Discourse relativity in Russian-English bilingual preschoolers’ classification of objects by gender

Abstract

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: We tested whether structural relativity (i.e. the grammatical gender of words in Russian) or discourse relativity (e.g. the language spoken, cultural attitudes toward objects) would influence preschool Russian–English bilingual children’s classification of toys as boys or girls. Design/methodology/approach: We asked 20 Russian–English bilingual children to classify toys as either boys or girls, once in Russian and once in English. Some of the toys had masculine names in Russian, some feminine and some neuter. Data and analysis: We compared the children’s classifications of the toys between languages and within the items differing on gender (i.e. masculine, feminine and neuter) in Russian. Findings/conclusions: We found some weak support for structural relativity affecting children’s classifications. We found stronger effects that could be attributed to how language is used within a culture: the children classified the toys as boys more often in Russian than in English, and showed strong correlations between their two languages in how they classified toys as well as strong correlations with English monolingual adults’ classifications of the same items. Originality: This study tests the developmental course of language relativity, relying on data from bilingual children. Significance/implications: These results are consistent with a developmental account of language relativity in which some aspects of discourse relativity can emerge early, but structural relativity effects do not emerge until the middle childhood years.