Child Rearing

01 Wierzbicka (mrw/d) 25/8/04 3:08 pm Page 251
Article
Abstract The expressions good boy and good girl are widely used
in Anglo parental speech directed at children to praise them for
their actions. Used in this way, these expressions have no
equivalents in other European languages. In tracing the history of
these expressions, and their negative counterparts bad boy and bad
girl, this paper seeks to show that they reflect a unique cultural
model of child rearing, which links evaluation of a child’s
behaviour with evaluation of the child him- or herself. It is argued
that this model, which might seem natural and universal, but
which is in fact culture-specific, has its roots in England’s and
America’s Puritan past. Using the NSM semantic methodology,
the paper explores the changes and continuities in this cultural
model against the backdrop of broad linguistic usage.
Key Words Anglo culture, child rearing, cultural history of
English, cultural models, cultural psychology, Natural Semantic
Metalanguage, Puritanism
Anna Wierzbicka
Australian National University
The English Expressions Good Boy

and Good Girl and Cultural Models of
Child Rearing
Good Boy, Good Girl and the Cultural Emphasis on

Praise
The expressions good boy and good girl are widely used in Anglo
parental speech directed at children. To quote from a recent paper by
Naomi Quinn (2002), which discusses cultural models for child rearing
in a comparative perspective:
Closer to home, we need only to think of the exaggeratedly happy cry of
‘Good girl!’ or ‘Good boy!’ that rings out in middle-class American house-
holds, said in a special praise-giving voice and accompanied by an exag-
gerated expression of delight and often by a little clap, to mark parents’
extravagant praise for the toddler’s every new accomplishment, such as
going to the potty without prompting, or learning to tie her own shoes.
Culture & Psychology Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
Vol. 10(3): 251–278 [DOI: 10.1177/1354067X04042888]
Culture & Psychology 10(3)
There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that this kind of exagger-

ated praise for small children is a culture-specific phenomenon, and
that it is closely linked to other phenomena characteristic of modern
Anglo (and especially Anglo-American) culture.
Quinn (2002) discusses a range of child-rearing techniques that she
regards as widespread across cultures, including, in particular, beating,
frightening, teasing, shaming and praising. She emphasizes the differ-
ences between cultures in the relative weight given to these different
techniques. In particular, she surveys the evidence for the positive
value of ‘shaming’ in Chinese culture and the distrust which many
cultures (including Chinese culture) show towards the praising of
children. Speaking of the Gusii culture in Kenya (with reference to the
ethnographic work done there by Robert LeVine and his colleagues),
she notes that ‘the technique of choice for middle-class American
parents, praise, is rarely used by Gusii parents’. Within the context of
Gusii culture, which emphasizes obedience and respect, ‘praise is
explicitly rejected by Gusii mothers as a verbal device that would
encourage conceit and make even a good child rude and disobedient,
meaning disruptive of hierarchy’.
The emphasis on praise as a distinctive feature of contemporary
American culture has often been commented on in cross-cultural
studies. For example, Stigler and Perry (1990), in a study of the teach-
ings of mathematics in elementary schools in Chicago, Sandai (Japan)
and Taipei (Taiwan), have shown that praise plays a much greater role
in American classrooms than in Japanese or Chinese classrooms.
First-grade Japanese students are frequently evaluated by having their errors
displayed to the class. These errors are then discussed, and correct solutions
are derived by class members. . . . The most prevalent type of evaluation in
Taipei was reporting to the class the number of problems correctly solved.
. . . The most prevalent type of evaluation found in the Chicago first-grade
segments was praising students. (p. 344)
Similarly, Kitayama and Markus (1992, pp. 16–17) have contrasted
the preferred educational and child-rearing strategies in America and
in Japan by means of the following typical utterances addressed to the
child:
(a) Mary, you did such a nice job—I am very proud of you.
(b) Masaru, you are acting strange—your friends may laugh at you if they
see it.
Quinn’s (2002) main thesis is that the models of child rearing prevail-
ing in a given culture have ‘the greatest cultural influence on who we
are’, and that ‘child rearing results in a culturally distinctive, lifelong
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Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’
self (or personality)’. Accordingly, she argues that the emphasis on

praise characteristic of current child-rearing practices in middle-class
America is related to a number of other important aspects of modern
American culture, and indeed is one of the most important clues to
‘who we [Americans] are’. If she is right, then the ‘happy cry’ of ‘Good
boy!’ or ‘Good girl!’, which epitomizes this current cultural emphasis
on praise, deserves special attention, both in a synchronic and in a
diachronic perspective.
Praise, Parental Wishes and the Overall Evaluation of

Children
In a comparative (cross-linguistic) perspective, the most striking
feature of the expressions good boy and good girl is the link which they
appear to establish between the value of something that a child has
done and the ‘value’ of the child him- or herself. I will return to this
point shortly. Another interesting feature of these expressions is that
they link praise for something that the child has done with the idea
that the child has acted in accordance with parental wishes.
The link between the expressions good boy and good girl and the
speaker’s wishes is reflected in the extension of these expressions to
dogs (and also horses), as in the following examples from COBUILD:
You get down for a moment Fido—No! No! You’re not to bark. Get up on
your chair. Get up! Good boy, now sit! Sit!
Quiet, Fido—no, not on your chair, there’s a gentleman going to sit there.
Now I’m going to give you a biscuit and you’re going to be as good as gold.
Hush! Now stop it. Biscuit! Good boy.
I am not suggesting that in contemporary English, the expressions
good boy and good girl always imply compliance or obedience. As
Naomi Quinn’s examples illustrate, they can also convey praise for the
child’s achievement (such as going to the potty without prompting). In
all cases, however, they imply that the addressee has done something
that the speaker has wanted him or her to do.
Using the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) based on empirically
established lexical and grammatical universals (see Goddard, 1998;
Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2002; Wierzbicka, 1996a),1 we can represent the
meaning of these expressions in contemporary English as follows:
Good boy (girl)
(a) I think now: you did something very good
(b) I want you to do things like this
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(c) because of this I say: you are a good boy (girl)

