Assignment One. ‘….To View Language As Though It Were An

They consider a child’s daily routine and activities highly influence an important role in their language development. Their theories focus on exploring how children socially interact within environments. They explain how children start to explore how language and communication works by inevitably adapting themselves to environments (Orfano F, 2015). This process confirms children are socially persuaded to be pragmatic. Depending on the context of the situation children listen to sounds and look at symbols movements and expressions from things around them. It acknowledges the importance of the environment in that it purports that children learn language as a result of communicative needs, in social contexts, and with social support. This evidence persuades them to deem nurture as the dominant

Language development is something that occurs in many different aspects of a relationship. Emotion is a huge part of a child and their caregiver, as this is huge because of the affective expression that is given. Infants begin to communicate at an early age, just by eye contact, facial expressions, gestures and sounds. Though before a child understands and continues to speak, “before being able to use language effectively, infants acquire some understanding of the social processes involved in communication”, so before actual language is communicated a child needs to learn the social norms. Some examples of this is turn-taking between infants or parent, and the outcome before the actual understandable language is “conversational-like”

Individuals who have Autism will often have difficulties interpreting both the verbal & non-verbal language, tone of voice & other people’s gestures. Many people on the Spectrum will also have a very literal understanding of language. They will often think what other people say, they mean. For instance, if someone says “It’s raining cats & dogs”, individuals with Autism may then look to the sky trying to see the cats & dogs falling, or if someone says “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”, they may be disgusted that someone will eat a horse.

Overall, the experiment determined that CC infants had a significant increase in the number and quality of their vocalizations during the social response period while YC infants did not. CC infant’s vocalizations were also more advanced than the infants in the YC group (Goldstein, 2003). These results suggest that the more social interaction a child receives the more significant their language development over time. It is observed that children learn from social interaction; the CC infants received more social interaction when making vocalizations which caused them to increase their total number of vocalizations, which led to an increased quality of vocalizations, which supports the interactionist argument that children develop language through interaction with others and social cues. These results do conflict with the current view on language development, that infants learn by imitating the language of their caregivers. During the experiment, the mothers did not have to vocally respond, they could smile at their child, move closer to them or use other physical cues when their child made a vocalization. The children in the experiment still had an increase in the number and quality of the vocalizations even if the mother did not respond to them verbally. Goldstein’s experiment determined that social interaction to an infant’s babbling does have an influence on their language development, and help further determine just have human language

For example, “with the onset of language, infants have a much more direct and sophisticated way of signaling that they are experiencing pain rather than just by crying,” (Craig, Stanford, Fairbairn, & Chambers,2006). Children also use joint attention, constraints and sentence cues to help them learn the meaning of words. Throughout the given readings in regards to children’s speech development, with some culture’s encouraging speech development and other cultures allowing natural language development. The approach that makes the most sense is the one that benefits the child to speak by any means constantly and consciously. The involvement of parents in all aspect of their child’s life development is crucial, with every child having the right to the best possible childhood we can give them. Care and learning by parents are fundamental to a child’s lifelong learning ability. Families are the most powerful influence on their children’s development by encouragement or participation, which in turn reaps powerful benefits to their

The more I was exposed to native English speakers, the more I wanted to speak and sound like them. In the Language Awareness by Paul Eschholz, Paul Roberts explains that it is the “desire to communicate and the desire to be admired,” (pg.140), that causes a child to imitate and learn the language quickly. For example, I stopped calling my mom “ma” in Vietnamese after a few months of being in America and started calling her in the same manner as my other siblings, simply because I wanted to be included and felt it was the “correct way”. Roberts goes on to explain the significance of “baby talk” and even though I have grown out of it, I still witness my little two-year-old niece experience it as her language skills develop. Since I live with her, we both have learned to communicate with each other quite well. We have come with new words such as “bum bum” for bottom and her own invention “Be ya” for pacifier. Robert expresses, “Baby talk is not so much invented by the child as sponsored by the parent”, therefore the way we speak is based on reactions we get from others.

