linguistic roles of mothers and fathers in the developmental perspectives on politeness
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Linguistic Roles of Mothers and Fathers in the Developmental Perspectives on Politeness:
Requests, Routines, and Turn-taking.
Word count: 3827
Janice Fung
20711603
Monash University, Clayton
Unit code: LIN3430
Due date: 3rd May, 2010
Unit coordinator: Dr. Anna Margetts
Class time: Mondays 11:00 – 13:00
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Table of contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Requests
1.2 Politeness routines
1.3 Turn-taking
1.4 Aims and rational
2 Methodologies
2.1 Material analyzed
2.2 Analysis procedures
3 Results and discussion
3.1 Requests 459
3.2 Politeness routines
3.3 Turn-taking
4 Conclusion
5 Appendices
6 References
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Brown and Levinson (1978) theorized politeness as being the underlying model for
all human public social interaction. The concept proposes two kinds of face: positive face
(the need to be admired) and negative face (the need of the freedom of action, to not be
imposed on). Politeness is defined as an expression of concern for the face needs of the
interlocutor, in avoidance of making face-threatening acts (Mao, 1994). The way in which a
face-threatening act is produced is determined by the understanding of three dimensions of
politeness: (a) the degree of imposition which the face-threatening act would present, (b)
the social distance between the speaker and interlocutor, and (c) the differential power
between the speaker and interlocutor (Snow, Perlmann, Gleason, and Hooshyar., 1990). It
is this understanding of complex social relations and human behaviour that is required in
order for politeness forms (greetings and salutations, conventional indirect apologies and
requests, please, excuse me, thank you) to be used in the correct and appropriate manner.
This raises the question of how children acquire this complex system with the input from
adults who are competent with politeness strategies; and how children elaborate this input
into a more complex and abstract systematic theory (Snow et. al., 1990).
Child interlocutors are limited in the social roles to which they are exposed, as they
operate in the familial context in which they have little power. It is through parent-talk at
home that children are first given lessons of the dimensions that underlie politeness. Parents
guide children into using conventional politeness forms by modeling and direct teaching.
They present to children a large variety of requests, directives, compliments, and
occasionally some insults; addressing the positive and negative face needs of their children
(Snow et. al., 1990). Men and women culturally differ in their use of politeness strategies
(Bellinger, 1982). There is a tendency for women to use more politeness conventions than
men (Holmes 1995, p. 1); however it cannot be simply stated that women are more polite
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than men, as the answer is a complex one. The perception of politeness is dependent on
how it is defined, and what norms of polite behavior are accepted in application to men and
women (Holmes 1995, p. 1). As previous research has found different politeness patterns in
men and women, it would be expected that mothers and fathers communicate to their
children with different linguistic conventions.
1.1 Requests
The convention of politeness is usually implicit. It is governed by pragmatic
awareness which is the understanding of the rules of effective communication. This
includes knowledge of the structure of language, social conventions, and the
conversational use that underlie effective language use. Linguists are interested in the
children’s development of pragmatic awareness, particularly in their use and
understanding of different forms of requests (Garton, 2009). Children tend to show a
preference for indirect forms of requests from an early age, although their
understanding of pragmatic conventions is premature (Garvey, 1975). Nevertheless,
parental use of indirect forms has been successful in the education of pragmatic rules to
their children; and children as young as 3 years of age are able to respond accordingly
to the different forms of social politeness conventions (Becker, 1988).
In accordance to the model of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson
(1987), such pragmatic conventions are regulated by the social convention of face
preservation. Hence requests for action or information can be presented in two forms,
direct or indirect. Requests that are presented indirectly permit the addressee to decline
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the request while preserving positive face wants of the addresser, and negative face
wants of the addressee (Garton, 2009). Requests are speech acts that express the
assumption of the speaker (S) for the hearer (H) to do the act (A), and the illocutionary
force of the request is determined by the linguistic devices applied to the utterance. For
the purpose of this study, the different forms of requests were categorized as follows
(Garvey, 1974):
1. Direct requests: Explicit utterances that are either imperative, e.g. Eat with your
fork not your hands (Appendix C, line 596) or may include a performative
marker, e.g. I’m asking you to eat with your fork not your hands.
