Speaking to Twin Children: Evidence Against the “Impoverishment” Thesis

Abstract

It is often claimed that parents’ talk to twins is less rich than talk to singletons and that this delays their language development. This case study suggests that talk to twins need not be impoverished. We identify highly sophisticated ways in which a mother responds to her 4-year-old twin children, both individually and jointly, as a way of ensuring an inclusive interactional environment. She uses gaze to demonstrate concurrent recipiency in response to simultaneous competition for attention from both children, and we see how the twins constantly monitor the ongoing interaction in order to appropriately position their own contributions to talk. In conclusion, we argue for the need to take twins’ interactional abilities into account when drawing linguistic comparisons between twins and singletons. Data are in Australian English.

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers who gave detailed and insightful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹ Cromdal (2009) provides a detailed overview of recent research into children’s social interaction.

² For a meta-analysis of twins’ language studies refer to Thorpe (2006).

³ See Ochs (1992) for discussion of how the mother orients, through her upgraded assessments, to the cultural script of Western, middle-class mothers.