The present study investigated the use of directives which can function to direct, control and keep the child's attention during the interactions. The directives utterances may show different functions in the interactions in which they are used depending on characteristics such as gender. In this study the possible variations in the use of maternal directives were analyzed by considering the child's gender. Sixteen mother-child dyads participated in this study. Children's age varied between 24-30 months. The dyads were video-recorded in natural environment for 20 minutes. The transcriptions of the sessions were carried out following the norms of the computational system Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Mann-Whitney U test indicated a significant difference in the maternal speech directed to boys and girls. These results showed that the maternal directives were directed more to boys than to girls. These results were discussed considering the level of the children linguistic development and the context in which the utterances were presented.
mother-child interaction; maternal directives; communicative intention; gender