2. Indirect requests (Type 1): Implicit expressions with which the utterance makes
reference to one of the assumptions of the four sincerity conditions as follows:
a. S wants H to do A, e.g. I want you to use your fork.
b. S assumes H can do A, e.g. Can you use your fork?
c. S assumes H is willing to do A, e.g. Would you want to use your fork?
d. S assumes H will not do A in the absence of request, e.g. Will you use
your fork?
3. Indirect requests (Type 2): Implicit expressions with which the utterance does
not make reference to the sincerity conditions as stated above. Implications of
the participant status are embedded, and may also include the necessity of the
act. Indirect requests (Type 2) also include utterances that embed the content
that H will do A, but does not specify the target act that S wishes H to perform,
hence being posed as a ‘hint’ (Garvey, 1974), e.g. Bobby’s father (S) wants his
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daughter Jennifer (H) to watch the mess she is making over the dinner table (A).
Without explicitly asking the child to watch her etiquette, the father indicates his
desire by implying that H will do A in the following utterance, Jennifer, you
don’t want to spill it all over your lap (Appendix B, line 1852). This utterance is
an attempt from S to get H to do A.
Direct forms of requests are potentially more face-threatening as it carries a high degree
of imposition. They are usually directed downward in rank from interlocutors of high
power to low power. As fathers tend to phrase requests in direct forms more often than
mothers, this trend may be a linguistic indication of fathers’ usual authoritarian status in
the family (Bellinger, 1982). Type 2 implied indirect requests are more difficult to
understand than other forms of indirect requests, as they require the interlocutors to
have shared knowledge of concepts and assumptions. It is then that a complex message
can be communicated with minimal and sufficient words (Bellinger, 1982). Fathers are
less able than mothers in understanding children’s speech (Weist and Stebbins, 1977).
Although fathers make more use of Type 2 implied indirect requests, of which
meanings are more difficult to decipher, it does not imply that fathers are insensitive to
their children’s abilities of comprehension. Garvey (1975) conducted a study using the
Parent Awareness Measure, and found that fathers were equally able as mothers in
understanding the level of their children’s linguistic abilities. Furthermore, children as
young as four years old have demonstrated competence in interpreting and producing
Type 2 implied indirect requests (Garvey, 1975).
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1.2 Politeness routines
There are several differences in the use of politeness markers by mothers and
fathers (Snow et. al., 1990). In working class families, mothers generally tend to use
more politeness terms, such as thank, excuse, and please, than fathers. Furthermore,
mothers were found to engage in child-directed talk much more often than fathers. It
was suggested that this may be a reflection of the larger responsibility that mothers feel
they possess to display politeness and train children in politeness, even though they may
not necessarily be more polite themselves than fathers. Snow et. al. (1990) found that
over 80% of the use of politeness terms by parents is addressed to children. Parents
actively teach their children the constructs of politeness routines through explicit
instructions or provide models of polite behaviour. The pressure on parents to teach
politeness conventions begins very early in the child’s development. The pressure is
high to the extent that being truthful is of secondary value (Ladegaard, 2004). Greif and
Gleason (1980) conducted a study where children were offered with a gift from an
assistant. The assistant would greet the child with Hi, Thanks, and Goodbye. The
intention was to present to the child an opportunity to practice polite social routines,
and to observe the child’s ability to spontaneously produce politeness markers.
Prompting politeness markers by parents was very common. The study also reported
that there were no differences between mothers and fathers in their amount of
prompting boys and girls to show appropriate politeness. Results of the study revealed
that children aged 2-5 were very unlikely to autonomously engage in polite social
routines. In the circumstance that children do not spontaneously produce the correct
politeness routine, parents would often present the politeness routine themselves as
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model behaviour. mothers have been found to thank the assistants for the child’s gift
and say goodbye more than fathers (Ladegaard, 2004).