(d) I feel something good because of this
Component (a) accounts for the spontaneous character of these
exclamations, which imply a parent’s current thought (usually, but not
necessarily, related to the child’s current action); component (b) refers
to parental wishes; component (c) expresses a positive evaluation of the
child, linked with the child’s actions; and component (d) indicates an
element of emotion (cf. Quinn’s reference to ‘the happy cry’).
I have formulated component (a) of this explication in terms of ‘very
good’ rather than simply ‘good’ because, as Quinn notes, the exclam-
atory expressions good boy and good girl tend to express extravagant
praise and to be accompanied by an exaggerated expression of delight,
and because they tend to interpret the child’s action as an achieve-
ment—something to be proud of. Although component (b) refers to
parental wishes, these exclamatory expressions focus on the child’s
accomplishment rather than on obedience, and they convey an encour-
agement ‘to do things like this’ rather than the assumption: ‘you have
to do as I say’.
While in contemporary speech, the expressions good boy and good girl
appear to be used primarily to express praise and encouragement (in
accordance with contemporary cultural ideologies of child rearing), in
the past they were also widely used in other ways (and to some extent,
still are): to control children’s behaviour, to exhort the child to do some-
thing (‘like a good boy/girl’), to act on the child’s conscience. The
following example from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
(‘Advanced Search’) is particularly telling in this respect:
During my childhood, it was constantly hammered home to me that I should
be a good boy at school. (1974)
Other characteristic examples which can be found in the OED include
the following (from the 19th and 20th century):
1. I want you to be a good boy. (1845)
2. He must be an extra good boy that day. (1863)
3. Vie said, ‘Good boy, Georgie.’ (1896)
4. I am sorry dear Nana but I will be a good boy. (1899)
5. Come along that’s a good boy! (1899)
6. Drink up your tea, that’s a good boy. (1947)
7. I’ve come to ‘fess up’, like a good boy. (1947)
8. Johnnie, do take him to the loo, there’s a good boy. (1955)
9. Be a good boy. You can begin by running me a hot bath. (1974)
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It is interesting to note that, as the examples above illustrate, there is

a whole family of conventionalized speech acts built on the notion of
‘good boy’: in addition to the exclamation good boy!, as in example 3,
there is the exhortation be a good boy (also I want you to be a good boy),
as in example 9; there are exhortations with an anticipated result: that’s
a good boy and there’s a good boy, as in examples 5, 6 and 8; there are
promises: I will be a good boy, as in 4; there are combinations with
modals of obligation such as ‘must’, as in example 2; there is the setting
of model behaviour: like a good boy, as in example 7; and so on. In some
of the OED examples, the expression good boy is actually directed at an
adult, in a mock-imitation of the pedagogical style directed at children.
The very fact that such a mock-pedagogical use of the phrases good boy
and good girl is well attested in English highlights the salience of the
pedagogical use in speech directed at children, a use in which be a good
boy implies (though it cannot be simply reduced to) behave like a good
boy.
The expression good girl used in reference to a child’s (and, by exten-
sion, a young woman’s) behaviour is also well attested in the history
of English. Again, the typical frames in which this expression appears
include the imperative: be a good girl; the ‘model’ phrase: like a good girl;
the exhortative-cum-anticipation: that’s a good girl and there’s a good girl;
if-clauses: if you are a good girl; and a variety of modals. Some examples
(also from the OED):
10. But come, be a good girl, don’t perplex your poor Uncle. (1695)
11. When you break up next, my dear, said he, if you’re a good girl, you
shall make your new aunt a visit. (1740)
12. The governantes at the boarding-school teach Miss to be a good girl.
(1756)
13. ‘Very well,’ cried I, ‘that’s a good girl’. (1766)
14. Maria, like a good girl, to keep herself constant to her . . . true-love,
avoided company. (1790)
15. Bless your heart, child; you are a good girl. (1862)
16. ‘Sh, now, there’s a good girl.’ ‘I won’t shush. I want to go home.’ (1972)
17. Read her the riot act, tell her to be a good girl and take her home. (1976)
Clearly, teaching a girl ‘to be a good girl’ (as in example 12) implies
teaching her to be a ‘well-behaved’ girl.
The expressions bad boy and bad girl are not normally used as
exclamations, in the way good boy and good girl are. But it is still possible
to say in English ‘you’ve been a very bad boy’, although for many
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parents it would now be culturally unacceptable to do so. One example

from COBUILD (US Books):
You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking her by one arm.
Look what you’ve done.
The theme of ‘good boys’ and ‘bad boys’, ‘good girls’ and ‘bad girls’
frequently recurs in English literature, and the expressions themselves
are well established in the literature and in the English language. Given
the universal tasks of child rearing (as discussed, for example, in Quinn
2002), this may seem unremarkable. But in a comparative perspective,
their common use in English is striking: there are no comparable
expressions (used in parental speech addressed to children) in other
European languages.
For example, in French one can’t say ‘Bon garçon!’ (‘Good boy!’) or
‘Bonne fille!’ (‘Good girl!’) to a child who has gone to the potty without
prompting. To praise a child’s achievement, one would normally say
something like ‘Bravo!’, or perhaps ‘C’est bien, mon petit’ (lit. ‘That’s
good, my little one’); or ‘C’est bien, chérie’ (‘That’s good, darling’). The
word bien used in such sentences is an adverb referring to the child’s
action. Nor can one say in French to a child ‘Sois bon’ ‘Be good’ (i.e.
don’t misbehave). To warn a child not to misbehave, one would say
‘Sois sage!’ (lit. ‘Be not-naughty)’; ‘Ne fais pas de bêtises!’ (‘Don’t do
silly things’). One would not say anything linking a child’s misbe-
haviour with ‘badness’.
Similarly, in German one doesn’t normally praise a child by saying
to her/him ‘Gutes Mädchen!’ (‘Good girl!’) or ‘Guter Junge!’ (‘Good
boy!’). If one wants to praise a small child’s achievement (such as, for
example, going to the potty without prompting) one might say: ‘Fein!’,
‘Fein gemacht!’, ‘Gut gemacht!’, ‘Schön!’, ‘Toll!’ (roughly, ‘Fine!’, ‘Well
done!’, ‘Lovely!’, ‘Great!’), but definitely not ‘Gutes Mädchen!’ or
‘Guter Junge!’. One can also praise a child as ‘brav!’ (or ‘Du bist brav’,
‘You’re brav’), but this means ‘obedient’. (Langencheidts Großwörterbuch
Deutsch als Fremdsprache glosses brav as ‘den Erwachsenen gehorchend,
folgsam, artig’, that is, ‘obedient to adults’). The expression ein braver
Junge, which may seem comparable to a good boy, is incomparably less
frequent in German than a good boy is in English. It also sounds old-
fashioned, and in any case it cannot be used in an exclamatory way to
enthuse about a child’s achievement (such as, for example, learning to
tie his or her own shoelaces).
The same applies to my native Polish. One can’t say to a child in
Polish ‘Dobry chłopiec!’ (‘Good boy!’) or ‘Dobra dziewczynka!’ (‘Good
girl!’). What one would normally do in a situation when in English one
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would say ‘Good girl!’ or ‘Good boy!, is to use an adverb or adverbial

expression referring to a particular action. For example, one would say
‘Bardzo dobrze!’ (‘Very well!’), ‘Doskonale!’ (‘Perfect!’), ‘Ślicznie!’
(‘Lovely!’) or ‘Wspaniale!’ (‘Wonderful!’).2
Why, then, does the English language seem to link the praise for a
child’s actions with a global evaluation of the child him- or herself as
a ‘good boy’ or a ‘good girl’? Where do these expressions come from
and why did they come to have such an important role in speech
directed at children?
English Literature for Children

