Language change notes


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Tom transcripts

According to B F skinner (1953) imitation and reinforcement are basic learning structures for learning, which is used by not only humans but animals too. In terms of child language acquisition this is the process of a child learning, understanding and correctly interpreting language. This “active” process is called operant conditioning, which consists of 3 types of consequences of behaviour, these are; Positive reinforcement – is receiving a reward when certain behaviour is performed, for example a parent praising their child for correcting pronouncing a word or standard phrase or utterance, to praise them in the hope they will replicate this in the future. This is evident in text A, where Tom who is age 2years; 7months is talking to his parents but in this text he is helping mend bikes with his mother and father. E.g. Echoing “I need to fix dad’s bike OK” “you need to fix Dad’s bike”, this is a form of positive reinforcement because the parent is clearly agreeing with the child...
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Conversation and representation.

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We represent ourselves by not only what we say but the way and formality in which we deliver it, meaning that you can infer characteristics based on this. For example, someone who has long periods of airtime in a conversation can be seen as a “confident” individual.   However, when you look at the amount of hedges, indirect commands and minor sentences such as “um and erm” they produced immediately change the way they are represented and received. Their persona goes from confident to doubtful and uncertain. Pin pointing a particular “way” in which you speak, is difficult because when you are asked this we automatically begin to change our natural speech.   This results in using “demand characteristics”, which is where we change our behaviour and speech to fit in with the way we think we should behave. This gives us a false indication of the way in which someone is represented because it lacks reality. Schegloff’s conversation model, suggest that “conversations are like ...
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Accents or dialect? What's causing the confusion?

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The UK holds numerous different accents, even though to many of us English is our first and only language, we still fail to fully understand one another. The characteristics of each accent range dramatically, with each of them distinctive and totally different to another. This is almost unbelievable taking into consideration the size of the UK, and the number of different accents. Each city holds its own opportunities for; jobs, families, universities, housing etc. This is causing people to move across the country, mixing accents and causing confusion. Everyone has experienced the awkward interaction with those of a different accent to their own. There is almost bizarrely a language barrier, they may as well be speaking in a ‘foreign’ language because only very little is being understood. The rate at which technology is developing, has also allowed a mix in accents. Technology is becoming more and more important in our everyday lives as we pretty much rely on it nowadays for school...
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