Attitudes to Language Change and Technology

'I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language' has a very clear prescriptivist opinion, John Humphries talks about how he prefers the dictionary and how new additions to the dictionary and to our written language are ruining grammar rules. He feels that the introduction of text messages has made us lazy and abbreviations and use of symbols and numbers to communicate has impacted on our language. He refers to people who text as "vandals", he agrees that language does change and he acknowledges the positive impacts of this, but that texting is a different language and is not a good change.

In john Sutherland's "cn u txt?" he states that the dialect of texting is boring and unimaginative, his perspective is prescriptive, describing texters as "chimps with banana phones". He says that texting is leading written language to overtake spoken language but doesn't seem to think it will last very long.

in "2b or not 2b" David crystal, is descriptive in his opinions of text language, he believes that abbreviations and text type shortenings are not recent, they existed far before texting - in 1942 the dictionary of abbreviations was published by Eric partridge. He discusses what can be done with texting, such as examples of stories and poems written purely through the medium of texting. He feels that texts can be linguistically complex, people play with words and the way that they use them, he sees it as an evolution not a disaster.

In my opinion, people nowadays have enough sense to 'turn off' text speak when writing an exam or a letter, to me the ability to almost know two very different languages is an important change and ability, and being able to switch between them when you recognise it would be inappropriate is a positive thing. language is always changing, and change is always met with criticism, so whatever comes after texting will be met with as much backlash as texting has received, it's just how things adapt and improve.

Referring in detail to the transcripts and relevant ideas from language study, analyse the language used by the child and caregiver.

The transcripts contain a 3 year old child and her mother, Jess’s language is very typical for a child of her age for example her language shows a lot of repetition of her mother’s lexical choices. Jess’s utterances are very simple and when her mother corrects her, or makes Jess’s sentences correct or more complex Jess tends to copy this “j: Heads together m: Putting their heads together…. J: Put their heads together” to start with Jess’s sentence is simple and lacks the verb and pronoun from the phrase, but with her mother’s corrections it becomes a better sentence and the fact that she repeats it may show that she understands slightly what to do with this type of sentence next time. At this point, being 3 years old, Jess will be in the telegraphic stage and this is defined by the ability to turn take and being able to pronounce words in a similar way to adults. Turn taking is very clear in both transcripts, but in the first conversation Jess also ask questions rather than just the mother “where” “what you do like that” as she is trying to gain a lot of information with her new found ability to communicate and talk in such a way.

In the second transcript it is clear that although Jess is quite competent with turn taking and talking to her mother, there are certain words that she struggles to say fully "gloo" instead of igloo and in the first transcript she struggles to say policewoman and instead says piswomen missing out the first syllable, these may be difficult for Jess to say, but she does understand what she is trying to say as when her mother replies to her igloo comment "igloo and what lives in igloos" she knows what is meant by the word. This is very similar to the Berko/Brown study with the "fis" in which the child could not yet say the word but fully understood the context and meaning of it. Jess uses a lot of possessive words in her speech especially the word I, "I not know", "i not have no eating" although the sentences do not really make sense, it shows that Jess has a sense of possession and can identify herself in speech, she also knows that the car is "mummy's". 

According to Jean Piaget, Jess would be in the pre-operational stage, which is defined by over explanation of what is obvious. Jess does do this slightly in the first conversation, where she tells her mu what she is doing "i put em in the middle" "i get head together" this is almost her expansion of turn taking and interacting with her mother. Jess enjoys singing nursery rhymes, when her mum starts saying the rhyme Jess immediately joins in and carries on, rhymes such as these help children learn words and repeat them in a simple format and be able to recite them easily. The language in these rhymes may also help teach the way to use the words, the context and pronunciation. 

The mothers language in these texts is very interrogative and mainly questions and correcting Jess. The questioning format of the mothers speech, would not fit into a normal adult conversation as it would be seen as rude or overbearing, but with a child this age it helps develop turn taking and being asked questions means that you have to answer so Jess' speech will be improved as she talks back to her mother. The mother also uses a lot of repetition, this is mainly to correct Jess' speech "J: it go in middle M: in the middle" this may also be used to confirm that what Jess said was correct or just to reassure her that yes it does go in the middle.

The mother also uses a lot of child directed speech by using the word "horsey" she is lowering her lexis to Jess' level so that she will understand, the mother obviously knows that this is how Jess identifies a horse and so she says it in a way that Jess will get. The mum also uses diminutives, for example using the nickname "Jessie" makes her language more friendly, without it her phrase may just be a simple "where does this one go" which is perfectly fine but by adding the "Jessie" it makes it nicer and seem more happy and less demanding. She also alters words, for example she changes "bee" to "busy bee" this phrase is common when talking to children it may be used in children's books and tv shows and Jess will be familiar with it. 

the WUG test:

I think that, through the use of imaginary words, Jean Berko was trying to show that the child does know the rules regarding tense and can apply them "wugging", "wugs" and "zibbing", "zibber" but when it comes to identifying titles of jobs, whereas the adult would know that someone who 'zibbed' was a 'zibber' but the child would say zib man as this is quite an adult term and one they wouldn't recognise as yet. 

