Communicative behavior in family conversation: Comparison of amount of talk in Finnish, SwedishFinnish, and Swedish families

The present study is a part of a project aiming at studying whether or not there are differences in the communicative behavior among three Nordic groups: 20 Finnish families in Finland, 20 Finnish families living in Sweden, and 20 Swedish families in Sweden. Families with a 9- to 13-year-old target child were compared with regard to amount of talk during family mealtimes. The Swedish families differed distinctly from the Finnish and SwedishFinnish ones in that they produced more talk. The two latter groups behaved quite similarly even though the SwedishFinnish families had lived in Sweden for 13–25 years. Particular emphasis was placed on studying pauses, which were remarkably shorter and less frequent in the Swedish families. The study showed that the contribution by different family members to conversation was quite similar in all the groups, with a dominance of the mother.