Chapter published in:
How Emotions Are Made in Talk
Edited by Jessica S. Robles and Ann Weatherall
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 321] 2021
► pp. 211–232

Socializing the emotions of joy and surprise in parent-child interaction

| Columbia University
The importance of emotional competence and the pivotal role parents play in the development of such competence have been a topic of great interest for developmental psychologists and linguistic anthropologists alike. While existing research on emotional socialization primarily focuses on negative emotions using mostly experimental or ethnographic methods, positive emotions remain an under-explored territory, and conversation analysis an under-utilized micro-analytic tool. This chapter investigates how the socialization of joy and surprise is accomplished in a repeated series of playful gift giving and receiving during video-recorded mealtime parent-child interactions in a U.S. family with a three-year-old girl and her parents. Findings contribute to the broader literature on parent-child interaction with a specific focus on the socialization of emotions.
Keywords: emotion, joy, surprise, socialization, conversation analysis, play, parent-child interaction, gifting sequence
Published online: 12 May 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.321.08war
References

References

Antaki, Charles, and Alexandra Kent
2015 “Offering Alternatives as a Way of Issuing Directives to Children: Putting the Worse Option Last.” Journal of Pragmatics 78: 25–38. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Jason K., Rachel M. Fenning, and Keith A. Crnic
2011 “Emotion Socialization by Mothers and Fathers: Coherence among Behaviors and Associations with Parent Attitudes and Children’s Social Competence.” Social Development 20, no. 2: 412–430. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bateson, Gregory
(1972) 2000 Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Bruner, Jerome S.
1975 “The Ontogenesis of Speech Acts.” Journal of Child Language 2: 1–19. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Burdelski, Matthew, and Koji Mitsuhashi
2010 “ ‘She Thinks You’re Kawaii’: Socializing Affect, Gender, and Relationships in a Japanese Preschool.” Language in Society 39, no. 1: 65–93. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Carly, and Ann Weatherall
2006 “ ‘No, We’re Not Playing Families’: Membership Categorization in Children’s Play. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39, no. 4: 441–470. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cassano, Michael, Carisa Perry-Parrish, and Janice Zeman
2007 “Influence of Gender on Parental Socialization of Children’s Sadness Regulation.” Social Development 16, no. 2: 210–231. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cekaite, Asta
2015 “The Coordination of Talk and Touch in Adults’ Directives to Children: Touch and Social Control.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 48, no. 2: 152–175. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2016 “Touch as Social Control: Haptic Organization of Attention in Adult–Child Interactions.” Journal of Pragmatics 92: 30–42. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cekaite, Asta, and Anna Ekström
2019 “Emotion Socialization in Teacher-Child Interaction: Teachers’ Responses to Children’s Negative Emotions.” Frontiers in Psychology 10: 1–19. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cekaite, Asta, and Malva Kvist Holm
2017 “The Comforting Touch: Tactile Intimacy and Talk in Managing Children’s Distress.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 50, no. 2: 109–127. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chaplin, Tara M., James Casey, Rajita Sinha, and Linda C. Mayes
2010 “Gender Differences in Caregiver Emotion Socialization of Low-Income Toddlers.” In New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 128: 11–27. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chaplin, Tara M., Pamela M. Cole, and Carolyn Zahn-Waxler
2005 “Parental Socialization of Emotion Expression: Gender Differences and Relations to Child Adjustment.” Emotion 5, no. 1: 80–88. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clancy, Patricia M.