1.3 Turn-taking
Speech by mothers directed at children acquiring language seems to contain
many of the characteristics that consider it to be the ideal form of speech for teaching
language (Rondal, 1980). Maternal speech tends to be simplified and well-formed with
less disfluencies, contain repetitiveness, and have utterance boundaries clearly marked
by pauses. Furthermore, its style appears to change in concordance with the developing
linguistic capabilities of children. Mothers seem to accordingly adjust their utterances,
prosody, and paralinguistic features in length, structural, and semantic complexity.
Mothers are particularly talented at understanding children’s utterances. In comparison,
fathers are less able to understand the precise meanings of children’s speech, and they
are not better able to understand children’s speech than other unrelated adults (Weist
and Stebbins, 1977). Although fathers’ speech also develops simultaneously with the
developing linguistic competence of their children, the simplifications of their child-
directed speech is not the same as those in maternal speech (Rondal, 1980). A study
conducted by Gleason (1975) reported that the language of fathers and male day-care
teachers displays the same basic communicative features as the language of mothers’,
however to a lesser extent. Many similarities and differences can be found in comparing
the speech of mothers and fathers addressed to children. Rondal (1980) suggests that
mothers produce more speaker changes or engage in more turn-taking than fathers. It
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has also been found that fathers produce more requests addressed to children for
clarification, than mothers do. This may be an indication of the fathers’ lesser ability to
understand children’s speech; or that fathers are more curious to know of their
children’s thoughts, hence they may be more demanding than the mothers as to how
much verbal elaboration they expect from their children.
Research by McLaughlin et al. (1983) reported that mothers seem to ask fewer
questions to children of lower linguistic ability, and more questions to children of more
advanced linguistic ability. Thus providing further evidence to Rondal’s (1980)
hypothesis that maternal speech develops simultaneously with the children’s developing
linguistic competence. McLaughlin et. al. (1983) also suggested that this was not true of
fathers to modify their language use for the children; however research by Rondal
(1980) argued the opposite, with suggestions that fathers are simply serving different
linguistic lessons to the child.
1.4 Aims and rational
It is a widely accepted notion that many expressions and conventions of
politeness are more apparent in women speech styles than in men’s (Ladegaard, 2004).
Therefore the question is raised of when and how this gender difference is developed in
the language of young children. Greif & Gleason (1980) propose that by the age of 4,
children have strong stereotypical ideas of how different people talk. Bellinger (1982)
explains that early primary school children are already able to associate more directive
speech with males, and more indirect speech with females. Furthermore, studies by
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Gleason (1987) proposed strong correlations between children’s language and that of
their same-sex parent. It was found that by the age of 4 years, children displayed a
preference to use the same linguistic patterns as their same-sex parent (Ladegaard,
2004).
The purpose of the present study was to examine the linguistic roles of mothers
and fathers in children’s developmental perspectives on politeness. The linguistic
features of maternal and paternal child-directed speech were compared. Furthermore,
the different perspectives on politeness that children may gain through maternal and
paternal linguistic interactions were explored. Lastly, the ways in which linguistic roles
of mothers and fathers serve different needs of their children’s developmental
perspectives on gendered speech and politeness patterns were investigated.
2 Methodologies
2.1 Material analyzed
The analyzed transcripts were of the Gleason corpus obtained from the archives of
the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES; MacWhinney, 2000). The
participants were from middle-class families in 1976, from the greater area of Boston,
USA; and were recruited from nursery schools and similar networks. The children were
placed in three laboratory sessions to be audio recorded: (a) with the mother, (b) with the
father, and (c) at the dinner table with both parents. During the sessions with a single
parent, activities consisted of (a) playing with a toy car, (b) reading a picture book, and (c)
playing store. The sample for the present study consisted of 10 children aged 2;1.4 to 5;2.7
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(5 boys and 5 girls: Andy, Bobby, Eddie, Frank, Martin, Helen, Isadora, Katie, Olivia, and
Nanette), and included the transcripts from the mother-child and father-child laboratory
sessions.