In a well-known jocular poem composed for (and about) his little
daughter Edith, the 19th-century American poet Henry Longfellow
wrote:
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
When one looks at English (and American) poetry for children from
a comparative perspective one must be struck by the frequent refer-
ences to ‘good children’, ‘good boys’ and ‘good girls’, which are not
characteristic of other literary traditions. In what follows, I will illus-
trate this propensity mainly with examples drawn from the poetry of
the Taylor sisters, Anne and Jane, which played a prominent role in the
development of literature in English for children and which was
extremely popular for a long time and had many imitators.
As Thwaite (1963) puts it, ‘among all the makers of rhymes for
children, “the Taylor sisters” were the first who really entered the
child’s world and interpreted it in an easy, entertaining way . . . and
they captured the market’ (p. 131). Darton (1958) speaks of ‘the revol-
ution’ (p. 188) wrought by the Taylor sisters’ first volume, Original
Poems for Infant Minds (Taylor & Taylor, 1805–6)—a book which ‘awoke
the nurseries of England, and those in charge of them’ (p. 187; see also
Muir, 1985).
While the Taylor sisters wrote in a simple and entertaining way,
appealing to young children, their poetry consisted largely of simple
‘moral tales’. It often focused on the distinction between ‘good boys’
and ‘bad boys’, ‘good girls’ and ‘bad girls’, and on the all-important
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task facing each and every child: that of being ‘a good (i.e. well-
behaved) girl’ or ‘a good (i.e. well-behaved) boy’. For example, in her
poem entitled ‘Dirty Jim’, Jane Taylor (author of the song ‘Twinkle
Twinkle Little Star’) writes:
There was one little Jim,
’Tis reported of him,
And must be to his lasting disgrace
That he never was seen
With hands at all clean,
Nor yet ever clean was his face.
Little Jim’s dirty ways are contrasted with those of ‘good boys’ as
follows:
The idle and bad,
Like this little lad,
May love dirty ways, to be sure;
But good boys are seen
To be decent and clean,
Although they are ever so poor.
(Taylor & Taylor, 1925, p. 47)
In another of Jane Taylor’s poems, ‘The Boys and the Apple-tree’, a
model little boy is described as ‘a good boy’:
As William and Thomas were walking one day,
They came by a fine orchard’s side:
They would rather eat apples than spell, read, or play,
And Thomas to William then cried:
‘O brother, look yonder! What clusters hang there!
I’ll try and climb over the wall:
I must have an apple; I will have a pear;
Although it should cost me a fall!’
Said William to Thomas, ‘To steal is a sin,
Mamma has oft told this to thee:
I never have stole, nor will I begin,
So the apples may hang on the tree.’
‘You are a good boy, as you ever have been,’
Said Thomas, ‘let’s walk on, my lad:
We’ll call on our schoolfellow, Benjamin Green
Who to see us, I know, will be glad.’
(Taylor & Taylor, 1925, p. 11)
In the same author’s Rhymes for the Nursery and other books for
children (written in collaboration with her sister Anne) we come again
and again across boys and girls who ‘try to be good’, as in the follow-
ing poem entitled ‘Working’:
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Well, now I will sit down, and work very fast,

And try if I can’t be a good girl at last:
‘Tis better than being so sulky and haughty,
I’m really quite tired of being so naughty.
For, as mamma says, when my business is done,
There’s plenty of time left to play and to run:
But when ‘tis my work-time, I ought to sit still,
I know that I ought, and I certainly will.
(Taylor, 1840, p. 78)
The idea of ‘trying to be good’ is attributed not only to ‘boys’ and
‘girls’ but even to babies, as in the poem ‘Mamma and the Baby’ (also
by Jane Taylor):
What a little thing am I!
Hardly higher than the table;
I can eat, and play, and cry,
But to work I am not able.
Nothing in the world I know,
But mamma will try and show me:
Sweet mamma, I love her so,
She’s so very kind to me.
And she sets me on her knee,
Very often, for some kisses:
Oh! How good I’ll try to be,
For such a dear mamma as this is.
(Taylor, 1840, p. 11)
The theme of children’s misbehaviour seen as a sign of ‘badness’,
and model behaviour seen as a sign of ‘goodness’, frequently recurs in
English and American literature, and in Anglo discourse. In 19th-
century children’s literature, another word commonly associated with
children’s ‘bad behaviour’ is wickedness, as in the Taylor sisters’ poem
‘Poor Children’:
Oh, how very thankful I always should be
That I have kind parents to watch over me,
Who teach me from wickedness ever to flee!
(Taylor, 1840, p. 24)
Similarly, in a poem entitled ‘The Undutiful Boy’, little Harry hears
from his mother a didactic song about a ‘wicked’ boy:
Little Harry, come along,
And mamma will sing a song,
All about a naughty lad,
Though a mother kind he had. . . .
He would not learn to read his book,
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But wisdom’s pleasant way forsook;

With wicked boys he took delight,
And learned to quarrel and to fight.
And when he saw his mother cry
And heard her heave a bitter sigh,
To think she’d such a wicked son,
He never cared for what he’d done.
Little Harry’s mother concludes as follows:
I hope my little Harry will
Mind all I say, and love me still:
For ’tis his mother’s greatest joy,
To think he’s not a wicked boy.
(Taylor, 1840, p. 56)
As the recurring words wicked and wickedness indicate, children’s good
or bad behaviour was frequently interpreted in English literature in
terms of their personal goodness or badness.
Poems for children by other English and American authors are also
replete with references to good and bad children. Often, such refer-
ences make their appearance in the titles of either individual poems or
whole volumes. For example, another well-known English writer for
children, Sara Coleridge (the daughter of the poet Samuel Coleridge),
was the author of a popular volume entitled Pretty Lessons in Verse, for
Good Children (1834). Similarly, one Orlando Hodgson published a
volume entitled Blue Beard, or, Fatal Curiosity: A Tale of the Olden Time
Intended for the Amusement of All Good Children (1835), while a Mrs Sale
Barker produced a book entitled Little Wide Awake: An Illustrated
Magazine for Good Children’ (1880). Many poems emphasized the effort
required to be ‘a good boy’ or ‘a good girl’, and the need to try hard
and to ‘practise’ good behaviour. For example, the American writer
Charles Dudley Warner in his novel Being a Boy (1877/2002) writes:
‘One of the best things in the world is to be a boy; it requires no experi-
ence, but needs some practice to be a good one’ (cited in B. Stevenson,
1949, p. 195).
In more recent times, references to ‘good children’ start to predomi-
nate over those to ‘bad children’, and the phrase bad children starts to
be used lightly, even jocularly. Good examples of this tendency are
provided by Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems ‘A Good Boy’, ‘System’
and ‘Good and Bad Children’ (R.L. Stevenson, 1885/1908). In the first
two the protagonist congratulates himself on having been good on a
particular day (‘I’ve been good’), without any symmetrical references
to having been bad. In the third, good children are described not only
as ‘innocent and honest’ but also as ‘bright and quiet, and content with
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simple diet’, whereas bad children are described as ‘the unkind and
unruly and the sort who eat unduly’.
Similarly, in Beatrix Potter’s books, where animals are also depicted
with child-like moral characteristics, we encounter characters like a
little girl called Lucie who ‘was a good little girl’ (The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-
Winkle, 1905/2002b), ‘two bad mice’—who, however, ‘were not so very
naughty after all’ (The Tale of Two Bad Mice, 1904/1987), or ‘Flopsy,
Mopsy, and Cottontail, who were good little bunnies’ (in contrast to
their brother Peter, who ‘was very naughty’, The Tale of Peter Rabbit’,
1902/2002a).
Thus, the exclamations good boy and good girl commonly used by
Anglo parents to praise the achievements of their small children, are
not simply idiomatic expressions without a deeper cultural signifi-
cance. On the contrary, they are expressions which continue, in a new
way, a cultural tradition extending a long way back, which links child-
rearing practices with children’s moral status. A parent who praises a
child, in an exaggerated tone, with the words good boy or good girl
follows a cultural model of long standing—a model which combines a
positive evaluation of something the child has done (in accordance
with the parents’ wishes) with a positive evaluation of the child as a
moral being. Despite the apparent simplicity and ‘naturalness’ of the
expressions good boy and good girl this model is highly culture-specific.
Where does this culture-specific model of child rearing come from?
The Puritans and Their Religiously Inspired Books for

