George Transcript

Young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake

Young readers usually make miscues; early readers make miscues such as whole word errors, letter confusion such as d and b, and blending errors. Miscues are mistakes that readers make; sometimes they use virtuous errors whilst attempting to read something.

When George is trying to read with his mother he pauses for 2 seconds after saying ‘with’, this shows that he may be struggling to read the word after, which is ‘sandbags’, a more complex word. His mum then uses the phonics strategy to help him out by saying ‘sound it out’. It is likely that George has been taught phonics in school so he may be able to do it after being told to use the strategy. George’s mum helping him supports Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal development theory, scaffolding. George is at the zone of proximal development, he is unable to read the word himself but with help from his mother he is capable of doing it. After having help from his mother he was able to have a go at sounding it out and eventually says the correct compound ‘sandbags’. When sounding it out he was unable to make the ‘d’ sound so his mother did it for him. She may have been aware that George may find that sound more complex due to letter confusion, d looking very similar to b. Rather than asking him to try and do the sound himself, she uses the scaffolding technique. This may give him confidence, he is in the process of learning to sound the word out so if he was pushed harder to try and make the ‘d’ sound he may of given up. Georges mum then goes on to say ‘well done’ which supports Skinner’s theory, operant conditioning, giving him positive reinforcement in order for his speech to develop further. Skinner believes that if speech isn’t given a response, it won’t develop any further. Positive reinforcement is giving the child praise or a response, negative reinforcement is punishment or getting ignored. He believes that children are like empty blood vessels in which language has to be put in to. George says ‘people (2.0) were taking the s (.) sandbags’ he has a false start as he has only just learnt how to say the word, and then when saying sandbags he makes a virtuous error by missing out the ‘d’ sound which shows he is still struggling with the word even though his mother had just helped him.

Imitation is used in this transcript which also supports Skinner’s theory. Skinner believes that children imitate people in order to learn language. When his mother was helping him out with saying ‘sand’ and ‘bags’ George repeated her, this shows that he can’t do it on his own but if he gets help from his mother he is able to do it. This also supports Vygotsky’s theory, when given guidance; the child is able to complete it. George imitating his mum does not support Chomsky’s Language Acquisition theory. Chomsky believes that children do not learn language through imitation as language adults use are usually ungrammatical and broken up, he believes children will usually notice if a sentence used is ungrammatical.

Throughout the transcript there is a pattern of George missing out the endings and making whole word errors due to this. His mother had picked up on this as he said ‘never’ instead of ‘need’, she told him to watch his endings. When George first said ‘we never’ his mother uses negative reinforcement ‘nooo’ which causes for George to then self-correct himself and repair the virtuous error he had made. This supports Skinner as he believes in operant conditioning, behaviour is influenced by its consequences. George realises he had gone wrong after getting negative reinforcement which caused for him to try again. His mother said ‘nooo’ instead of ‘no’, she is protecting his positive face needs, not trying to bring his confidence down by using a firm ‘no’, she softens the word instead which gives him the chance to have another go.

The transcript of George reading a book with his mum supports Bruner’s interaction theory. Bruner believes that interaction between the child and care giver is key to language development. When speaking to children, caregivers use child directed speech, they adjust their speech to interact with the child. Georges mum uses phonology, she asks him interrogatives in order for adjacency pairs to take place. ‘What do you think is happening’ she gives him an open interrogative; this may enable him to broaden his imagination and develop his speech whilst having to decide for himself. George uses a strategy to look at the pictures to work out the story. George replies with 'look at that flood (.) you'll have to get loads there and one there(.) and one there and one there' this shows that he is interacting with his mum, replying to her interrogative with a declarative and he may be pointing at the pictures whilst explaining it to his mum. Bruner's theory is supported here as interaction with his mum is enabling him to answer a question and give an explanation to his mum showing he can work things out independently.

Comparison of Children's writing

  

'Nature'. Kyra Hollingsworth: Year 4 student

'California' Denise Svoboda: Year 6 student

The year 4 student uses simple declarative's. The simple sentence's are repetitive,  they each begin with the pronoun 'This' which shows the child may not be very knowledgeable of vocabulary at this stage. There are no conjunctions used, at stage 2, the consolidation stage, the conjunction 'and' is usually used by the child. The child may not be familiar with using compound sentences. This stage is usually when the child is up to age 6. The child will be at the age 8-9. The child uses pictures, recognising the different bird types having different proper nouns. The child writes the words as they sound, which is also stage two. She writes 'magpiy' instead of 'magpie'. There are many spelling errors of the bird types, this may be due to the names being complex. She has invented her own names for the birds such as a 'signing', 'loh taltit' and 'tree otiepe'. The year 4 students is familiar of the bird 'Robin' this may be because it is a popular bird, and it is spelt how it sounds. 