Language cannot be devoid of the social context of its creation and use, as this would dislocate it from the field of human interaction, within which language derives the full quality of its meaning. Social context of language is the way in which we understand novels, stories, conversations and other people; as it is embedded in everything about the ways in which we communicate. To view language in the absence of social context creates significant limitations in its real-world application. The reason for this is that for language to have any meaning then context is essential. The source of this context is quite varied, the origin of the language is from the originator with its own context, however, the receiver also places their own

Language is a means of communication that people use to interact with others in society. Generally, language comprises vocal sounds to which meanings have been assigned by cultural convention and often supplemented by various gestures. (Sharma, 30) For any 'normal' person, language is no longer viewed as a tool to acquire: language is placed as a standard and basic skill, almost being considered given at birth. Such an idea about language is reasonable when taking into account how the development of speech and language is acquired in early childhood. But as a rule, such a 'standard and basic' process of language development is only relevant to 'normal'

“to view language as though it were an object, devoid of the social context of its creation and use, is to dislocate it from the field of human interaction within which language derives the full quality of its meanings…”

Would you expect a newborn baby to understand the inner workings of a language? Of course not! Newborn’s minds are not developed enough to understand language or anything, besides how to eat. However, over time the baby’s brain will develop and more information could be stored in knowledge. We teach our children a method of mimicry called repetition and is the basis for all learning under the age of nine years old. As children fall into this mushy cycle of repeating everything they see, they often look to their role models and providers: their parents. Parents provide the basis for children’s accent, speech pattern, body language, and reactions. Parents are the child’s teacher in every way, shape, and form possible.

From a social interactionist perspective, the most important influence on language development for a child will be adult figures that have a significant presence in their lives. The child will learn language through communication with that adult and the conversations the two have together will help model language to the child to stimulate growth. A parent, grandparent or carer might assist the child to expand their vocabulary through the

Viewing language is an object is a very practical and necessary way of viewing it, but it is also a very narrow view. To widen our knowledge and to be able to teach language effectively, it must also be viewed as a broader social process.

If language has to be defined in simple context, it would be described as the technique of communication between two individuals and group of people. Language can be both oral and visual. “Language arose first as speech (oral language). It is oral language that evolved in the human species” (Gee and Hayes, 2011 p. 9). Gee & Hayes highlighted language to be individual and social. Similarly, Lyons (1981) emphasized language as primarily a conventional symbol system concerned with communication or cooperation between people. Language can be further categorised with different functions such as personal, interpersonal, directive, referential and imaginative (Finocchiaro and Brumfit, 1994 pp.65-66). While philosophers in the field of linguistic have argued with the definition of language as “material object – physically presented in the world “ (Gee and Hayes, 2011); however, Duranti, A emphasized language as a set of social conventions. Furthermore, Foster-Cohen (2009) suggested opening the possibilities of language being collection of systems as well as built in with human nature.

Language is best seen as a five-pronged system made up of these things: Phonology – Sounds that are combined to make words; Lexis – Which are words; Orthography – Spelling rules that standardise the way in which specific words are written; Syntax – Grammar – Rules that govern the order of words to form sentences; Semantics – The meanings of individual words as well as phrases, clauses, sentences and texts (Gardner, 2017, slideshow topic 1, slide 16). Without these five basic principles language would become an object not necessarily a physical one but a mental one to start with, because if you can’t group a sentence together in your head that makes sense then how can you communicate with one another. With that in mind, having learnt these five basic principles we move onto the five functions of language: Personal – expressing feelings, concerns, thoughts, clarifying ideas; Interpersonal – Salutations (which is an acknowledge meant of a greeting or saluting someone), discussing, social chat, sharing ideas, showing concern; Directive – Influencing others actions e.g. like your boss giving you an order, persuasion, requesting information, warnings; Referential – Reporting actions/events that have taken place, identifying objects, company things; Imaginative – Story telling, problem solving, discussing creative things (Finocchiaro, Brumfit, 1994, pg. 65-66) (Gardner, 2017, slideshow topic

Language and philosophy have an intimate connection to one another; without a philosophical examination of the meanings and structure of language, we cannot easily ascertain the objective truth of the statements we make, nor can we usefully discuss abstract concepts. The philosophy of language seeks to understand the concepts expressed by language and to find a system by which it can effectively and accurately do so. This is more difficult than it appears at first; philosophers are looking for a theory of language which avoids the minute errors of meaning and usage which occur in all discussions of abstract concepts and which tend to