Hans J. Ladegaard

Gender differences in young children's speech: the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence

Many sociolinguistic studies have found that female speakers prefer standard speech forms while male speakers prefer vernacular forms. This article addresses two questions: (1) when does this split between male and female language occur in the language of young children; and (2) how do little boys and girls come to prefer linguistic features which are predominant in the language of adults? Two hypotheses accounting for the mechanisms of transmission are presented – the frequency hypothesis and the role-model hypothesis – and data from a study of Danish childrens acquisition of past-tense morphology is presented. The study found gender differences in the past-tense morphology of the 4-, 6- and 8-year-old participants, and it is argued that the role-model hypothesis would most adequately explain these differences. Furthermore, it is argued that early institutionalisation of children in Denmark may lead to increased peer group influence and help explain why gender differences occur at an earlier age compared to studies from the UK and the USA.

Global Culture—Myth or Reality? Perceptions of “National Cultures” in a Global Corporation

The literature argues that in global business communication the concept of “national culture(s)” is becoming obsolete because globalization leads to cultural convergence. This article argues that “national cultures” are not obsolete in global organizations. Two focus group interviews were conducted in a global corporation using folk perceptions as a framework. Employees were asked to discuss their work practices and agreed that uniform standards could not be used across cultures. The article concludes that, despite globalization, we do not see evidence of cultural assimilation in global employees’ work practices, but rather that stereotypes of national cultures are used to provide orientation.

Sprogholdninger i Danmark

Ladegaard, H.J. (1992). Language attitudes in Denmark. Nordisk Psykologi, 44, 173–189. In social-psychological research language has been used as a means of evoking stereotyped reactions reflecting differential views of social groups. Various British and North American studies using the basic principles of the “matched-guise” technique—a method designed to measure rather private and uncensored attitudes—conclude that standard varieties of English usually connote high status and competence whereas regional non-standard varieties may be seen to reflect greater integrity and attractiveness. Socially conditioned nonstandard varieties are often evaluated most negatively. In the present study 212 informants with different age, sex, social class, linguistic background and place of residence listened to seven voices representing different social groups (four regional varieties from Jutland, Funen and Bornholm, high and low variety of Copenhagen-speech and Standard Danish) and evaluated the quality of the language...