Tom Transcript

Imitation and reinforcement are the most crucial tools for children’s language acquisition. Evaluate

The genre of this text is a spontaneous conversation. It has an informal register as there are paralinguistic features such as the child giggling. The audience of this transcript is Tom, his mother and his father. The mode of the transcript is spoken as it is an interpersonal and unplanned dialogue. The purpose of this transcript is to discuss the subject of Tom using his dad’s bike.

Imitation is when something is being copied; in this example speech is being copied. The child imitates his mother when she models a phrase that he has said. In one of Tom’s utterances, he says “the dad bike”. His mother then goes on to model him by saying “Dad’s bike” in order to provide him with the standard form. Tom then goes on to imitate “dad’s bike” however the first time he says, he says it the original way “the dad bike” and then repairs himself, eventually saying “dad’s bike” multiple times. He hears the standard form, he then uses the non – standard form however self corrects himself and uses the standard form with the suffix. Skinner is a theorist in which believed that imitation is key, like Bruner, he believes that when interacting with a child, the child will imitate you and that is how they learn to acquire language. Skinner believed that children are like ‘empty blood vessels’ in which language had to be put into, they learn language from the environment, people. Chomsky is a theorist which disagreed with Skinner. Chomsky suggested that a child has a built in LAD (language acquisition device) and learning language is a natural ability. He believes LAD converts the major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children then learn different/new vocabulary and relate the syntactic structures from the LAD to form different sentences.  Chomsky said that imitation is not how children learn due to adult’s language sometimes being broken up and ungrammatical. Children will usually recognise if an adult uses an ungrammatical sentence. Tom imitating his mother in this transcript supports Skinner’s theory as he does learn the Standard English form from imitating his mother.

Operant conditioning is a theory that B.F Skinner came up with; it is based on whether behaviour is determined by its consequences. Positive and Negative reinforcements are used. Positive reinforcement is where praise or response is given, Negative reinforcement is where they are punished or ignored. Tom’s mother gives him positive reinforcement when he uses a non-standard form “Is dat your talker”. His mother replies with ‘My talker? Yeah (.) that’s a tape recorder”. She gives him positive reinforcement by repeating what the noun he says and replies with ‘yeah’ even though it isn’t the standard name. She is impressed with his recognition of the communication noun. Giving him positive reinforcement may give him confidence whilst speaking, and modelling him at the same time using the correct noun, ‘that’s a tape recorder’ may help him to learn more complex language in the future. Tom saying ‘talker’ supports Chomsky as he would not of imitated  this noun from anybody as his mum calls it a tape recorder.

She also gives him positive reinforcement when he is counting the chickens. He counts “one (.) two(.) three (.) four (.) one (.) two (.) three (.) four (.) five (.) six (.) seven (.) eight (.) nine (2.0)”. His mother counts “One (.) two(.) three (.) four (.) five”. His mother is helping him learn how to count by doing it the correct way; she may be using a strategy such as pointing at the chickens or counting from left to right in order to teach Tom a simpler way of doing it correctly. Tom may have counted the chickens twice as he may not have had a method to use, however he is at the Zone of Proximal Development, Vygotsky, where he may be able to do it with help from his mother.

Children's Authors, How children are taught in school, Children making virtuous errors whilst speaking

1 The best authors for 0-5 year olds

-     Janet & Allan Ahlberg. Books- Each Peach Pear Plum, The Jolly Postman or Other         People’s Letters

-     Eric Hill. Books- Where’s Spot?

-     Eric Carle. Books- The Very Hungry Caterpillar

-     David Mckee. Books- Elmer

     Puffin – popular children’s books

   The best authors for 6-8 year olds

-     Roald Dahl. Books- The BFG, The Magic Finger, James and the Giant peach

-    Jeff Kinney. Books-Diary of a Wimpey Kid

-     Michael Bond. Books – A Bear called Paddington

   The best authors for 9-11 year olds

      Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. Books- Matilda

    C S Lewis. Books- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

     J K Rowling. Books- Harry Potter

   Harper Collins- popular books

Books for early year’s children are interactional. Sometimes there are stickers included in the books. They sometimes pop out (3D). They may have different materials in the books for the children to feel (Elmer elephant) they have big colourful pictures and minimum of writing. The Hungry Caterpillar has local topics in them, such as food, which may be interesting for the children as they will recognise the foods. Some contains buttons to press for music. If the child is 0-1 years they will be at the Enactive stage, generally using actions and touching tangible things. If the child is at 1-6 years they are usually focussing on images as they will be at the Iconic stage. –James Bruner

Books for 6-8 year olds have more compound sentences in them. They are more complex than 0-5 year old books. They contain more text and include words such as adjectives/ adverbs to make the child imagine what is happening in the story. They still contain pictures and are not overloaded with too much text. They usually will not be as interactive as 0-5 year old books. The books usually contain an interesting, imaginative story.

