Comparison of transcripts

Comparison of transcripts

In the 2;4 transcript Zach shows premature signs of the multiword stage; at Zach’s age (28 months) we would expect to see the telegraphic stage of language acquisition as more dominant in Zach’s speech. However phrases such as ‘I got food on the floor’ show evidence that he has entered the multi-word stage, an equivalent phrase that we would expect in the telegraphic phase would read more like ‘got food on floor’.  Zach’s early entrance into the multi-word stage would appear to disprove Piaget’s ideas that we have to reach certain ages to move through learning development and that language acquisition is somewhat destined to occur at innate junctures.  Linked to this is the idea that language development is not a linear process and that despite Zach’s language being more sophisticated than expected at 28 months regression is still a natural phase in learning, arguably the fact there are more false starts in the second transcript (3 to the first transcript’s 1) show that Zach is going back to language he is more comfortable with (i.e. regressing) in order to develop. However, an alternative explanation of this is that at 41 months he has a wider vocabulary and therefore more words to choose from causing more false starting.

In the second transcript a lot more emphasis is given by the caregiver to politeness than accuracy, this is shown by the idea that although there are various grammatical mistakes in Zach’s speech which Halla doesn’t correct him for, when he fails to say please, he is prompted by Halla’s use of the cloaked interrogative ‘I think you might need the magic word then’. His failure to use the adverb ‘please’ might be due to his high level of comfort at home with his primary caregiver where he will not be judged. However, the earlier transcript doesn’t show any evidence of correction for either politeness or grammatical error. According to Halliday’s language functions the earlier transcript appears to show more interactional speech from Halla (compared with more dominant regulatory speech in the latter transcript). It could be argued that this is because younger age children can get away with both grammatical mistakes and lack of politeness but as the child gets older the social and cultural context means that parents wouldn’t want their child to appear rude as it would reflect badly on them however grammatical mistakes will be seen as part of the child’s development and accepted, this could differ across different cultures.  

There is a clear morphological development over the 2 transcripts; in the first transcript the mean length of utterance is 5.6, whereas in the second transcript it is 12.45 (both much higher than expected). This development in MLU shows not only development in morphological skills but also syntactic development, this development reduces the level of ambiguity in the child’s language, reduction in ambiguity is very important in language acquisition and this is shown in Zach’s language. For example, in the first transcript Zach says ‘I cutting round the edge’ the lack of pluralisation on ‘I’m’ shows lower morphological development than the second transcript; phrases such as ‘so I put lots of sellotape…’ shows how morphological development can lead to more maturity in phonetics and general acquisition of language.

According to John Dore’s language functions, the first transcript shows a much heavier focus on answering, i.e. answering questions. Examples include utterances such as ‘yes’ and ‘I think I don’t’. This is contrasted by the second transcript which shows a much a wider range of functions such as requesting action’ – ‘can you do it mummy’ and protesting – ‘we don’t need breakfast’. It could be argued that this range in language functions shows development in Zach’s language, it could also be argued that the context of just Zach and his primary caregiver at home has given Zach the confidence to try and use a wider range of language functions.

Something common in both transcripts is the scaffolding put in place by Halla to help Zach to widen his linguistic ability. Scaffolding is the process by which adults such as parents and teachers help children to learn language by prompting and asking questions such as 'what have we eaten today' in the first transcript. This allows the child to mature and develop their language use. The idea of scaffolding was developed by vygotsky, he stated in his theory of cognitive development that children have a zone of proximal development, this is the gap between what a child knows and what they can know with the help of a caregiver; in the transcript Halla enables Zach to bridge this gap with the help of prompts such as 'what else have we had?' in the first transcript and 'because' in the second transcript. This helps Zach to grow his knowledge of language and effectively make his linguistic ability eat into his current zone of proximal development.