2.2 Analysis procedures
In computing data on the use of request forms (see Table 1a, 1b, 1c), four sets of
transcripts were divided into two equal groups according to the child’s age and gender (age
2 years, and age 4 years). With the transcripts for each group, frequencies of requests
produced by mothers and fathers were manually counted separately and the proportions of
the used requests forms (direct and indirect) were calculated. The same two groups of
transcripts were used to analyze the development of parent’s child-directed speech in
accordance to their children’s linguistic ability. A computerized lexical search was
separately applied to the utterances of mothers and fathers. The total number of questions
over the denominator of the total number of utterances produced was calculated (see Table
4).
In analyzing the use of politeness terms (see Table 2), procedures of the CLAN
(Child Language Analysis) programs available through CHILDES were used to examine
the computerized data. Separate lexical searches was applied to the transcripts of the home
interactions to count the occurrences of politeness forms (including would, could, should,
please, excuse, thank you, hello, and goodbye) in the utterances of mothers and fathers.
Furthermore, automated CHILDES procedures were used to compute the number of
utterances per speaker to serve as a denominator; thus obtaining relative frequencies to
compare mothers and fathers in their use of politeness forms. The same procedure was used
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to record and compare the frequencies of utterances produced by mothers and fathers in
child-directed speech (see Table 3).
3 Results and discussion
3.1 Requests
Referring to the summarized results in Table 1 below, it was evident in all the
corpora analyzed that both mothers and fathers produced more indirect than direct
requests in child-directed speech; however, the proportion of produced indirect requests
was larger for mothers.
Table 1a: A comparison between mothers and fathers, the average proportion of requests
produced indirectly and directly in child-directed speech.
Request Form Mothers Fathers
Direct 38.29% 43.23%
Indirect (Type 1) 56.0% 41.29%
Indirect (Type 2) 5.71% 15.48%
Indirect total 61.71% 56.77%
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Findings from the current study suggested that mothers generally produced more
indirect requests than fathers. Results (Table 1a) revealed an average proportion of 61.71%
indirect requests produced by mothers, in comparison to 56.77% by fathers. Conversely,
fathers tended to phrase requests as directives; with an average proportion of 43.23% direct
requests produced by fathers, in comparison to 38.29% by mothers. As can be seen in
Table 1a, the findings were consistent with the claim by Bellinger (1982) that in
comparison with mothers, fathers are more likely to produce requests in either direct form,
e.g. Sit over here! (Appendix 19, line 545), or as indirect ‘hints’, i.e. Type 2 Indirect
requests, e.g. Nanette, that’s going to get very messy (Appendix 19, line 1366); and that
mothers are more likely than fathers to phrase requests as transparent indirect forms, i.e.
Type 1 Indirect requests, e.g. Alright, why don’t you turn this with your hand? (Appendix:
5, line 498).
The current study compared mothers and fathers in their production of request
forms addressed to children of two different age groups. The younger age group (2;1.2 to
2;6.23) represented children of lower linguistic maturity. Correspondingly, the older age
group (4;11.1 to 5;2.7) represented children of higher linguistic maturity.
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Table 1b: A comparison between the average proportions of requests produced indirectly
and directly by mothers and fathers, to children of different linguistic abilities.
Mothers Fathers
Younger Older Younger Older
Direct requests 29.33% 45.0% 34.19% 47.52%
Indirect requests
(Type 1 &2)
70.67% 55.0% 64.81% 52.47%
The results of the current study indicated that both mothers and fathers showed
similar patterns of change in producing request forms to younger and older children. Both
parents showed an increase of direct forms presented to older children, as well as a decrease
of indirect requests. This pattern is possibly due to the relatively lesser burden of teaching
older children politeness forms, as it can be assumed that their linguistic ability could
demonstrate competence in politeness. These results are consistent with the findings of
Rondal (1980) that the child-directed speech of fathers develops simultaneously with
children’s speech.