Books for 9-11 years have minimal pictures and contain more complex sentences. There are many books that are written after films such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl.

When I was younger my favourite book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This was and still is a very popular book for early year’s children. It is a big book containing colourful pictures on each page. It has local topics such as food on the pages and is educational as it shows us that a Caterpillar turns into a Butterfly. There were minimal words on the book.

There are different approaches for teachers to teach reading in schools. The main strategy is Phonics. Phonics enables a child to learn to read quickly and skilfully. Whilst learning phonics they are educated to identify the sounds that letters make and recognise the sounds involving the combinations of letters. E.g. ‘sh’ or ‘oo’, they then merge these sounds together from left to right to make a word. After learning the basics, children can then apply their knowledge to new words that they see or hear. Applying what they have learnt, to new words is a significant way of helping them to improve their reading.

The reason why phonics are used to teach children in schools is due to research proving that it is the most effective method of teaching. Phonics is structured. Children start with the simple sounds and improve to the more complex sounds. Phonics helps children of ages 5-7, when they start learning to read in Primary school. ‘Look and say’ is another method used to teach reading; however the children are not as accurate when reading as children learning phonics. Phonics particularly helps children with Dyslexia.

Arguments for Phonics: the government introduced a phonics screening check for pupils in 2012. This tests pupils on their reading, asking them to read 40 words. The amount of students meeting the expected standard has increased from 58% to 74% in 2014.

Look and Say is also a method of teaching children how to read. Rather than breaking down the word, like phonics, the child will learn by reading words as whole units. This method is usually done using flashcards. Children are told the word repeatedly whilst being shown a flashcard with the word on it. Sometimes there are pictures included. This learning technique enables them to ‘sight-read’ and they will be able to identify the word through pattern recognition. After learning and remembering words, children will continue to learn more complex vocabulary and have a lot more of it. 

Pros- children need to identify whole words to read fluently. Children can usually recognise any word when learning with the ‘Look and say’ method. 

Cons- If a word is unknown to the child; they will find it hard to read it. The child would not have learnt every single word, so when it comes to reading books, the child may not be able to read everything.

Some caregivers will model a word. If the child is struggling with pronouncing a word, and they pronounce it wrong, the caregiver may say it in the correct form. This may then help them improve for the next time round. Modelling certain words that a child finds hard may also help them to understand how to read other complex words. The caregiver may also echo the child, meaning repeating their non – standard use of the word. This may give the child confidence if they are not a very good reader, it will also help to not confuse the child if they have only recently started learning to read.

Jerome Bruner - Interaction

Jerome Bruner's theory is based on how language is acquired through interaction between a child and the care giver.

Child directed speech (CDS) - caregivers use it. Adults change their speech whilst speaking to children.

LAD- language acquisition device- Chomsky

-Bruner says that interaction is the key element

Limitations- In some cultures children are ignored and are not acknowledged. Other parents interact with their children

Child directed speech-

- Phonology

- Pragmatics

- Grammar

- Lexis

Adults when speaking to children. CDS-

Phonology- higher pitched voice, questioning for a response, slower speech, exaggeration

Lexis- Simplified, fewer syllables, concrete nouns, local topics, diminutives (kitty, doggy)

Grammar- simpler constructions, frequent use of imperatives and interrogatives, repetition, simple sentence, personal names instead of pronouns (mummy instead of me), repeated sentence frames e.g. 'that's a', no past tenses

Pragmatics- Lots of gesture and warm body language. 

Bruner says that using the child's name is essential, they will concentrate on what you are saying

CLD- child led discourse- pursuing the child's area of interest, letting them set the discourse

Example that supports Bruner- 

'Interaction' case study: Jim's death parents-

-Little boy growing up with death parents and he tried to learn language from the TV.

-He used non standard syntax e.g. i saw that she a cookie ate   -what he said

He attended language therapy sessions which helped him improve his language and he came to a similar level as other children.