I runned- this overgeneralisation is due to the child recognising how to use to "ed" rule but not yet knowing where to use it so they add it to words such as runned as they havent learnt that some words alter when they are pluralised as run tuns into ran.

two mouses- again with this word they child has not learnt to say mice, and adds and s on to the words as it is added to dog(s) and cat(s) etc

my foots- this is the same as above. child had not yet learnt to say feet

he feeled shy- the child has generalised the "ed" to feeled as they have not recognised it should be felt

he satted on the truck-

he drived himself-

Explain some of the difficulties a child might encounter in its acquisition of vocabulary from the time it speaks to the age of seven. You can also refer to some phonological features, as well as considering ideas such as the use of concrete and abstract nouns, overextension, acquisition of grammar words etc.

In the first stage of language acquististion, the sensorimotor stage, the child doesn't especially focus on language, more on experienting what they can do with their mouth and bodies. Much of this stage is phonological, playing with mouth movement and moving their bodies language is physical. Imitation is found at this point, when the baby is opening their mouth and playing around with sounds they may hear from caregivers. The context of where these sounds should be made will also be learnt, this stage will last until the child is around 2. During this one or two word stage mainly concrete nouns will be used as abstract ideas will not be familiar to the child.

The next stage, the preoperational stage, focuses very much around talking. Over talking is seen, as the child seems to say everything, even the things that people who are watching the child can see that they are doing, but the child describes it anyway. there is little distinction between thinking and talking aloud at this point. Difficulties during this stage, when the child is talking a lot, may be over extension seeing that a ball looks like an apple so calling it that and seeing that apple is a fruit so calling all fruit "apple". Abstract nouns will most probably be unused during the beginning of this stage as abstract ideas are not seen and concrete nound are easier to learn and the child can see them.

Response to 'Jean Piaget's theory on child language development' article

I think that her 4 stages of language development links to the order a child learns language, as there are a high amount of concrete nouns in a child's first 50 words and there are not many abstract feelings and nouns, they are all items you can see along with action words and personal and social words. 
the use of concrete nouns links to the Jean Piaget theory as she states that a child only really starts to use abstract idea when they get to ages 11 or 12 and before then language is only used to express specific ideas, ones that the child can see, "ball" "apple" etc.

summary

Chomsky:

Chomsky believes that we are all 'hardwired' to learn language,  as children use grammatical and linguistic structures that would not be learned through imitation alone. He believes that each child had an LAD or a language acquisition device, which allows them to posses the knowledge of sentence structure and linguistic devices. the idea of over generalization may back this up, this shows that children have the knowledge of affixes and tenses but use them in the wrong way, for example "Child: Me drawed a cat." could not have been learned from parents or caregivers and shows the child understands the grammatical rule but has applied it to the wrong setting. For example this sentence "Child: When Daddy coming home?" is ordered correctly (in terms of the subject verb and object) which shows that a child may have this innate device, as parents may not always speak with the correct grammar, yet the child will always say things in the correct way.

quotes taken from: http://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/

Skinner:

He believed that language was learnt by imitation, by conducting experiments on rats and pigeons he stated that language was just a learnt behaviour and that children picked up language from there environment rather than possessing it a birth. When a child speaks to their parent they pick up words from their sentences and repeat them, "that's disgusting" "gusting" the child repeats what the caregiver says, he believes all language is learnt this way.
He also believed that language was learn by positive and negative reinforcement, he conducted experiments showing how positive and negative reinforcements, the skinner box, he said that if a child were to say something and it was incorrect the parent would correct them, and the child might repeat which would end with the parent confirming this was right which would then result in the child using the correct word next time.


http://www.tutorhunt.com/resource/569/

Jonny Depp on Ellen:

E: Please welcome for the first time on this show (.) Jonny Depp

[clapping/ cheers]

E: how are ya?

J: I’m good

[clapping voices indistinct]

E: we we took into account there’s gonna be a lot of that so we accounted for the time (2) now I know uh that your –y a pretty private guy a pretty quiet guy and most of your off time is spent being very quiet so is this kind of like stimulation overload when you have to promote a movie [audience laughs]

J: it’s always- I mean it’s always a little (.) strange when you (.) you know end up (.) out there in the world i-i- kind of stay home a lot [over audience hubbub] don’t go out much

E: right I I I also stay home a lot but I do this every day so I’m used to it but I would assume for someone like you and this is part of it (.) because a movie set is very different from the press part and the press part is (.) and people love you (.) and they go crazy when they see you so theres a lot of noise

J: it’s a its a very different thing when you’re playing a character when you’re playing a character you can do virtually anything (.) but as yourself (.) you know

E: awkward? [Audience laughs]

J: yeah very awkward