Children
Given the Puritan roots of various other aspects of the Anglo-American
ethos (cf., e.g., Barnstone, Manson, & Singley, 1997; Weber, 1930/1968)
and moral discourse (cf. Wierzbicka, 2002a), the hypothesis suggests
itself that this particular child-rearing model may also have had its
roots in England’s and America’s Puritan past.3
An obvious way to test this hypothesis is to turn to the writings of
classic Puritan writers dealing with child rearing and children’s early
education. One good source is A Book for Boys and Girls: Country Rhymes
for Children by John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress and a
key figure in the Anglo-Puritan tradition. Originally published in 1681,
the Book for Boys and Girls subsequently went through numerous
editions (a 10th edition was published in 1757). Its avowed purpose
was to ‘entice’ children ‘to mount their thoughts from what are childish
toys to Heav’n, for that’s prepar’d for Girls and Boys’ (‘To the Reader’,
Bunyan, 1681/1890).
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Reading these once so popular ‘country rhymes for children’, the

modern reader must be struck by the connection made in no uncertain
terms between children’s misbehaviour and their ‘sinful nature’ which
can lead them straight to hell. For example, the first stanza of the poem
entitled ‘Upon the Disobedient Child’ reads as follows:
Children become, while little, our delights,
When they grow bigger, they begin to fright’s,
Their sinful Nature prompts them to rebel,
And to delight in Paths that lead to Hell.
The theme of hellfire is strikingly prominent in these ‘country rhymes’
for young children. The ‘sinfulness’ and moral ‘filth’ of children
leading them away from God and towards hell is elaborated in
considerable detail in a poem entitled ‘The Awakened Child’s
Lamentation’, which as the author of the introduction to Bunyan’s
book points out (Brown, 1890), has some autobiographical interest.
When we read this poem, ‘we recall . . . that Bunyan tells us how,
because of his sins, “the Lord even in my childhood, did scare and
affright me with dreadful visions” ’ (p. xxii). I will quote this poem at
some length:
When Adam was deceived,
I was of Life bereaved;
Of late (too) I perceived,
I was in sin conceived.
And as I was born naked,
I was with filth bespaked,
At which when I awaked,
My Soul and Spirit shaked. . . .
My Joys with sin were painted,
My mind with sin is tainted,
My heart with Guilt is fainted,
I wa’nt with God acquainted. . . .
As sin has me infected,
I am thereof detected:
Mercy I have neglected,
I fear I am rejected.
The Word I have mis-used
Good Council too refused;
Thus I my Self abused;
How can I be excused?
When other Children prayed,
That work I then delayed,
Ran up and down and played,
And thus from God have strayed. . . .
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O! That God would be pleased,

T’wards me to be appeased;
And heal me thus diseased,
How should I then be eased!
Other Puritan writers for children wrote in a similar vein. In the 17th
century, the most popular among them, apart from Bunyan, was James
Janeway, the author of the once famous book A Token for Children,
which the subtitle described as ‘an exact account of the conversion,
holy and exemplary lives and joyful deaths of several young children’.
The exemplary children in question are repeatedly described as ‘good
children’. For example, in the preface, Janeway exhorts his little readers
as follows: ‘You may now hear, my dear lambs, what other good
children have done . . . if you would go to heaven when you die . . . do
as these good children’ (quoted in Thwaite, 1963, p. 24).
In the 18th century, Puritan writers continued to encourage young
children to be ‘good boys and girls’ and thus to head for heaven rather
than hell. One of the most influential ones among them was John
Newbery, the author of A Little Pretty Pocket-book, Intended for the
Instruction and Amusement of Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly’. The
book explained what can ‘infallibly make Tommy a good Boy and Polly
a good Girl’ (quoted in Thwaite, 1963, p. 46; see also Darton, 1958,
p. 58), and frequently referred to ‘all good Boys and Girls’.
Another prodigiously popular 18th-century Puritan writer for
children was Isaac Watts, the author of Divine Songs Attempted in Easy
Language for the Use of Children (1713/1971). The number of editions
which appeared in the two centuries after its first publication in 1713
has been estimated at over 500 (Pafford, 1971, p. 2). The overall tone of
the Divine Songs can be illustrated with song 11, entitled ‘Heaven and
Hell’:
There is beyond the sky
A heaven of joy and love
And holy children when they die
Go to that world above.
There is a dreadful hell,
And everlasting pains;
These sinners must with devils dwell
In darkness, fire, and chains.
Can such a wretch as I
Escape this cursed end?
And may I hope whene’er I die
I shall to heaven ascend?
Then will I read and pray
263
While I have life and breath;