Bruner has three stages of representations:

-Enactive- 0-1 years (movement) e.g. shaking a rattle, sniffing things

-Iconic- 1-6 years (images)

-Symbolic- 7+ years (symbols or codes)

Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device

Chomsky – language acquisition 1960’s

Chomsky believes that every child has a language acquisition device. Noam Chomsky believes that the LAD (language acquisition device) concept enables a child to acquire and produce language because it is a natural mental ability. He believes LAD converts the major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children then learn different/new vocabulary and relate the syntactic structures from the LAD to form different sentences. Chomsky discusses that an infant cannot learn language through imitating people because the language people use around the child is very irregular. Adult’s speech is sometimes broken up and can be ungrammatical. His theory applies to all languages as they all contain verbs, consonants, vowels and nouns and children seem to be ‘hard-wired’ to acquire the grammar. He is adamant that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human language. Chomsky suggests that certain linguistic structures which children can precisely use must already be imprinted on to the infants mind. All children, regardless of their intellectual ability, become fluent in their native language within five or six years.

Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory 

   -Children learning to speak do not usually make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs and objects in the wrong order.

-   -If an adult said a grammatically incorrect sentence on purpose, the child would generally recognise it

-  -Children often say things that are ungrammatical such as ‘mama ball’, which they could not of learnt from someone else

-    -Mistakes such as ‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’ show they are not learning through imitation alone

      Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’. This does not make sense but it is a grammatical sentence. To prove his theory: he believed that it shows sentences can be grammatical without having any meaning. We can recognise the difference between a grammatical and an ungrammatical sentence even if we have never heard of it before.  This shows that we can create and understand new sentences that have not been said before.

Evidence against Chomsky’s theory

People who do not believe in Chomsky’s theory say that although it is obvious that children do not learn language from just imitating people, this doesn’t prove that they have an LAD. Language learning could simply be through general learning and understanding abilities and interactions with other people.

https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/

Updated Reliability for Methodology

Reliability- To make my data reliable, I am going to use the most recent series of Towie, to find conversations between Danni and James. I will be testing Robin Lakoff’s theory, the Deficit Model, about whether women’s language is deficient in reference to men’s language. Series 18 is the most recent series. I will start from episode 1 and I will find 5 conversations meaning it may go to other episodes as well (2,3) . I am starting from the most recent series as Danni and James have been on the show for a while meaning their speech may be more natural as they are on TV and they may be used to having cameras around them. However, I also understand that it may be slightly scripted to entertain the audience. I will still use the data if other people are present during the conversation. I am choosing the first 5 conversations they have because I will have more data to analyse, they may have an off conversation which does not represent their usual selves, so I need to have a range.

Child Language - Zach Texts

Zach drawing a banana-

The genre of this text is a conversation. The transcript has a formal register; it is a conversation between Zach and his parents. The mode of the text is spoken; it is a spontaneous and interactional conversation. The purpose of the transcript is to discuss, Zach is speaking about his day and his surroundings such as his ‘little pad’ and drawing a banana.

Within the transcript, his mother uses a lot of interrogatives. This may be because of the contextual factor, his age. Zach is two years old which means he is at his two word utterance stage, going onto the telegraphic stage. His mother uses interrogatives which lead to adjacency pairs. His mother also uses interrogatives to ask Zach to elaborate his speech such as ‘for the banana (.) what can the banana have (.) its three things (.) what are they?’ Zach had stated that a banana, has three things and his mother is asking him to go in to detail with his speech to challenge him to use more language such as adjectives. At Zach’s stage he will usually know more than 200 words. He has proved he knows nouns, such as his local topics like banana, biscuits, his 'little pad'. He also shows he is new to adjectives 'little pad' and 'because its too small'. He hasn't used many adjectives which may be because he had recently been introduced to them and has started recognising factors about nouns such as the size of objects.

Zach’s mother echoes him when he uses overgeneralistion, ‘skins’, in conversation. ‘and here’s the skins’ ‘oh (.) are the are the skins off are they?’ Zach is at a young age, he is at the telegraphic stage so he is familiar with nouns such as ‘skin’ but may not know the difference between it being plural or not. His mother may echoe him to give him confidence whilst learning speech rather than confusing him by modelling what he had said in a non standard form.

Chomsky has a theory about language acquisition, 1960’s. He believes that every child is born with a language acquisition device which enables them to learn and produce language because it is a natural mental ability. He believes that LAD converts the major principles of a language and it’s grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children then learn different vocabulary and relate the syntactic structures from LAD to form different sentences. He believes that children cannot learn language by imitation alone because adults use irregular language in general conversation. Adult’s speech can be broken up and sometimes ungrammatical. Zach using ‘skins’ backs up Chomsky’s theory as in the environment; he would have heard his mother say ‘skin’ instead of ‘skins’ which shows that not everything is imitated. However, Zach may of heard his mum pluralising words such as ‘cows’ and he may have picked up on it and is applying it to other words.  There is evidence to support Chomsky’s theory such as when children are learning language, it is unusual for them to get there subjects, objects and words in the incorrect order. Also when they use overgeneralization such as ‘I drawed’, instead of ‘i drew’ show that it can’t be just imitation that allows them to learn language. There is evidence against Chomsky’s theory such as language can be learnt from interactions with other people (Bruner).

