Language Is The Primary Form Of Communication For The Human Race Essay

I am of the opinion that as a child practitioner an essential part of our work role will involve actively seeking to evolve and where apt build relationships. Consequently having a significant impact on children and young people’s lives.

In order to fully understand the creation of American Sign Language (ASL), it must be understood that it is a form of communication. That means every sign has a meaning that is culturally bound just like languages in oral communication. That also means that the language has a distinctive origin. In fact, ASL carries “several linguistic features that are similar to spoken languages” (Rosen, 2008) such as the presence of homonyms and its constant evolution (Shaw & Delaporte, 2011). The unique concept about ASL, though, is that it actually has very strong ties and connections with the French Sign Language, also known as LFS. This connection is explained by Delaporte & Shaw (2009) and Shaw & Delaporte (2011) as being due to how ASL was formalized in the U.S. by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet with the help of a deaf French professor named Laurent Clerc who used LSF. Because “LFS

For years and years, Deaf people were shunned and oppressed. If you were a deaf person who created art that can blow a persons mind, you weren’t treated as if; you were isolated, an alien from a distant planet. As Deaf culture began to grow, Sign Language, beliefs and most importantly Art became a powerful focal point on the identities of each person in the Deaf community. Visualization is a vital concept in the life of a Deaf person. American Sign Language depends on visuals. Hand shape, Location, Palm orientation, Movement and Non-manual markers are the five most important rules of ASL also known as the ASL Parameters. These Parameters are what make Sign Language a language; this is what gives each and every deaf person an identity. Deaf

Throughout a child’s early stages of life, language is used primarily for communicating with parents in order to get what they need. From as early as birth babies communicate through crying in order to tell parents what they want. Parents soon learn to distinguish between the hungry cry, the wet/dirty cry and the tired cry. According to Halliday, 1975, children begin to learn their first language from between six – eighteen months old. He believes children are learning a ‘system of meanings’. He looks at language from a functional point of view and suggests there are seven functions that language serves for young children. The first four of these functions ensure that social, emotional and physical needs are catered to, they are called, Instrumental, Regulatory, Interactional and Personal. Instrumental refers to a child using language to ensure they get what they need or want. The Regulatory function tells others what to do in order to control their behaviour. The Interactional function relates to the use of language in order to interact with the people around the child particularly those seen as important such as parents and siblings or close friends. The personal function relates to how the child uses language to explain feelings, and their own identity. The other three functions are used as children become older and want to know more about the world, tell stories and pass on information.

Language is becoming a powerful means of communication. From connecting two words first children are beginning gradually to build up sentences and their talking is becoming understandable even to those who are not in regular contact with the child. Even though there might be the odd mistake in the sentence structure, the language toward the end of this period is becoming fluent and children ask questions and generally enjoy expressing themselves through language.

Growing up I learned both common American gestures and a bit of sign language. Many of these gestures do not overlap though, and the meanings vary from spoken English and sign language. In addition, facial expressions also vary between the languages, which leads to additional complications. I have relied on gestures throughout my life to fully understand the meaning of a conversation because I have had hearing loss since childhood. Most people do not have to consider what a gesture or facial expression contributes to nonverbal communication, they see them and know what they mean because of the tone of a person’s voice, or what was said. On the other hand, I struggle to understand speech when certain inflections are made, or letter sounds fall in a specific place in the sentence. Instead, I rely on the speakers facial expressions to tell me the mood of the conversation, and gestures to fill in gaps of missed speech. “Movements of the body to communicate with others, are shorthand ways to convey messages without using words”, Henslin says, and this sums up my experience with gestures (2014, p.

I liked the fact that the authors expounded on the creative use of sign language to convey meaning in a visual manner. This information will be incorporated into my work. One example for the creative use of sign language was the sign used for a person who volunteers but later, changes his or her mind. By raising one hand to indicate VOLUNTEER and using the other hand to pull the hand down and place it in the pocket, indicating that the person decided not to do so, was a more visual way of conveying the message (para 2, p. 321).

Language has different meanings and is used to describe something physically presented in the world. It is distinguished among terms such as oral language, written language, and language itself. Oral language is the primary form of language and written language comes second. An individual’s social class can influence the way language is written and spoken. Language is ideological, where an individual’s view of the world can be changed. Multi-literacies can influence the way texts are viewed and the child's access to it can shape their journey with language. Educators guidance on their students can affect the child's skills and learning of language. Language has its many purposes and forms in which are influenced by culture and religions.