1999 “The Socialization of Affect in Japanese Mother-Child Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 31, no. 11: 1397–1421. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Pamela M., Margaret K. Michel, and Laureen O’Donnell Teti
1994 “The Development of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: A Clinical Perspective.” In The Development of Emotion Regulation: Biological and Behavioral Considerations, edited by Nathan A. Fox, 73–100. Monographs of the Society for Research on Child Development 59, no. 2–3.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
2009 “A Sequential Approach to Affect: The Case of ‘Disappointment.’” In Talk in Interaction: Comparative Dimensions, edited by Markku Haakana, Minna Laakso, and Jan Lindstrom, 94–123. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Denham, Susanne A., Hideko H. Bassett, and Todd Wyatt
2007 “The Socialization of Emotional Competence.” In Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, edited by Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings, 614–637. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Denham, Susanne A., Hideko Hamada Bassett, and Todd M. Wyatt
(2010) Gender differences in the socialization of preschoolers’ emotional competence. In A. Kennedy Root & S. Denham (Eds.), The role of gender in the socialization of emotion: Key concepts and critical issues. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 128, 29–49. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Denham, Susanne A., Hideko H. Bassett, and Todd Wyatt
2015 “The Socialization of Emotional Competence.” In Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, 2nd ed., edited by Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings, 590–614. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf, and Jurgen Streeck
2018 “The Body in Interaction: Its Multiple Modalities and Temporalities.” In Time in Embodied Interaction: Synchronicity and Sequentiality of Multimodal Resources, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann and Jurgen Streeck, 1–29. Amsterdam, John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, Elinor Ochs, and Bambi B. Schieffelin
(eds.) 2012 The Handbook of Language Socialization. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Nancy, Amanda Cumberland, and Tracy L. Spinrad
1998 “Parental Socialization of Emotion.” Psycholinguistic Inquiry 9, no. 4: 241–273. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, Paul
1972 “Universals and Cultural Differences in Facial Expressions of Emotion.” In Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, ed. by James Cole, 207–282. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Evaldsson, Ann-Carita, and Olga Abreu Fernandes
2019 “Embodied Performances and Footings in a Young Child’s Spontaneous Participation in Bilingual Russian–Swedish Storytelling.” Research on Children and Social Interaction 3, no. 1–2: 36–64. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fasulo, Alessandra, Heather Loyd, and Vincenzo Padiglione
2007 “Children’s Socialization into Cleaning Practices: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Discourse & Society 18, no. 1: 11–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Charles A.
1977 “Baby Talk as a Simplified Register.” In Talking to Children, edited by Catherine E. Snow and Charles A. Ferguson, 209–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gardener, Hilary, and Michael Forrester
2010 Analyzing Interactions in Childhood: Insights from Conversation Analysis. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold, and Harvey Sacks
(1970) 1986 “On Formal Structures of Practical Actions.” In Ethnomethodological Studies of Work, ed. by Harold Garfinkel, 157–193. London and New York: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1974 Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
2006 “Participation, Affect, and Trajectory in Family Directive/Response Sequences.” Text & Talk 26, no. 4–5: 515–543. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, and Asta Cekaite
2013 “Calibration in Directive/Response Sequences in Family Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 46, no. 1: 122–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 Embodied Family Choreography: Practices of Control, Care, and Mundane Creativity. London and New York: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Cynthia
2008 “A(p)parent Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in Society 37, no. 3: 319–349. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gottman, John M., Lynn F. Katz, and Carole Hooven
1997 Meta-emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hepburn, Alexa
2020 “The preference for self-direction as a resource for parents’ socialization practices.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 17, no. 3: 450–468. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hepburn, Alexa, and Jonathan Potter
2007 “Crying Receipts: Time, Empathy, and Institutional Practice.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 40, no. 1: 89–116. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Chiung-chih
2011 “Language Socialization of Affect in Mandarin Parent-Child Conversation.” Pragmatics 21, no. 4: 593–618. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keel, Sara
2016 Socialization: Parent-Child Interaction in Everyday Life. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lo, Adrienne, and Heidi Fung
2012 “Language Socialization and Shaming.” In The Handbook of Language Socialization, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, and Bambi B. Schieffelin, 169–189. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lunkenheimer, Erika S., Ann M. Shields, and Kai S. Cortina
2007 “Parental Emotion Coaching and Dismissing in Family Interaction.” Social Development 16, no. 2: 232–248. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Peggy, and Linda L. Sperry
1987 “The Socialization of Anger and Aggression.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 33, no. 1: 1–31.Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza
2018 “Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 51, no. 1: 85–106. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 “Contemporary issues in Conversation Analysis: Embodiment and Materiality, Multimodality and multisensoriality in Social Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 145, 47–62. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Leslie C.