Build a robot- Zach and his mum-

The genre of this text is a conversation. It has an informal register as it has non standard use of language such as ‘doo doo doo dooo’ which is said by Zach. The audience of this transcript is Zach and Halla as they are having a conversation. The mode of the text is spoken. It is a dialogue which is spontaneous.  The purpose of this text is to discuss the project of building a robot which is the subject of the transcript.

Throughout the transcript, Zach pauses a great amount within his sentences. He is not very fluent. This may be because he is focused on what he is doing physically, building his robot. He is also ill which may affect his speech. ‘We don’t need breakfast (.) it’s gonna take a little time now (2) cos it went wrong before (.) now we (.) then it healed and now (.) it will take a little time (.) for the robot to heal again (2). Because of his age he may need to think more about what he is saying, meaning it takes him longer to get his words out, rather than if he was older and more experienced, he would be more familiar with new words. Zach uses adjectives in his speech such as ‘lots’ of sellotape, ‘long’ bit. Zach may have recently become familiar with adjectives because of his age, meaning his speech is broadening. Zach uses many declaratives, in response to his mum’s interrogatives. He also uses an exclamative ‘Tadah!’ which shows that from 13 months onwards, his speech has developed significantly.

Throughout the first conversation, Zach brings up the topic of the robot, but his mum, Halla, sets the agenda by asking him interrogatives, which leads to adjacency pairs of Zach responding. In the second half, Zach is setting the agenda as he is dominating the conversation. He is saying to his mum that they have to wait rather than get breakfast. ‘Yeah (.) it’s gonna be a long time though (.) but we’re not gonna have breakfast still’. This supports Zimmerman’s and West’s theory, the Dominance model, that men dominates the conversation over women. It also contradicts the theory as Zach does not interrupt his mum, the theory claims that men interrupt more than women. He uses a declarative to tell his mum what they are going to do, rather than asking her.

In the first transcript, i looked at the first 10 utterances that Zach uses. I look at the morphemes within the 10 utterances. There were 80 morphemes within the first 10 of Zach’s utterances. I divided the number of morphemes with the number of utterances (80/10) which got me the mean length of utterance, 8. In the second transcript, build a robot, i looked at the first 10 utterances as well to make sure the data is reliable. There were 112 morphemes in Zach’s first 10 utterances, meaning the mean length of utterance was 11.2. The difference between the two transcripts mean length utterance is 3.2. This proves that since Zach has got a little bit older, his speech has improved and he has a broader range of language.  Zach was ill on the ‘build a robot’ transcript which may have reduced the amount of language he would usually use, so if he was feeling okay, he may have had a greater mean length of utterance.

Methodology

Methodology-

Hypothesis- Danni uses more deficit features than Lockie whilst in conversation

Data resource- TV programme – The Only Way is Essex. People: Danielle Armstrong and James Lock. Known names: Danni and Lockie

Reliability- I am going to look at the series where Danni and Lockie started off as a couple together. I am then going to look at 5 of their conversations. I may look at more of their conversations if they are short. I am going to watch the first episode and find the first 5 conversations they have, which will most likely mean I will be looking at the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th episode as well, depending on how many conversations they have in each episode. I am choosing the first 5 conversations they have because I need it to be a reliable piece of data. I am not going to pick and choose at random, the different conversations otherwise it is not scientific. I am choosing 5 conversations because I will have more data to analyse, they may have an off conversation which does not represent their usual selves so I need to have a range.

Comparability- The one factor in which will be different is the Gender of the two people. There are many comparability factors which mean that gender is the main reason for the different language they are using. The two people that I am studying for my data are both from Essex and still currently live there. This means that they will have similar accents and also dialect as they have been brought up within the same city. They are both of similar ages, Lockie is 29, and Danni is 28. They have similar life styles as they both own their own businesses; Danni owns a clothes shop called ‘Danni Boutique’ and Lockie has his own restaurant called ‘Lockie’s Kitchen’. They both have similar interests such as going clubbing, getting spray tans and going to the gym.

Ethicality- I am using a TV programme for my data. This means I will not need any permission as it is a show that is for public viewing. 

B.F Skinner - Behavioural Theory

B.F Skinner – Behavioural Theory

·         Skinner- American Psychologist.