Lest I should be cut off to-day
And sent to eternal death.
In another song (12) we hear of the happy child ‘who hates the
sinners’ path and fears the road that leads to hell’, and in song 13, of
God whose ‘power and vengeance none can tell’ (‘one stroke of his
almighty rod shall send young sinners quick to hell’). Song 18 tells
God: ‘Great God how terrible art thou to sinners ne’er so young!’, song
19 speaks of ‘wicked children’ whom God shall doom ‘to the place of
everlasting fire and pain’, in song 21 a child solemnly assures God: ‘I
hate to walk or dwell with sinful children here’ and asks not to be ‘sent
to hell where none but sinners are’. ‘Holy children’ and ‘godly
children’ are repeatedly contrasted in Divine Songs with ‘wicked
children’ and ‘sinful children’.
The authoritative history of the subject by F.J. Darton, Children’s
Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life (1958), contains a chapter
entitled ‘The Puritans: “Good Godly Books” ’ , in which Darton writes:
The authors wrote to the end that the children might be saved from hell,
with the implication that salvation is extremely difficult. . . . The purpose is
apparent in all early American children’s books; in the greater part of Mrs.
Sherwood’s writing, often with emphasis. It is logically implicit in all ‘moral
tales’, including the Lambs’; in ‘Peter Pasley’s ‘instructive works’; in the
writings of partisans of the Establishment, like Mrs. Trimmer, and even later,
Charles Kingsley. (p. 52)
Jane and Anne Taylor did not write much about hellfire, and the
general atmosphere of their poems is different from that of the poems
of Bunyan, Janaway or Watts. Nonetheless the tradition to which the
Taylors and their imitators belonged was clearly influenced by
England’s Puritan past.4
Given the cultural tradition that linked children’s naughtiness with
hellfire, the sentiment expressed in Jane Taylor’s poem ‘The Undutiful
Boy’, quoted earlier, is hardly surprising: ‘For ’tis his mother’s greatest
joy, to think he [her little boy] is not a wicked boy’. Nor is it surpris-
ing that many parents ‘consistently hammered home’ to their children
that they should be ‘good boys’ and ‘good girls’.
In the course of time, presumably in connection with the growing
secularization of English and American society, a counter-tradition
developed, which irreverently reversed the perspective and came to
present ‘the bad boy’ as someone potentially more interesting and
more exciting than the dutiful ‘good boy’. For example, George
William Peck’s book Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa, first published in
Chicago in 1883 (Peck, 1883–1907/1958), was immensely successful in
264
America, went through numerous editions, and, as Bleiler (1958) puts

it, ‘was among the great bestsellers of the late nineteenth century’
(p. iv). Bleiler observes that part of the book’s appeal must have lain
in the undercurrent of rebellion, in the readers’ minds, ‘against the
goody-goody sentimentalism that was rampant’ (p. vii).
Peck . . . wrote in a transition area, in the time-space . . . between decaying
frontier evangelism and the new secular life of the twentieth century. . . . He
poked fun at the most sacred institutions of the older folkways, and made
a success of it. (p. vi)
Another example of an irreverent treatment of the theme of ‘a bad boy’

is The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, originally published
in the magazine Our Young Folks, an Illustrated Magazine for Boys and
Girls (1869/1951). Mark Twain’s ‘The Story of the Good Little Boy’
(1870) is another good example of this counter-sense. It begins in
mocking tones: ‘Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob
Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and
unreasonable their demands were.’
As the counter-cultural type of an adventurous and exciting ‘bad
boy’ (again, without a counterpart in other European languages)
became well established in modern Anglo-American culture, the
moralistic contrast between ‘bad boys’ and ‘good boys’, ‘bad girls’ and
‘good girls’ gave way to predominantly ‘positive thinking’, the nurtur-
ing of children’s ‘self-esteem’ and the didactic celebration of their
achievements, reflected in the exaggeratedly happy modern cry ‘Good
boy!’ and ‘Good girl!’ noted in Quinn’s article. Nonetheless, that happy
cry, consistent with contemporary Anglo-American cultural ideology,
still resonates with the older tradition of evaluating children as ‘good’
or ‘bad’ on the basis of their ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behaviour.
The practice of evaluating children as good or bad is sometimes
presented in anthropological literature as present in all cultures. For
example, Quinn (2002) writes:
. . . across these various ethnographic examples—American, Chinese,
German, Gusil, Ifaluk, Inuit—we begin to see how child rearing is every-
where designed to make the child’s experience of important lessons
constant, to link those lessons to emotional arousals, and to connect them to
evaluations of the child’s goodness or badness.
Quinn’s points about making the child’s experience of important

lessons constant, and about linking those lessons to emotional arousals,
are, undoubtedly, well taken. One must wonder, though, whether the
practice of connecting these lessons to the evaluation of the child’s
goodness or badness is also found in all cultures. Could it be, rather,
265
that this practice is culture-specific and that it has its roots in the
religious traditions which have shaped so many other aspects of Anglo
culture and left their stamp on the English language?
The Beliefs and Practices of Puritanism