Escalera (2009) exerts that the difference between male and female speech patterns is a
cultural difference. Young boys and girls are segregated in play groups; therefore they are
socialized differently and develop different conversational, social, and intellectual norms
and values (Maltz and Borker, 1983). Previous research has shown that girls are generally
more cooperative in speech, and use collaborative positive reciprocity. In contrast, boys are
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more likely to use negative reciprocity and disrupt the narrative (Escalera, 2009). Hence it
would be easy to expect that parents socialize with young girls and boys differently, and
possibly present more politeness forms towards female children. To test this assumption,
the present study further compared mothers and fathers in their pattern of request making
addressed to boys and girls separately, and also to children of different linguistic abilities,
i.e. age.
Table 1c: A comparison between addressing male and female children, the average
proportion of requests produced indirectly and directly by mothers and fathers.
Direct requests Indirect requests (Type 1 & 2)
Child gender Boys Girls Boys Girls
Mothers 34.21% 41.41% 65.79% 58.59%
Fathers 45.67% 28.30% 54.32% 59.46%
Total 40.13% 34.63% 59.87% 58.96%
As can be observed in Table 1c, there were no major discrepancies found between
mothers and fathers in the proportion of request forms addressed to male and female
children. The proportion of indirect requests addressed to boys (59.87%) was almost equal
to that of girls (58.96%). Thus the previous assumption that parents socialize with girls and
boys differently was not fully supported. Research by Bellinger (1982) revealed no
significant disparities in the differential treatment of boys and girls in the types of requests
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used. However, the results of the current study revealed an interesting pattern in which
fathers tended to use more direct requests with boys, and mothers with girls. These findings
may possibility indication that same-sex parent-child relationships are more intimate, hence
allowing a higher tolerance for direct requests. This also may be a reflection of the role of
gender segregation in the personal identity formation of children and their acquisition of
gendered speech. However, these findings lack in external validity as the proposition was
drawn on a relatively small sample of children. It is apparent that future extensive research
is needed on the gender-differences in parent-child interactions to address the complexity of
these relationships.
3.2 Politeness routines
In the current study, the use of politeness forms was compared between mothers
and fathers:
Table 2: Mothers’ and fathers’ proportion of utterances with use of politeness forms
(would, should, could, may, please, thank/ta, excuse, hi/hello, goodbye/bye) in child-
directed speech.
Child Mothers Fathers
Boys 5.53% 1.92%
Girls 4.98% 3.12%
Total 5.22% 2.58%
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In support for the findings of Greif and Gleason (1980), the results of the present
study (Table 2) found that child-directed speech of mothers tend to present with more
politeness forms (5.22%) than that of fathers (2.58%). Ladegaard (2004) asserts that parents
do not insist girls to be more polite than boys. However, results of the present study imply
that fathers may present more politeness forms to females rather than males. However the
small sample size may deem the data too small for significant percentage computed from a
inferences to be drawn. In explanation to the differences in the linguistic behaviour of
mothers and fathers, the results may reflect the differential distribution of power in society
(Zimmerman and West, 1987). Deuchar (1988) suggests that powerless individuals have
more pressure to be polite. Hence women who are subordinate to men are more likely to be
linguistically polite. Thus the current results confirm the assumptions that the speech of
women is more polite than that of men’s. Mothers and fathers serve as different models of
gendered linguistic behaviour; therefore children imitating the same-sex parent may have a
stronger influence on politeness acquisition, as opposed to the differential treatment of boys
and girls (Ladegaard, 2004).