• ·         Developed Theory of Operant Conditioning : Whether behaviour is determined by its consequences, Reinforcements or punishments are used, which make it more or less likely that behaviour will occur again.
• 
  
• ·         Positive Reinforcement- Praise and Response
• ·         Negative Reinforcement- Punishment/ignored

Skinner viewed babies as ‘empty vessels’ in which language had to be ‘Put into’. He suggested that children learn language through the environment (e.g. people) and consequences of undesired responses.

·         He noticed parents reward children for babbling etc, they don’t punish their baby for no vocalisation.

·         Skinners suggested that babbling would not progress into speech unless the parents give the child a response.

·         Said children imitate speech, if this is rewarded, learning takes place.

• How he discovered the theory:  Placing a rat in the ‘Skinner Box’

1.  He showed positive reinforcement- placing a hungry rat in his skinner box. The box contained a lever on the side and as the rat moved around the box it would accidentally knock the lever.
2.   Food would fall.
3. The rat learnt to go straight to the lever after a few times
4.  The consequence of receiving the food, if they pressed the lever, it is ensured that they would repeat action again and again.
5. He shown Negative Reinforcement by placing a rat in his Skinner Box and then giving it an unpleasant electric current.
6. As the rat moved around the box it would accidentally knock the lever
7. The electric current would then switch off
8. The rats learnt to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box
9. The consequence of escaping the electric current ensured that they would repeat action again and again.

Evidence- Rat pressing level to get a reward is like a child doing something and getting an outcome.

Not too reliable... a rat and a child is a big difference.

Punishment- Opposite of Reinforcement

Problems with punishment-

·         Punished behaviour is not forgotten, its suppressed- behaviour returns when punishment is no longer present

·         Causes aggression, which is a way to cope with problems

·         Can create fear. E.g. fear of school

Accent and Dialect Theories

Accent and Dialect

Dialect is what you say, the vocabulary and the Grammar. People from different social groups such as teenagers, children, adults and pensioners will most likely all have different dialects. The regional area you are from will also determine what dialect you use e.g. ‘Alright my Luver’ from Bristol.

Accent is how you say it, the pronunciation of utterances. People will be recognised from their regional areas by their accent, each regional area usually has a distinctive accent which is familiar by the public. E.g. Bristolian, Scouse, Brummy, Geordie. Different social groups usually have varied accents as well.

William Labov

William Labov was known as one of the creators of sociolinguistics. He was born in 1927 and was the professor of linguistics at Pennsylvania Uni. Labov was interested in how social class affected the use of language.

Martha’s Vineyard

Labov had two theories. Martha’s Vineyard was one of his studies. Martha’s Vineyard was an Island located off the east coast of the USA. It was a popular tourist attraction for in the summer. There are people that live in the Island all year round called ‘the Islanders’, most of which lived on the eastern part of the Island. ‘Down- Island’ is the populated part of the island and ‘up-island’ is the less populated however it is where the fishermen live. There are three social groups within the Island. ‘The Islanders’ who were a mixture of working and middle class, ‘The Summer People’ who were middle and upper middle class and ‘The Fishermen’ who were working class.

The Fishermen were seen as a desirable social group for the rest of the Islanders; they had old fashioned values and were also very hard working. They spoke with non-standard, old fashioned pronunciation. Their vowel sounds were especially different from standard punctuality, especially the diphthongs. A diphthong is a sound made by joining two vowels, specifically when it starts as one vowel sound and goes to another, like the (oy) sound in oil.

Results

Findings- Labov found that the young Islanders were making a deliberate shift to using the old-style pronunciation. He found that they wanted to be like the fisherman because they respect them. They don’t want to be like the summer people so they diverge from them. Even the islanders who were well educated were using the non-standard dialect.

The social stratification of the post-vocalic R

Also known as the Department Store Study, this is one of Labov’s other theories. It is based in Manhattan in New York. He was looking at the link between social class, department stores and language. Labov was testing the patterns of language usage and their link to prestige and social class. He looked at three different department stores of varying degrees of prestige. Saks 5th Avenue was the highest, Macy’s was the middle and Kleins was the lowest. The social stratification of the post-vocalic r looks at the final ‘r’sound at the end of words such as guard, beer and fourth. Labov rested the word ‘fourth’in his study. He asked a question designed to elicit the answer ‘fourth floor’ or similar, he then pretended not to hear the response and asked the sales assistant to repeat the answer.

Results

The results illustrated that (r) in New York City was stratified by class. The pronunciation of (r) depended on the social class membership of the employees.

Those with higher socioeconomic status pronounced (r) more frequently than those with lower socioeconomic.

'Build a Robot' Zach Transcript

Analysis of ‘Build a Robot’ – Zach and Halla Transcript

The genre of this text is a transcript. It has an informal register as it has non standard use of language such as ‘doo doo doo dooo’ which is said by Zach. The audience of this transcript is Zach and Halla as they are having a conversation. The mode of the text is spoken. It is a dialogue which is spontaneous.  The purpose of this text is to discuss the project of building a robot which is the subject of the transcript.