In what way exactly can the expressions good boy and bad boy, good girl
and bad girl be related to the beliefs and practices of Puritanism? First
of all, the view that there are two sharply distinguishable kinds of
people (children as well as adults), good and bad, is consistent with
the Puritans’ practice of calling themselves ‘godly people’, in contrast
to others—‘godless people’. (As noted, for example, in Collinson, 1983,
p. 1, ‘ “ the godly” was the appellation preferred by those 16th-century
Englishmen whose unsympathetic neighbours called them “puri-
tans” ’.) This strictly dichotomous view of people is also consistent
with the doctrine of predestination (the Puritans’ ‘favourite and distin-
guishing doctrine’, Arnold, 1870, p. 8), according to which some people
are ‘elect’ and are predestined for heaven whereas others are ‘not elect’
and are predestined for eternal damnation.
From the Puritans’ point of view, it was vital to know that one was
elected for salvation. While ‘the saving grace was a gift, not a reward
for anything that man had done’ (Encyclopedia Americana, 1996, p. 21),
nonetheless one could only know that one was among the elect by
one’s way of life, by one’s experience of conversion and the fruits that
this conversion bore in one’s conduct (cf. Weber, 1930/1968). ‘Those
who had this experience took on a new identity. They became “visible
saints”, persons who showed by their behaviour that their whole way
of living was based on serving God’ (Encyclopedia Americana, 1996,
p. 21).
The conversion process was depicted, in a way which uniquely
captured English and American people’s imagination, in the Pilgrim’s
Progress, where Bunyan ‘dramatized the lifelong effort of the Puritans
to move from sin to grace, and having received grace, to live as a visible
saint’ (Encyclopedia Americana, 1996, p. 21). From a child’s point of view,
we might conjecture this meant the daily effort to move from being ‘a
bad boy’ or ‘a bad girl’ to being ‘a good boy’ or ‘a good girl’, and to
take on a new visible identity as ‘a good boy’ or ‘a good girl’. Arguably,
for children, being ‘a good boy’ or ‘a good girl’ was tantamount to that
‘visible state of salvation’ (Barnstone et al., 1997, p. xvi) that every
Puritan was to aim at with all their heart and soul.
In his book entitled The Puritan Family, Schücking (1969) comments
on this point as follows, referring to Bunyan’s other work:
266
Since man is evil both in thought and imagination from youth up, the battle
against the natural man becomes necessary from the earliest years and this
battle must be fought within the family. Bunyan’s advice is to make it clear
to children what accursed creatures they are, how through original sin and
their own actual sins they are under the wrath of God. By means of threat
and reward, by bringing home to them at an early age the lot of the Godless,
by describing the inward glory of the pious, children must be set upon the
road towards that inward conversion which brings with it the certainty of
grace; but this must be done while they are still very young for it is the
tender twigs that can still be bent, even as clay and wax can be given a shape
while they are still soft. (pp. 76–77)
The Encyclopedia Americana article notes that
. . . it was characteristic of the Puritan that he worried about his spiritual
condition. Daily the saint examined himself to see whether he were truly set
on Christ. One Puritan minister drew up a list of 60 rules to guide himself
in making this examination, while others kept diaries as a record of their
self-scrutiny. (p. 21)
It followed that the Puritan worried also about his children’s spiritual
condition. Significantly, in the case of a child, ‘goodness’ and salvation
were seen as inextricably linked with obedience. To quote Schücking
(1969), ‘The prime duty of the child was obedience, and what is more,
such obedience had to be clearly manifest’ (p. 72). The English
Puritans’ worry about their children’s spiritual state is echoed in the
thought—and even the laws—of the American Puritans.
In his book The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relationships in
Seventeenth-Century New England, Edmund Morgan (1966) notes that ‘a
Puritan parent . . . was responsible for the well-being of their [his
children’s] souls as well as their bodies’ (p. 87). It was the parents’ duty
to ensure their children’s education, and ‘the ultimate purpose of
education . . . was salvation’ (p. 97). The prominent American Puritan
Cotton Mather composed a reader entitled Good Lessons for Children,
whose purpose was ‘to have the Child improve in Goodness at the
same time that he improved in Reading’ (quoted in Morgan, 1966,
p. 101). In another book, Help for Distressed Children (Boston, 1695), the
same Cotton Mather summed up a large part of Puritan educational
philosophy in the epigram ‘Better whipt than Damn’d’ (quoted in
Morgan, 1966, p. 103). As Morgan notes further,
Parents who themselves had been converted were especially bound to
educate their children. God made the ‘covenant of grace’ with a believer and
his seed: he promised godly parents that he would save their children as
well as themselves. As extended to children, however, the promise was not
unconditional, for even a believer’s children were born ignorant. The
covenant did not give them an absolute claim to salvation, but it did give
267
them a better chance than other children. If they were properly brought up,
it was almost certain that the promise would be fulfilled. (p. 91)
The Puritans never went so far as to assert that a child could be saved by
good habits alone. . . . Good habits did not themselves bring saving grace,
but they furnished one of the main channels through which grace could
flow. . . . It was important to teach a child good habits, not because they
would save him, but because it was unlikely that he would be saved without
them. (p. 95)
As noted by James Axtell in his book The American People in Colonial
New England (1973), ‘the serious Puritan concern for the spiritual
welfare of children’ (p. 40) shows clearly in a variety of sources. Axel
cites the journal-letter or Esther Burr, daughter of Jonathan Edwards,
the most powerful minister in colonial New England:
1755: 28 February, Friday. I had almost forgot to tell you that I have begun
to govourn Sally. She has been whipp’d once on Old Adams account, & she knows
the difference between a Smile & a frown as well as I do, when she has done
any thing that she suspects is wrong, will look with concern to see what
Mamma says, & if I only knit my brow she will cry till I smile, and altho’ she
is not quite Ten months old, yet when she knows so much, I think tis time she
would be taught. But none but a parent can conceive how hard it is to
chastise your own most tender self. I confess I never had a right idea of the
mothers heart at such a time before, I did it my self too, & I did her a vast
deal of good. If you was here I would tell you the effect I had on her. (p. 37,
emphasis added)
As Axtell notes,
The children of New England learned to behave properly from many
sources—parents, teachers, and ministers—but their earliest written intro-
duction to the accepted rules and standards of their society came from The
New England Primer, the most popular schoolbook in America for over 150
years. (p. 54)
This popular primer included moral lessons like the following:
Upon the wicked God shall rain an horrible Tempest.
Wo[e] to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall
be given him.
It also contained the following verse:
I in the Burying Place may see
Graves shorter than I;
From Death’s Arrest no Age is free,
Young Children too may die;
My God, may such an awful Sight,
Awakening be to me!
Oh! That by earthly Grace I might
For Death prepared be.
268
Thus, the same worry about a child’s spiritual condition that we find
in Bunyan’s poems for ‘boys and girls’ is also manifest in the sources
which document the outlook of the American Puritans.5 This worry, in
all its seriousness, is echoed in much of the subsequent Anglo-
American literature for children. In this tradition, children’s mis-
behaviour was not to be viewed lightly, as a matter of childish mischief.
Rather, it was to be viewed from the point of the all-important division
between ‘bad boys (girls)’ and ‘good boys (girls)’, and the all-important
task of forging through daily effort one’s visible identity as a ‘good
boy’ or a ‘good girl’.
As DeLoache and Gottlieb (2000) put it, ‘The Puritans believed that
infants were born damned and in need not only of baptism, but also
of constant biblical teaching by parents’ (p. 31; cf. also Pollock, 1983).
Biblical and, one might add, moral. Children’s literature reflected those
beliefs and concerns; and their trace has remained in the English
language.
The Changing Cultural Models

The question of what conventionalized phrases like ‘good girl/good
boy’ and ‘bad boy/bad girl’ may have meant (at different times) in the
past is, of course, separate from the question of what they mean now.
The meaning of a phrase can change and the underlying cultural
assumptions can change too. For example, the assumption that a child
who ‘does bad things’ can go to hell is, by and large, a thing of the past.
But if one wanted to articulate the Puritan model in full, then one
would have to include this assumption. In the contemporary cultural
model,6 reflected in the positive exclamations ‘Good boy!’ and ‘Good
girl!’ (without the symmetrical equivalents ‘Bad boy!’ and ‘Bad girl!’),
the assumption linking bad behaviour with hell clearly has no place.
But the idea that the child can be evaluated by people as a good child
is, I would argue, a descendant of that older Puritan model.7
Using the natural semantic metalanguage based on empirically
established lexical and grammatical universals, we can represent one
important aspect of the cultural model of child rearing implicit in the
older Puritan tradition as follows:8
some children do bad things
(they know that their parents don’t want them to do these things)
because of this, people can say these children are bad children
some other children don’t do bad things
these other children do good things
(they know that their parents want them to do these things)
because of this, people can say these children are good children
269
In contemporary Anglo culture, the older binary model, opposing

