Gender socialization of Chinese children: empirical evidence from school, family, and media
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Date
2021-09-13
Authors
Shi, Hui
Journal Title
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation seeks to deepen understanding of language-mediated gender socialization of Chinese children by answering three questions. In the family setting, how do parent-child interactions convey gender norms and gender-related expectations? In the school setting, how do teacher-child interaction embody gender norms? What role is cartoon playing in socializing Chinese children with gender? I analyze linguistic data collected from two Chinese families, two Chinese kindergartens, and one household name Chinese cartoon. The results provide novel answers to the three questions. First, parent-child verbal interactions differ in terms of the child’s gender. While the father-son pair focus more on rules in the physical world and skill development, the mother-daughter pair care more about social relations, emotions, and joyful life experience. Second, though aware of gender-egalitarian principles, Chinese kindergarten teachers subconsciously treat boys and girls in inconsistent manners. Children of different gender receive diverse interaction frequency, speech length, and speech acts from their teacher. Third, through artistic creation, Chinese cartoon embraces overt gender stereotypes through its language and plots. Male characters produce statistically significantly more utterances and visit a wider range of out-home locations than female characters. Male characters are portrayed through lexemes that embody adventurous and heroic masculine gender norms, while female characters are primarily associated with lexemes that related to home-based and appearance-related feminine gender stereotypes. All three case studies associate gender socialization with contemporary Chinese zeitgeist. I thus advocate an approach to gender socialization that considers layers of factors in a target society, as it allows us to develop a more comprehensive understanding of gender in dynamic social practices.
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Keywords
cartoon, Chinese language, gender socalization, kindergarten teacher, language socialization, parent