American Sign Language, ASL or Ameslan, is a visual-gestural language of the Deaf community that was made for and by Deaf people. It is visual due to its use of body movements rather than sounds, so receivers are using their eyes to understand what is being said. While by gestural it refers to the elements that are comprised of “specific movements and shapes of the hands and arms, eyes, face, and head and body posture” that act as the words and tone (Charlotte, pg. 1).

When my four year old fingers were taught how to curl to form words that are unspoken I never thought I’d fall in love with such a thing. For years I meaninglessly spoke a language I never knew had a history. Child I simply knew that my cousin could only play with me if I spoke with my hands. As I grew older, however, my fascination for these signs began to burst through my chest into my hands. I was taught of how my hands, face, and body language could say more than anything my words could ever convey on their own. How, in a group of people, almost no one can speak to those who cannot hear or physically use their voice and of how the ignorance of the hearing world often destroys their opportunities for a normal life. I learned that I had to sign to my cousin because she had Down syndrome and could not talk and that there are millions of people who cannot speak for themselves.

Deaf people around the world communicate using sign language as distinct from spoken language in their everyday lives. A Sign Language is a visual language that uses a system of manual, facial and body movements as the means of communication. Sign language is not a universal language, and different sign languages are used in different countries, like the many spoken languages all over the world. Hundreds of sign languages are in used around the world, such as Indonesian Sign Language (ISL), Japanese Sign Language, (JSL), British Sign Language (BSL), Spanish Sign Language (LSE), Turkish Sign Language (TID), etc.

There are many different variations of language, language that is seen, such as sign language, body language and written language, then there is the language that is heard, such as people speaking. There are over 7,000 spoken languages in the world alone without taking into consideration nonverbal languages. For adults and children alike, this can be overwhelming because in each language there are different behaviour patterns, different registers, different age groups and what is acceptable in one language may not be considered acceptable in another such as how close is too close to stand to someone else. For children who come from families whose first language is not English, this is even more difficult when trying to live somewhere that doesn’t predominately speak their first language, which is just one of the many differences people have to be aware of when considering diversity. This essay will examine the different environmental and circumstantial factors that may influence the development of children and the role that language can play in their lives as they grow, such as what and who children are exposed to, positive and negative influences such as adults and other children and the lifelong impact these surroundings have on the child.

American Sign Language (ASL) is a language that uses manual signs, body movements and Non Manual Signals (NMS) (i.e., eye gazes, head tilts, and mouth movements) instead of sound to convey meaning (Stokoe, 1960). Most of the early research on sign language during the 1960’s and 1970’s, focused on handshapes. Studies by many linguist such as Baker and Padden (1978), concluded that not all information was confined to the hands during sign language communication. Researchers such as Baker and Padden and others have documented that ASL uses the face, head, body, mouth, cheeks, and eyes to convey specific and complex linguistic information.

Sign language teaches deaf children to use the other senses such as sight to communicate with others. ASL centers on several techniques such as “hand shape, position, and movement, body movements, gestures, facial expressions, and other visual cues to form its words” instead of sounds and tones in the spoken language (“American Sign Language”).

Introduction: Speech is the major vehicle of human communication through which ideas and thoughts are conveyed by the speakers to the listeners. During this process, the conveyed message is heard, understood and the meaning is extracted. Here, it is important to distinguish between Hearing, Listening and Perception. Hearing is the sensation of sound. Sounds produced by a source are transmitted through a medium and into the ears of the listener which converts vibrational energy into neural impulses which travel to the brain. Listening is the act of paying attention to the spoken word, not only in hearing symbols but also reacting with understanding. A person with normal hearing sensitivity may have poor listening skills which may result in poor Speech Perception. Unlike hearing which is an innate process, listening is an acquired skill. Perception involves identification, categorization and integration of input from various sources so as to make sense from one’s environment. Interactions with one’s environment provides information about - how stimuli result in different sensations in different modalities, meaningfulness of different stimuli and their relevance in the environment. We organize perception and experiences into different categories thereby making it easy to establish order in the world and by identifying relationships shared by elements in the environment. It basically involves hearing, interpreting and comprehending all of the sounds produced by a speaker.