The Language of Love and Guilt

Book excerpt: Although mother and daughter are two central female roles, they have rarely been investigated. The relationship is specific, certainly different than the mother–son or father–daughter relationships. And this difference manifests itself in sex-specific language behavior. Despite ‘eternal’ features of the mother–daughter relationship, its quality is affected by individual psychological and by sociocultural variables. Thus, investigations took place in two big cities with very different structures and traditions: Vienna and Los Angeles. This is the first cross-cultural study which reflects and combines multiple linguistic, socio-psycholinguistic and text linguistic categories, approaches and methods to be able to investigate such an important topic as family relationships and the ‘place’ of women nowadays in our societies.