A2 Coursework Investigation Idea

Investigation 1


*Hypothesis - Parents talk to their child in accordance with their gender --> Men will use more directive language strategies when talking to boys, lexical precision and politeness strategies are used more with girls, boys are given more commands than girls especially by their dad's. 


* Methodology -  To record the interaction between a dad and his two children ( girl: 10 years old, boy: years old) when carrying out an activity, in this case it is a puzzle. I will be collecting data such as the turns taken, average number of air time, number of commands given to each child, politeness strategies etc. I will then create another stimulus but this time it will be the father alone with one child, this is to see how the father's language changes as well as to see if the patterns found in the first stimulus continues. Creating another stimulus will also allow me to compare the results that I have found and will enable me to create a more valid conclusion. I will then supplement the recordings with a questionnaire for the father and children, this will mainly be questions regarding the language used by the father and to see if this is typical.


*Issues - The main issue with my investigation is the observer's paradox; this is where the participants involved change their behaviour due to the knowledge of being observed. In order to avoid this I will ask the mum of the two children to record both interactions, this will make it more natural and hopefully minimise the effects of the observer's paradox. I will of course make sure to ask the permission of the children and the father, both before and after the interaction to make my investigation ethical. 
              

Child Language Acquisition: Speaking

Stages of vocal development -

·       Stage 1 ( 0-8 weeks) – basic biological noise, i.e. spluttering, reflexive noises

·       Stage 2 (8-20 weeks) – quiet musical noises, i.e. cooing and laughter. This teaches the child control of their vocal organ muscles as well as the importance of tongue movement.

·       Stage 3 ( 20-30 weeks) – vocal play, i.e. use of vowel/consonant like sounds, fricatives and nasal sounds

·       Stage 4 (25-50 weeks) – babbling/repetition of monosyllables, i.e. abababa, mamamama. The range of sounds uttered is more limited than that of stage 3 but they are said with more confidence.

·       Stage 5( 9-18 months) – melodic utterances, tone and rhythm of the child’s voice develops

·       Stage 6 – most children at 18 months have shown an ability to speak around 50 words; research however also shows that children can understand up to 250 words at this stage. Most children often start talking about their surroundings i.e. objects/people

·       Stage 7 – the child’s vocabulary usually develops to include around 200 words, overextension and under extension can also be seen at this stage.

Wider Reading for A2

Jon Reed (2014) How social media is changing language. Available: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/06/social-media-changing-language/. Last accessed 9/4/2015.  Short blog posts detailing how social media has affected the language, topics discussed include the introduction of new words/meanings as well as the rapid rise in the usage of emoticons and acronyms.

James Broadbidge (2003) An investigation into differences between Women’s and Men’s Speech. Available: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/cels/essays/sociolinguistics/jamesbroadbridgesociolinguisticsaninvestigationintodifferencesbetweenwomensandmensspeech.pdf . Last accessed 9/4/2015. Detailed investigation into how women’s speech differs to men’s, includes a brief history of language and gender, methodology analysis and a conclusion. The investigation involved recording a conversation between two men and women working for the same school. The analysis was broken down into four parts; conversational dominance, swearing and vulgar language, verbosity and assertive and tentative speech styles, each section revealed the findings of the author as well as whether those findings conformed to any theories.

Bjorn Carey (2013) Talking directly to toddlers strengthens their language skills, Stanford Research shows. Available: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/october/fernald-vocab-development-101513.html.  Last accessed 9/5/2015. A report on a study carried out by Stanford psychologists; the study involved analysing interactions between 19 month old children and those in their home environment.  The psychologists concluded that the children who had more direct conversations with adults had a larger vocabulary by 24 months and could process instructions/ words quicker.

Dr.Robert Beard (2010) Bad Grammar or Language Change? Available: http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/bad_grammar.html.  Last accessed 9/6/2015. A short article detailing how English speakers are misusing plurals, Dr.Beard explores whether the reason behind this could just be attributed to the fact that the language is evolving and therefore plurals are becoming redundant.

Author unknown (date unknown) 4.1 Child Language Acquisition Theory. Available: https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/ . Last accessed 9/6/2015. A blog post describing four different CLA theories from Chomsky, Crystal, Piaget, and Aitchison. Each section contained a transcript in support of the theory.