Age and Social Class in Children's Use of Persuasive Communicative Appeals

Abstract

PICHEi, GENE L.; RUBIN, DONALD L.; and MICHLIN, MICHAEL L. Age and Social Class in Children's Use of Persuasive Communicative Appeals. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 773-780. The study investigates the relationship between age, social class, and children's persuasive communication strategies. 16 fifth graders and 16 ninth graders representing combinations of high and low SES delivered a persuasive message to each of 4 hypothetical target listeners. Deriving in part from Bernstein's developmental sociolinguistic theory, messages were analyzed into 5 major categories of appeals. Results indicate that older subjects accommodated their messages to targets' varying role characteristics and produced a frequency of positional (role-oriented) appeals to a significantly greater extent than did younger subjects. No statistically significant differences beween highand low-SES subjects were detected. The ontogenetic trend revealed in this study extends the current developmental account of children's communication to include the persuasive function. The absence of significant SES differences in modal appeal types does not support Bernstein's theory of class-mediated communicative appeals. The overall lack of significant SES differences is interpreted as indicating the need for caution in assuming any very direct relationship between social class and children's communicative styles.