2012 “Language Socialization and Repetition.” In The Handbook of Language Socialization, edited by Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, and Bambi B. Schieffelin, 209–226. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nevile, Maurice, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, and Mirka Rauniomaa, M.
(eds) 2015 Interacting with Objects. Language, Materiality and Social Activity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik
(eds.) 2007 Fast-forward Family: Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, and Bambi Schieffelin
2017 “Language Socialization: An Historical Overview.” In Language Socialization, 3rd ed., edited by Patricia Duff and Stephen May, 3–16. New York: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Peters, Ann M., and Stephen T. Boggs
1986 “Interactional Routines as Cultural Influences upon Language Acquisition.” In Language Socialization across Cultures, edited by Bambi B. Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs, 80–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reber, Elisabeth
2012 Affectivity in Interaction: Sound Objects in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Robles, Jessica S.
2012 “Troubles with Assessments in Gifting Occasions.” Discourse Studies 14, no. 6: 753–777. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rogoff, Barbara
1995 “Observing Sociocultural Activity on Three Planes: Participatory Appropriation, Guided Participation, and Apprenticeship.” In Sociocultural Studies of Mind, ed. by James V. Wertsch, Pablo del Rio, Amelia Alvarez, 139–164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Root, Amy Kennedy, and Susanne A. Denham
(eds.) 2010 “Focusing on Gender: Parent and Child Contributions to the Socializations of Emotional Competence.” Special issue of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development: 128.Google Scholar
Ruusuvuori, Johanna
2007 “Managing Affect: Integration of Empathy and Problem-Solving in Health Care Encounters.” Discourse Studies 9, no. 5: 597–622. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 “Emotion, Affect and Conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 330–349. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1984 “Notes on Methodology.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 2–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1992 Lectures on Conversation. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50, no. 4: 696–735. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegoff, Emanuel A.
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sscaepek Reed, Beatrice
2020 “Reconceptualizing Mirroring: Sound Imitation and Rapport in Naturally Occurring Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 167: 131–151. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Selting, Margret, Elisabeth Reber, and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten
(eds) 2010 Prosody in Interaction. Amsterdam; John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sirota, Karen G.
2006 “Habits of the Hearth: Children’s Bedtime Routines as Relational Work.” Text & Talk 26, no. 4–5: 493–514. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Peräkylä, Anssi, and Marja-Leena Sorjoren
(eds) 2012 Emotion in Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Takada, Akira
2013 “Generating Morality in Directive Sequences: Distinctive Strategies for Developing Communicative Competence in Japanese Care-Giver-Child Interactions.” Language and Communication 33: 420–438. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tulbert, Eve, and Marjorie Harness Goodwin
2011 “Choreographies of Attention: Multimodality in a Routine.” In Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World, ed. by Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron, 79–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wells, Bill
2010 “Tonal Repetition and Tonal Contrast in English Carer-child Interaction.” In Prosody in Interaction, ed. by Margret Selting, Elisabeth Reber, and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, 243–262. Amsterdam; John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilkinson, Sue, and Celia Kitzinger
2006 “Surprise as an Interactional Achievement: Reaction Tokens in Conversation.” Social Psychology Quarterly 69, no. 2: 150–182. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wingard, Leah
2006 “Parents’ Inquiries about Homework: The First Mention.” Text & Talk 26, no. 4–5: 573–596. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wootton, Anthony J.
2012 “Distress in Adult-Child Interaction.” In Emotion in Interaction, ed. by Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen, 64–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zahn-Waxler, Carolyn
2010 “Socialization of Emotion: Who Influences Whom and How?” In New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 128: 101–109. CrossrefGoogle Scholar