‘good children’ and ‘bad children’, appears to have largely been
replaced by a non-binary model, more compatible with the modern
cultural goal of fostering a child’s ‘self-esteem’ (a word which appears
to have entered English in the late 17th century and started to be used
more widely much later). The relevant aspect of the contemporary
model might be represented as follows:
children know that their parents want them to do good things
if a child does these good things
people can say because of this that this child is a good child
The meaning of the exclamatory expressions Good boy! and Good girl!
articulated at the beginning of this paper is clearly related to the
cultural models outlined here—directly, to the more recent one, and
indirectly, to the older one.
In the formula given above, the relevant aspect of these models has
been phrased in terms of ‘children’ rather than ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Obvi-
ously, another part of these models consists in the assumption that
there are two kinds of children, boys and girls, and that the norms of
behaviour are different for each kind:
there are two kinds of children
children of one kind are called ‘boys’
children of the other kind are called ‘girls’
boys can do some things
girls can do some other things
it is good if boys do some things
it is bad if boys do some other things
it is good if girls do some things
it is bad if girls do some other things
Such gender-related norms of ‘good’ behaviour are often rejected by
liberal-minded contemporary parents and professionals, as the follow-
ing quotes from COBUILD illustrate:
They didn’t want their child to be a person with his or her own needs; they
simply wanted a good boy or a nice girl—and they managed to get what
they wanted. But if these good boys and nice girls later become therapists
or counsellors, it is essential that they not go on unconsciously doing to
others what their parents did to them.
Stage 3 . . . is the stage of mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships,
and interpersonal conformity (sometimes also called the good boy/nice girl
stage). Children at this stage believe that good behaviour is what pleases
other people.
270
I was the archetypal ‘good girl’, yet I could only see bad in myself.
Encourage your son to be a good person rather than a ‘good boy’, encourage
your daughter to be a good person, rather than a ‘good girl’.
As these examples illustrate, good boy and good girl can still be used in
English as descriptive and categorizing labels, that is, in a sense
different from that of the exclamatory expressions Good boy! and Good
girl! explicated at the outset. As descriptive and categorizing labels,
these expressions (now declining in use) clearly reflect some aspects
of the older cultural model articulated here. The conscious rejection
of the ‘good boy/good(nice) girl’ model reflected in some contem-
porary sources testifies to this model’s reality in the Anglo (American)
cultural tradition as much as does its acceptance evident in earlier
literature.
The continuing importance of the expressions good girl(s) and bad
girl(s) is reflected in the titles of books like the following: Good Girls
Make Good Wives: Guidance for Girls in Victorian Fiction (Rowbotham,
1989); Mother–Daughter Revolution: Good Girls to Great Women (Debold,
Wilson, & Malave, 1994); Confessions of a Bad Girl (Pesetsky, 1989); Good
Girls Gone Bad (Nadler, 1987); Good Girls/Bad Girls: Sex Trade Workers and
Feminists Face to Face (Bell, 1987); and Bad Girls/Good Girls: Women, Sex
and Power in the Nineties (Bauer & Perry, 1996).9 The status of the expres-
sions ‘good girls’ and ‘bad girls’ in these titles is of course quite
different from their status in earlier English books: it is usually ironic
and polemical. But the very fact that these expressions can be used in
contemporary English in such ways, and be effective in conveying the
intended message, shows that their earlier uses have not been
completely erased from the cultural memory of present-day speakers
of English.
The happy cry ‘Good boy!’ or ‘Good girl!’ resounding today in so
many American households may seem to be very far indeed from John
Bunyan’s musings about children’s ‘sinful nature’. Yet the idea that
children can be evaluated as ‘good’ and that a child’s behaviour can be
linked with his or her ‘goodness’ seems remarkably consonant with the
Puritan tradition. Arguably, the existence in English of the expressions
good boy and good girl, which have no parallels in other European
languages, is a vestige of those traditions.10
In modern English, the words puritan, puritanical and puritanism are
often used in a pejorative sense, as the following examples from
COBUILD illustrate:
We enforce a puritanism on Charles that bears no resemblance whatsoever
to the beer and divorce world of the ordinary Briton.
271
Maybe the grip of Puritanism has loosened a little. Back in the Sixties we
wrote: Drinking is restricted to certain hours of the day, and just when things
are just getting really jovial, everyone is thrown out of the nice warm pub
and made to contemplate their wicked . . . [incomplete]
The Longman Dictionary of the English Language (1984) reflects the same
negative connotations: ‘Puritan—someone who practises or preaches a
rigorous or severe moral code; esp. someone who denounces as
immoral generally accepted practices and pleasures.’
Given the negative connotations of puritans and related words in
contemporary English, for some Anglo readers the conclusion reached
in this paper may seem implausible, perhaps even offensive: being
themselves users of the expressions Good boy! and Good girl!, they may
resent the suggestion that they may be somehow following in the foot-
steps of the Puritans. But English bears the imprint of its cultural
traditions. Not only Shakespeare but also John Bunyan has left his
mark on the English language. While constantly changing and diver-
sifying, English is a product of history, linked by thousands of invisible
threads to England’s and America’s cultural past. The expressions Good
boy! and Good Girl! are a good case in point.
Notes
I am grateful to Clare Besemeres, Mary Besemeres, Cliff Goddard and Naomi
Quinn for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I would
also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who have helped me to improve
the earlier version of the paper.
1. The ‘natural semantic metalanguage’ (NSM) is the outcome of empirical
and conceptual investigations carried out over more than three decades
within the framework of NSM semantic theory. This theory is based on two
fundamental assumptions: that every language has an irreducible core in
terms of which the speakers can understand all complex thoughts and
utterances; and that the irreducible cores of all natural languages match
one another, reflecting the irreducible core of human thought.
The research done within the NSM approach seeks to test the validity of
these two assumptions, and their utility in describing and comparing
languages and cultures. The justification for the approach lies, therefore, in
the large body of work produced using this methodology (see the
references listed in Goddard & Wierzbicka, 1994, 2002; see also the NSM
homepage.)
Cross-linguistic empirical research undertaken within the NSM
framework suggests that there are 60 or so universal conceptual primes,
each with its own set of universal syntactic frames. Using their English
exponents, we can present them as follows (cf. Goddard, 1998; Goddard &
Wierzbicka, 2002; Wierzbicka 1996a):
272
Tabled universal conceptual primes