3.3 Turn-taking
Holmes (1995, p. 1) asserted that during conversations, men tend to dominate the
conversational floor while women use more turn-taking. Men use language as a means of
conveying information regardless of the emotional implications, whereas women use
language to establish, foster, and develop personal relationships. Thus women would tend
to use more questions and linguistic politeness terms than men. In the current study,
mothers and fathers were compared in their quantity of speech:
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Table 3: The average proportion of utterances produced by mothers and fathers during
one-on-one interactions with their children.
Child’s gender Mothers Fathers
Boys 76.08% 71.55%
Girls 72.88% 66.07%
Average 74.48% 68.81%
The current study obtained results reflective of the claims of Holmes (1995, p. 1) as
mothers of the corpora obtained a higher proportion of child-directed utterances (74.48%)
than fathers (68.81%). Gleason (1975) suggested that fathers produce less speaker turns
because they may be more demanding than mothers for the verbal elaboration they expect
from their child. Research by McLaughlin et. al. (1983) reported that although the speech
of fathers is shorter in utterance length, they tend to be lexically diverse. Thus it can be
assumed that mothers are more adept than fathers at teaching children the politeness
convention of turn-taking, and using the conversational floor with consideration of other
speakers.
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The corpora were analyzed for the average number of questions produced by mothers and
fathers in child-directed speech:
Table 4: Average proportion of questions produced by mothers and fathers during one-on-
one interactions with their children of two age groups.
Age group of children Mothers Fathers
Younger (2;1.2 to 2;6.23) 64.44% 39.39%
Older (4;11.1 to 5;2.7) 33.36% 37.53%
Results found that mothers asked younger children more questions (64.44%) than to older
children (33.36%). This was contradictive to the findings of McLaughlin et. al. (1983) that
suggested mothers would ask fewer questions to younger children. However this
incongruence may be due to the possibility that mothers may talk more to younger children
than to older children. Hence further elaborate research will need to be conducted to be able
to draw significant inferences.
4 Conclusion
This study is limited in providing significant evidence as the sample size was
relatively small. Furthermore, much of the data was analyzed using manual calculations;
hence it is not guaranteed that all evidential data was included in the analysis. Future
studies would benefit from a larger sample size and a computerized or automated data
analyses in order to improve external validity and increase significance. Future studies may
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also elaborate on parental use of compliments and insults in child-directed speech, and
explore the ways in which parents explicitly address the face needs of their children. This
would provide deeper insight in the ways in which politeness conventions are presented to
children.
The current study found that not only are the speech styles of both parents
simplified to cater to children’s limited linguistic ability, there are many other underlying
differences of mothers’ and fathers’ speech that help the child acquire different aspects of
politeness.
Mothers are more explicit in educating children in politeness conventions. They
tend to be more polite; are typically longer in utterance with more turn-taking
opportunities; make more prompts and corrections; and use more indirect than direct
requests, thus teaching children to be considerate of the face needs of others. In contrast,
fathers tend to phrase requests in direct and implied indirect form. Their use of implied
indirect forms may provide logical challenges to children, thus encouraging children to
develop their logical thinking. Although fathers talk less than mothers, their speech is
overall more lexically diverse, hence demanding children to talk more to explore their own
linguistic competence. The findings support Bellinger’s (1982) notion that fathers avidly
challenge children by providing more complex information. Therefore father provide
information for children to understand the application of politeness conventions in a
broader context beyond the home. Furthermore, it is noted that the child’s modeling of their
parents’ politeness behavior children may be a strong mechanism in learning politeness
behavior, as well as gendered politeness styles.
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In conclusion, mothers and fathers are equally contributive to their children’s
acquisition of politeness conventions. They play different social roles and provide different
linguistic experiences to cater to the different needs of children’s linguistic development
and politeness acquisition. This study defies the misconception that fathers contribute less
to children’s acquisition of politeness convention, and encourages both mothers and fathers
to interact with their children to provide balanced exposure to the different styles of child-
directed speech.
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5 Appendices
(Please refer to Word.doc file “Appendices 1-20 (Father-Child &Mother-Child)”
electronically submitted via MUSO.)
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