On Caretaker Speech

Today, Alan and I were talking about how we communicate with Hannah. As I said in a previous posting, I use caretaker speech: simple vocabulary, short sentences, slow speech, high pitch, very exaggerated intonation.

While Alan talks a lot with Hannah, he does not use caretaker speech. I asked him why, and he said that he feels that he wants Hannah to know the facts of life. That with one parent doing caretaker speech is enough and that he wants to "talk with" her and he wants her to learn the facts of life. He also says that he's read that while Hannah does not understand what he says she does get the idea that he loves her.

So I did some research on caretaker speech and gender differences. And I did find that men use a wider range of vocabulary and tend to use imperatives (while women don't). Also, men tend to interact more actively with the babies (could this be translated in the fact that I am treating Hannah like a little doll and he is less afraid?). The issue of the wider range is very clear to me. Alan's vocabulary is, from my point of view, quite sophisticated. He talks to her almost like he talks to me. His tone is low, his speech rate is neither fast nor slow; however, combined with the normal speech rate, his speech is not easy to understand to a second language (L2) speaker; therefore, one only wonders how difficult or easy it is for someone like Hannah.

However, what is interesting is that Hannah is immersed in what he says to her. She listens to him attentively and follows him with her eyes. She is very much focused on what he says. With me, she is focused but because of my high level of interaction with her, she "responds" with noises, smiles, the closing of her eyes....

Again, I would like to recommend the PSB series on The Human Brain. The page that I am linking this page to focuses on caretaker speech. I hope you enjoy it!

Also, men, according to a summary of research tend to understand baby talk less (and this seems to be attributed to the father's more limited contact with the baby (which is not Alan's case).

For those of you who want to read about the language development process, you may want to go to this page since it has a good summary of three excellent books. Cheers, Kuki
Saludos,