Substantives I, YOU, SOMEONE (PERSON), SOMETHING (THING),
PEOPLE, BODY
Determiners THIS, THE SAME, OTHER
Quantifiers ONE, TWO, SOME, MANY/MUCH, ALL
Attributes GOOD, BAD, BIG, SMALL
Mental predicates THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
Speech SAY, WORDS, TRUE
Actions, events, movements DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
Existence and possession THERE IS, HAVE
Life and death LIVE, DIE
Logical concepts NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF
Time WHEN (TIME), NOW, AFTER, BEFORE, A LONG TIME,
A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT
Space WHERE (PLACE), HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR,
SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCHING (CONTACT)
Intensifier, augmentor VERY, MORE
Taxonomy, partonomy KIND OF, PART OF
Similarity LIKE
The great majority of words and grammatical constructions in any

language are language-specific in their meaning, and cannot be matched
exactly across languages. But evidence suggests that the 60 or so words
listed as conceptual primes do match in meaning across languages, and can
be used as a conceptual lingua franca, which allows us to explain meanings
and ideas ‘from a native’s point of view’ while making them intelligible to
cultural outsiders.
2. The expressions xoroshij mal’chik (‘good boy’) and xoroshaja devochka (‘good
girl’) are quite commonly used in Russian, but they are not used in
parental speech directed at children and referring to their behaviour. In
Russian, these expressions are used to express warm positive evaluations
of the child in general, regardless of any particular acts of behaviour. They
are likely to refer to the child’s individual dusha (‘soul’) rather than
behaviour; and they are likely to be used about a child rather than to a
child.
3. This hypothesis was first suggested to me, in personal correspondence, by
Naomi Quinn.
4. Mrs. Sherwood (mentioned in the quote from Darton), in her widely read
three-volume novel for children, The History of the Fairchild Family (1853–4),
has a child praying as follows: ‘O Lord . . . have mercy upon me a poor
wicked child, forgive my past wicked life’ and ‘Lord, I am vile, conceived
in sin, And born unholy and unclean’ (p. 44). The Taylor sisters explicitly
acknowledged their debt to Watts in the preface to their Hymns for Infant
Minds: ‘The Divine Songs of Dr. Watts, so beautiful, and so universally
admired, almost discourage by their excellence, a similar attempt; and lead
the way, where it appears temerity to follow’ (Taylor & Taylor, 1808).
5. Axtell’s reference to New England laws are also illuminating. For example:
273
Growing up in colonial New England was not easy. Rules, laws, and restraints
abounded to try to prevent the child born in original sin from falling deeper into
mortal sin. The following laws from the 1672 codification of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony were copied widely by the other New England colonies in the 17th
century, creating a solid wall of order around New English children. It should be
noted that the ‘stubborn child’ law of 1646—which is still on the books in
Massachusetts—was a capital law, punishable by death. Although no child was
ever executed under the law, one young man came very close. (p. 46)
6. The notion of ‘cultural model’ used here corresponds, in essence, to that
developed in D’Andrade & Strauss (1992), Holland & Quinn (1987) and
Strauss & Quinn (1997). In the NSM work, however, ‘cultural models’
have to be articulated in words which are both indigenous and universal,
such as GOOD and BAD, DO and HAPPEN, or KNOW, THINK, WANT and FEEL,
rather than in technical (academic) English. The theory of ‘cultural scripts’,
which is an offshoot of the NSM semantic theory, seeks to articulate
cultural norms in terms of the 60 or so universal human concepts.
‘Cultural scripts’ can be understood as a special case of ‘cultural
models’—above all, those which can be formulated in the frame ‘it is
good/bad to do X’ or ‘I can/can’t do X’ (see, e.g. Goddard 1997, 2000;
Wierzbicka 1994 a and b, 1996b, 1998, 2002b, 2003).
7. My (Australian) colleague Cliff Goddard tells me that when he recently
rang his wife, who was, at the time, with their little boy, overseas, he
asked her to ‘give Kwan a big hug and to tell him that he was a good boy’.
One couldn’t say such a thing in, for example, my native Polish.
8. The set of empirically discovered universal and semantically simple
human concepts does not include ‘children’. From the point of view of
NSM theory, the concept ‘children’ is regarded as a semantic molecule
rather than a semantic atom. For the purposes of exploring cultural
models of child rearing, however, there is no need to decompose this
molecule any further. When necessary, it can be done along the following
lines:
children
a kind of people
people of this kind are small because they have not lived for a long time
all people are like this for some time before they can be not like this
But while ‘children’ is a decomposable semantic molecule rather than a
semantic atom, it may well be a lexical universal (see Goddard, 2001).
9. It is also interesting to note the following title: ‘There’s a Good Girl.
Gender Stereotyping in the First Three Years of Life: A Diary’ (Grabrucker,
1988). This is actually a translation from German—but, not surprisingly,
the German title does not include the equivalent of the English good girl.
Rather, it reads: Typisch Mädchen, that is, ‘typically, girl’.
10. For other evidence for this claim, see Wierzbicka (in press).
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274
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Biography
ANNA WIERZBICKA is Professor of Linguistics at the Australian National
University, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, of the
Academy of Social Sciences of Australia, and of the Russian Academy of
Sciences. She has lectured extensively at universities in Europe, America and
Asia and is the author of numerous books, including Cross-Cultural Pragmatics
(Mouton de Gruyter, 1991; 2nd ed., 2003), Semantics: Primes and Universals
(Oxford University Press, 1996), Emotions Across Languages and Cultures:
Diversity and Universals (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and What Did Jesus
Mean? Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and
Universal Human Concepts (Oxford University Press, 2001). Her work spans a
277
number of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, cognitive science,

philosophy and religious studies as well as linguistics, and has been
published in many journals across all these disciplines. ADDRESS: Professor
Anna Wierzbicka, School of Language Studies, Australian National
University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.
[email: anna.wierzbicka@anu.edu.au]
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01 Wierzbicka (mrw/d) 25/8/04 3:08 pm Page 251

The English Expressions Good Boy

Good Boy, Good Girl and the Cultural Emphasis on

Culture & Psychology Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that this kind of exagger-

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

self (or personality)’. Accordingly, she argues that the emphasis on

Praise, Parental Wishes and the Overall Evaluation of

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

(c) because of this I say: you are a good boy (girl)

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

It is interesting to note that, as the examples above illustrate, there is

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

parents it would now be culturally unacceptable to do so. One example

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

would say ‘Good girl!’ or ‘Good boy!, is to use an adverb or adverbial

English Literature for Children

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

Well, now I will sit down, and work very fast,

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

But wisdom’s pleasant way forsook;

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

The Puritans and Their Religiously Inspired Books for

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

Reading these once so popular ‘country rhymes for children’, the

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

O! That God would be pleased,

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

While I have life and breath;

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

America, went through numerous editions, and, as Bleiler (1958) puts

Another example of an irreverent treatment of the theme of ‘a bad boy’

Quinn’s points about making the child’s experience of important

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

The Beliefs and Practices of Puritanism

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

The Changing Cultural Models

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

In contemporary Anglo culture, the older binary model, opposing

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

Tabled universal conceptual primes

The great majority of words and grammatical constructions in any

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

frame: Implications for internationalizing psychology. Paper for symposium on

Wierzbicka ‘Good Boy’ and ‘Good Girl’

Culture & Psychology 10(3)

number of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, cognitive science,

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