When Cultural Scripts Collide: Conflicting Child-rearing Values in a Mixed-culture Home

Abstract

This paper discusses some key differences between the child-rearing values of American-English culture and Hong Kong-Cantonese culture. Evidence is drawn from contrasts in the child-rearing-related speech behaviour of people from the two cultures, including the American English-speaking author and his Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking partner. Speaker-oriented cultural scripts written in the natural semantic metalanguage are developed in an attempt to articulate and explain these differences in verbal behaviour. It is proposed that a major contrast between the two cultures is whether or not parents believe children can or should determine for themselves what is appropriate to say and do.

Keywords:

• Child-rearing
• Hong Kong Cantonese
• American English
• Cultural Scripts
• Natural Semantic Metalanguage

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor of this special issue, Jock Wong, for his comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this paper. I would also like to thank Stuart Christie and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments. And I am of course extremely grateful to my partner and daughter for allowing me, in fact encouraging me, to write about them. Finally, I would like to thank my family and others who provided me with their views about child-rearing speech.