The Socialization of Anger and Aggression.

The early socialization of anger and aggression and the role that language plays in this process is examined in data drawn from an ethnographic study of early communicative development in an urban, working-class community in the United States. A model of socialization is proposed which takes into account not only the immediate interactional context in which the child responds with anger or aggression, but also the caregiver's past experiences and her childrearing goals and values. These socializing contexts are realized to a large extent through language. A major finding is that justification of anger by reference to social and moral standards is central to each of these contexts. By the age of 2V4 years the children controlled a variety of verbal resources for communicating anger and aggression and showed a rudimentary ability to justify their anger. An ger labels did not appear, but verbs of aggression occurred relatively frequently. These findings support the view that emotion encompasses not just the emo tional state but other aspects of the whole emotion situation.