Throughout the transcript, Zach pauses a great amount within his sentences. He is not very fluent. This may be because he is focussed on what he is doing physically, building his robot. His main focus is the robot and building it rather than speaking to his mum. ‘We don’t need breakfast (.) it’s gonna take a little time now (2) cos it went wrong before (.) now we (.) then it healed and now (.) it will take a little time (.) for the robot to heal again (2). Because of his age he may need to think more about what he is saying, meaning it takes him longer to get his words out, rather than if he was older and more experienced, he would be more familiar with new words. Zach uses adjectives in his speech such as ‘lots’ of sellotape, ‘long’ bit. Zach may have recently become familiar with adjectives because of his age, meaning his speech is broadening. Because Zach is learning new speech, it may cause for him to take longer when speaking because he hasn’t known it for long enough to be fluent with it. Zach uses many declaratives, in response to his mum’s interrogatives. He also uses an exclamative ‘Tadah!’ which shows that from 13 months onwards, his speech has developed significantly. He recognises the use of adjectives and also he uses interrogatives ‘Can you do it mummy?’. This may be because of his surroundings, being with two adults who use this language, his mum and his dad.

Throughout the first conversation, Zach brings up the topic of the robot but his mum, Halla, sets the agenda by asking him interrogatives, which leads to adjacency pairs of Zach responding. In the second half, Zach is setting the agenda as he is dominating the conversation. He is saying to his mum that they have to wait rather than get breakfast. ‘Yeah (.) it’s gonna be a long time though (.) but we’re not gonna have breakfast still’. This supports Zimmerman’s and West’s theory, the Dominance model, that men dominates the conversation over women. It also contradicts the theory as Zach does not interrupt his mum, the theory claims that men interrupt more than women. He uses a declarative to tell his mum what they are going to do, rather than asking her. Zach uses non standard speech. This may be because he is new to more complex language so he hasn’t learnt that there are different ways of using it ‘It got lots of hurt all the way down’. 

The stages of Child Language

Child Language-

Babbling (Under the age of 11 Months) –

• ·         Babies start to ‘coo’ within 6 to 8 weeks. A coo is to make a sound, similar to a pigeon.
• ·         2-5 months the babies will recognise the parent smiling
• ·         Babies start to laugh at 16 weeks
• ·         6 months onwards babies notice certain words, names.
• ·         Reduplication happens (repeating all of the word or just some of it)

Holophrastic Stage-

• ·         Over generalisation (child adding ‘ed’ to words and make them none standard e.g. I rided, I goed.
• ·         Start learning 10 to 20 new words a month
• ·         Not very good with conversation, don’t have many conversational skills, normally communicated with single words (They use a lot of nouns)
• ·         Aren’t able to use questions in their language (what, why) They use rising intonation (voice rises)
• ·         11-18 months is the one word stage

Two word utterances-

• ·         18-24months
• ·         Consonant clusters are avoided
• ·         Between 18-24 months, unstressed syllables are dropped (e.g. tato instead of potato)
• ·         When a child is 2 years old they know 200+ words.

Telegraphic stage-

• Starts at 24 months
•  Longer utterances, combination of words
• Good pronunciation, close to adult
• Will recognise turn taking when speaking. More complex speech. Can use imagination

Me as an English student

Doing English Language at A Level, for me, was a huge wake up call!! I realised that there was a huge difference between A Level and GCSE, not just a small difference, a HUGE one.
After discovering this, i realised  that i had to make more effort,  and revise more even when not asked to. I find that English at A Level is a lot more complex, the amount of definitions that i need to know off by heart, the depth of analysis that needs to be done and also how much i need to elaborate on my writing. I enjoy learning definitions, i find that re-writing them and reading them over and over again helps..ALOT!The thing i find the most challenging is after finding words such as verbs/nouns, i struggle to explain why the words are used and how is affects the sentence/text. I think to myself, i can pull out thousands of verbs/nouns/adjectives, but what do i say about them?? I like writing about the representation and sentence functions, i usually know that to write about them. I find that the best way for me to learn is to take down notes, i know that there usually is a lot of writing, but when it comes to revising, every detail is there in my book infront of me. My chatty personality may have impacted my study, me and my friends, and revising, does not work together. On Saturday and every other Sunday i have a job, which may have reduced the amount of revision that i have done.

Twin your toilet - Poster

Poster – Twin your toilet and FLUSH AWAY POVERTY!

