were videotaped at their homes during mealtime. All regulatory utterances were identified, and differentiated into two groups depending on whether their aim was to control behavior or elicit talk. Attempting to link the hypothesized socio-cultural variation in regulatory speech to a broader belief system, a number of questionnaire items on values from the Schwartz’s Value Survey (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987) were administered to the mothers. As expected, the analyses revealed differences in the conversational intentions of the Estonian-speaking mothers living in two different countries. Mothers in Estonia were significantly more concerned with controlling early adolescents’ behavior than mothers in Sweden. Responses to value items supported the real-life findings, showing that mothers in Sweden valued significantly higher the value domains of Achievement and Self-direction than mothers in Estonia.