ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of talk as a medium in which both young children and the adults in their world “do” gender. It shows that the study of talk must be sensitive to differences in context: for example, setting, topic, activity, and most importantly, who one’s partner is. The juxtaposition of parent–child talk, peer talk, and sibling talk in this issue is intended to model a comparative framework for language and gender research. A comparative approach can help to avoid facile overgeneralizations about gender differences in language-in-use, which treat discourse as a context-free phenomenon. It can yield a much fuller understanding of how the context of talk shapes what is said to a large extent, and correlates with what has been called “gendered” language. DeHart extended research on peer talk to the sibling context and did not find differences noted previously in peer talk research.