G- Poster

R- Formal

A- People who are in the toilet

M- Multi-modal

P- Persuade, Inform

S- Poverty

Where? The poster is on the wall of the female toilets in a college. It may be in the location it is because it may make people realise how lucky they are to have toilets which are hygienic compared to other people around the world that are in poverty and can’t afford it. The location is an important factor that needs to be considered as they will want a certain audience to see it. They also would have put it in the toilet so the audience can compare the differences of their lives and the people in the pictures lives. It could be a way of making people feel guilty and can persuade them in helping the people who are in poverty.

The poster is very plain and gets the point across instantly. It isn’t full of writing, as soon as you look at the poster you will instantly know what it is about without having to read through a lot of information. There is a title in bold white writing saying ‘Twin your toilet and FLUSH AWAY POVERTY!’ An exclamative is used which makes it sound more serious rather than a full stop. The title is eye level with the people who will see it which will be more eye catching. ‘FLUSH AWAY POVERTY!’ Is in capital letters and bold writing so it instantly draws the viewers’ attention and straight away makes them think that they can do something to help. There is also a blue rectangle box which is in the background of the writing to make it stand out even more. The background of the picture is a man and a woman, who look dirty, with a shed which looks like it is used as a toilet. It shows us that it looks dirty and unhygienic and is trying to get the point across that some people are unfortunate and need our help. There is a website in the top right corner which is where people will have to look up if they did want to help. Alliteration is used as a persuasive technique. The words ‘Toilet twinning’ is an example of alliteration, they may use it so that the audience will remember it like a slogan.

William Labov

William Labov

William Labov was known as one of the creators of sociolinguistics. He was born in 1927 and was the professor of linguistics at Pennsylvania Uni. Labov was interested in how social class affected the use of language.

Martha’s Vineyard

Labov had two theories. Martha’s Vineyard was one of his studies. Martha’s Vineyard was an Island located off the east coast of the USA. It was a popular tourist attraction for in the summer. There are people that live in the Island all year round called ‘the Islanders’, most of which lived on the eastern part of the Island. ‘Down- Island’ is the populated part of the island and ‘up-island’ is the less populated however it is where the fishermen live. There are three social groups within the Island. ‘The Islanders’ who were a mixture of working and middle class, ‘The Summer People’ who were middle and upper middle class and ‘The Fishermen’ who were working class.

The Fishermen were seen as a desirable social group for the rest of the

Islanders; they had old fashioned values and were also very hard working. They spoke with non-standard, old fashioned pronunciation. Their vowel sounds were especially different from standard punctuality, especially the diphthongs. A diphthong is a sound made by joining two vowels, specifically when it starts as one vowel sound and goes to another, like the (oy) sound in oil.

Results

Findings- Labov found that the young Islanders were making a deliberate shift to using the old-style pronunciation. He found that they wanted to be like the fisherman because they respect them. They don’t want to be like the summer people so they diverge from them. Even the islanders who were well educated were using the non-standard dialect.

The social stratification of the post-vocalic R

Also known as the Department Store Study, this is one of Labov’s other theories. It is based in Manhattan in New York. He was looking at the link between social class, department stores and language. Labov was testing the patterns of language usage and their link to prestige and social class. He looked at three different department stores of varying degrees of prestige. Saks 5^th Avenue was the highest, Macy’s was the middle and Kleins was the lowest. The social stratification of the post-vocalic r looks at the final ‘r’sound at the end of words such as guard, beer and fourth. Labov rested the word ‘fourth’in his study. He asked a question designed to elicit the answer ‘fourth floor’ or similar, he then pretended not to hear the response and asked the sales assistant to repeat the answer.

Results

The results illustrated that (r) in New York City was stratified by class. The pronunciation of (r) depended on the social class membership of the employees.

Those with higher socioeconomic status pronounced (r) more frequently than those with lower socioeconomic. 

Liverpool Accent and Dialect

Liverpool – Scouse

Ar Ey – Oh no!

Bail- Go away/stop chatting shit

Beaut- Idiot

Bevvy- Beer

Blaggin me ‘ead- lying to me

Boss – Very Good

Butty- Sandwich

Clobber- clothes

Do one- go away

Fat Wap – Over weight person

Gobshite – another person

Knock off – stolen goods

Scally- Chav

Made up- very happy about something

People discriminate Scousers as being chavvy and dumb because of their accent. Sometimes people find it aggressive but other times it can be really friendly. Southern people are thought of to be ‘Posh’ by people up north because of the way we pronounce words more. The media take the mick out of Liverpool’s accents. They also say that they are thieves. It is stereotypical that people from Liverpool go out with rollers in their hair for the night, they have the ‘scouse brow’ and also they go out with their pyjamas on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POO7RbQlbZ4