Cognitive, Linguistic, and Social Aspects of Adults' Noun Definitions

Low-income, rural adults and middle-income, urban adults provided oral definitions for eight common nouns. Two general issues were addressed: (1) whether the rural adults' definitions would conform to the well-documented Aristotelian form typically found among middle-class, well-educated adults; and (2) whether different definitional types would emerge for two different noun classes, social vs. object nouns. Participants' definitions were examined for conceptual content and linguistic form. Among rural participants, the mean proportion of definitions conforming to the Aristotelian model was .13, contrasted with .69 for the urban participants. Also, rural adults were significantly less likely to cast definitions in the conventional linguistic form than were urban adults. On other measures of definitional skill as well, rural participants demonstrated less mastery. There were no significant differences in definitional form between social and object nouns. Various explanations for the findings are considered.