Amy Sheldon Kids Say and Do the Darndest Things":
Some Challenges in Interpreting Gender in Preschoolers' Conversations

University of Michigan
Department of Communication Studies
224 Church Street, SE
225 Ford Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55455
asheldon@umn.edu

Abstract

The questions of "how and when are gender identities salient?", and "how does the researcher make that determination?" can be especially difficult to answer when the speaker is a three- or four-year-old. Preschoolers have few metalinguistic skills; we know little about what they know of gender, or how committed they are to gender-typicality. Their display of less typical behaviors can be particularly problematic.

For example, when a boy rejects the suggestion to put on a skirt, we assume that it is because of his gender identification and his understanding of what is appropriate. But how do we interpret it when a boy puts on a pink, satin skirt, without comment, and his boy playmates, wearing military hats, seem indifferent? And what if he and they continue to enact hypermasculine personas in a "broadcast" speech mode, using a lowered fundamental frequency with pretend walkie-talkies.(a piece of bread, a syringe), as they plan and enact a hunt for robbers during pretend play? How to interpret gender and language for this child-robot commander- in-a-skirt? Does linguistic demonstration of masculinity trump the feminine symbolism of his clothing? Are questions about sexual orientation appropriate? Can we claim that pretend play gives him greater freedom to display gender atypical behaviors when we don't know what he considers typical and when other boys avoided or refused to wear this female clothing? Is he sending a message about androgeny? Does this example challenge binary gender distinctions?

I will show the video clip and discuss such considerations in reaching a valid interpretation of this event.

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