Introduction of investigation

Introduction of investigation 


I chose to investigate names and terms of address after reading Richard Hudson's article on the online English and Media magazine. He describes how every name and term of address has a different social message and I want to discover whether people perceive this to be true. Grice's maxims of conversation link to this argument; Grice's maxim of quality states that we shouldn't portray information for which we have no evidence, does this mean that by calling someone by a title without first asking them what that title is would be flouting a maxim of conversation? I wanted to look deeper into this idea so I chose to investigate the hypothesis 'people's positive face needs are effected when they are being referred to by the wrong title'. To investigate this I used a questionnaire in which I will find out how/when people are offended by being called the wrong title (if at all).

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.

 

Investigation methodology


Richard Hudson's theory about names and how every name carries a different social message, he says that if you call someone by their first name then you see them as someone you know well and your social equal and if you refer to them using a title such as 'Mr' 'Dr' or 'Professor' then you show that they're a stranger.


I am going to investigate whether names do carry different social messages in our culture & whether calling people by the incorrect title affects our positive face needs?


To investigate this I will design a questionnaire to give to people on how they feel when they are referred to in different ways for example, how a person feels when they are called a title which makes them seem less educated, for example Dr instead of Mr.


The use of a questionnaire can provide me with large amounts of data in a reasonably small space of time


Questionnaire design
- I will use a mix of open and closed questions to gain all relevant information
- before my main questionnaire is sent out I will run a small scale pilot study
- I will start the questionnaire with shorter, easier questions and develop it into the longer, more difficult ones
- I will ensure that all my questions are concisely and accurately worded to provide reliable results


Ethicality
-  I will let people remain anonymous and tell them that their results will be published in my investigation. I will ensure them that details such as their name and address will remain confidential.


Reliability
- I will keep my questions worded in a simple, readable way
- I will make sure that my questionnaire looks neat and well presented to improve the chances of the person thinking that the results they're giving is important
- I will give out my real questionnaire soon after my pilot one to ensure nothing changes
- I will ensure when reading answers that similar questions provide me with similar answers, if they are different then I might have to disregard the results of that questionnaire
- I will have to make sure that my questions provide results which, although qualitative, give measurable results for me to discuss in my report


comparability

Investigation ideas

Language investigation 


Deborah Tannen's advice versus understanding idea


I will investigate whether it's true that men look at a problem as a challenge and women look at a problem as a an opportunity to offer sympathy.




“When my mother tells my father she doesn't feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with his reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.”




beth kemps ideas that taboo language towards females is becoming a joke




https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/language-theorists-put-to-the-test/

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/contents.htm#langa


notes from this website


Notes on accent and dialect
dialect levelling and standardisation has occurred over the last 100 years


some important features of speech which I should revise

Affective features

Agenda

Adjacency pairs

Adverbials

Back-channelling

Backtracking

Closing conversation

Co-operative signals

Deictics

Disagreement

Facilitating mechanisms

Feedback

Fillers

Foregrounding

High considerateness/high involvement speakers

Humour

Implicatures (implication)

Introducing new topics

Metamessages

Monitoring talk

Opening conversation: request, question, offer

Overlap (co-operative)

Pauses

Rapport talk/report talk

Relevance

Repetition

Simultaneous speech

Tag questions

Turn-taking

Types of conversation: child/adult, gender related, power related (e.g. doctor-patient)

Uncompleted sentences

Utterance types: statement (declarative); question (interrogative); command (imperative); exclamation

Word of mouth link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtnz/episodes/player

Halliday and Dore


Halliday


These are Halliday's 6 functions of language in the child language acquisition


1)  Regulatory: Language used to influence the behaviour of others. Concerned with persuading / commanding / requesting other people to do things you want.


2) Interactional: Language used to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction. Concerned with the phatic dimension of talk.


3) Personal: Language used to express the personal preferences and identity of the speaker. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Here I am!’ function – announcing oneself to the world.


4) Representational: Language used to exchange information. Concerned with relaying or requesting information.


5) Heuristic: Language used to learn and explore the environment. Child uses language to learn; this may be questions and answers, or the kind of running commentary that frequently accompanies children’s play.


6) Imaginative: Language used to explore the imagination. May also accompany play as children create imaginary worlds, or may arise from storytelling.


John Dore


John Dore created an alternative to Halliday's theory of language functions
He focused more in interactional utterances, below are the Language functions


1) Labelling: This is naming a person, object or place


2) Repeating: This is repeating an adult word or utterance


3) Answering: Responding to an utterance of another speaker


4) Requesting action: asking for something to be done for them


5) Calling: greeting someone's attention


6) Greeting: greeting someone


7) Protesting: objecting to another person's request


8) Practising: using language when no adult is present