Language investigation ideas:

My initial idea for my language investigation was to investigate the use of code switching, amongst my home which is mainly a multi-lingual environment. Because of this, it has given me the opportunity to record data of my mother code switching from English, to multiple of languages, as she is able to speak four fluent languages. Therefore, I have decided to investigate on how she code switches, what particular words she uses in English and what she translates this into, etc. It is also essential to focus on how particular words she uses gives us a different interpretation and meaning of its original meaning, and why is so. This will all be analysed within my investigation.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZatrvNDOiE&feature=related

This main clip contains a section of the Horizon documentary, talking about, in detail, how individuals and particularly children learn the way they stimulate their minds and use language. and most importantly, learn the way they utilize language within their speech. It takes thousands of thoughts and decisions every time a child begins to communicate, and this is because they maintain a unique ability (as we all do) that defines us as humans. Within this clip, Deb Roy successfully developed a Speech Home Project. The speech home project is an experiment to test Deb Roy's son's development of language, which was recorded for a great amount of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsaqD9FVRsM&feature=relmfu

this clip explains brifely about how different children pick up language features, however in different stages within their life. According to the clip, children will be able to learn an incredible 3000 words every year, and this is due to the stimulation that children have during their times of learning language within the home, as well as communication from their care-givers. This process tends to be a more natural process, rather than being told what to do at a young age. Theorists say if we get told me to do something, we will never learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oimnxkEj4ns&feature=relmfu

This clips explains a man who suffered a stroke. which resulted in difficulties in speaking, as well as responding to certain questions. this is because during his stroke, a part of the man's brain had stopped functioning, which is vital for speech. He is told to describe a picture that contained general pictures. The man had the ability to do so, however he suffered some difficulties as he kept being asked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTbI-G42JoY&feature=relmfu 

This clip explains a man who has the ability to remember a variety of words, that means different things within different languages, and has the ability to remember words and sentences in different languages. He is given a set of words to memorize in a certain language and is then told to recap them speaking English, which shows that different people who may have speech difficulties are still able communication in an incredible way. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmsQJfyVrr0&feature=relmfu 

This clip explains how birds are able to communicate, in terms of sounds, however not in words. it has made a somewhat 'unattractive' noise. When the research is compared to the bird's sound and the generation, each new generation of birds didn't imitate the sounds of their fathers, they also improved it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqs-jKSdj8Y&feature=relmfu 

this clip also explains that we may have been physically be able to speak, but linguists believe that it is more likely that the birth of language is coincided with the proliferation of man made objects about 50,000 years ago.

Horizon Notes:

Name of particular gene:

FOX P2

The FOXP2 transcript was found to be expressed throughout the human body during early development, especially in the brain. The protein encoded by the FOX P2 gene has also been located in a number of species in addition to humans. 

Within this gene, our ability to speak is made up in our DNA. And as a result of this discovery, it shows as a great amount of evidence that can back up Chomski's theory, which shows that we are born with Language Acquisition Device. He further claims that children must be stimulated in order to speak, it is not nature, nor is it nurture, it is both.

In terms of corrections, a person must never say that a child's syntactic structure and grammatical sentences are incorrect or a mistake, you must always refer it as an error within the particular grammar. 

~This idea that language develops consciously happens over a period of time, according to certain theorists. Furthermore, language articulates unconsciously in a simple way.

Language and Power

Influential power: Influential Power – Is when the Person does not have power and they are trying to gain influence over you, an example would be an advertisement as they are trying to gain power over you to buy their product. 
A main theorist that would link to this would be Fairclough. He further claims that advertisements create the use of synthetic personalisation, which is a 'trick' to ensure that despite the fact that advertising is received en masse, readers feel that they are being addressed individually by a warm, and personable addresser, through the use if the second person pronoun 'you' in order to further establish a relationship between the reader and the writer. 
e.g - L'Oreal, 'Because you're worth it' the use of ' the second pronoun allows the reader to think in their minds that they are being addressed individually and therefore are more likely to buy it through the manipulation of the second person pronoun, as because once an individual gives in to buy this product, contextually L'Oreal will therefore earn more money to their company as people become more influenced and purchase it.

Instrumental power - 

Instrumental Power – When the Person already has power over usually due to authority or law, example would be a teacher in a classroom.

There are power structures in education, from nurseries to universities, but these are often concealed from those who are subject to them. Schools often produce codes or summaries or lists of rules, but these may have only a local or relative force, since the school itself is subject to laws that protect the interests of different groups.

In terms of CLA, parents tend to hold power over their children, as is the parents who have more knowledge (knowledge tends to be a form of power as a person may use this on another participant to make them feel subordinate/inferior) on the grammatical structure of sentences, as well as using verbs, nouns and determiners in the correct order, including interrogatives, imperatives, etc. 
However, influential power may not always work, for example. If a child had been asked to stop playing with certain toys, for their own safety in a subtle, warm voice through the use of a polite imperative, the child is likely to continue doing so. However, once this child has been told in a straightforward imperative through discipline, the child is likely to listen. 

BROWN AND LEVINSON - Face threatening act.
Positive politeness strategies are intended to avoid giving offense by highlighting friendliness. These strategies include juxtaposing criticism with compliments, establishing common ground, and using jokes, nicknames,honorifics, tag questions, special discourse markers(please), and in-group jargon and slang.

Language and Gender:

Within language and gender, this is the study of the forms and functions of talk, in which we investigate when studying men and women speak. In particular, we examine further by looking at conversational styles, historical and contemporary changes, how language is used by each gender in terms of the context, the list goes on. 

Many theorists have studied such questions, and as a result there has been a number of theory's attempting to find answers, such as:

DEFICIT THEORY - Robin Lakoff

Robin Lakoff, in 1975, published an influential account of women's language. In a related article, Woman's language, she published a set of basic assumptions about what marks out the language of women. Among these are claims that women:

• Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”, and so on.
• Use (super)polite forms: “Would you mind...”,“I'd appreciate it if...”, “...if you don't mind”.
• Use tag questions: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”
• Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words - so, very, quite.
• Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and so on
• Use hyper correct grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
• Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
• Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like colours, men for sports.
• Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative statements into questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a statement, expressing uncertainty. For example, “What school do you attend? Eton College?”

Lakoff further pointed out that women tend to

•  Speak less than men, 
• Use fewer expletives - expletive ɪkˈspliːtɪv,ɛk-/ noun - an oath or swear word.
• and use more intensifiers, such as 'so' and very'

She further argued that these features of women's language reflected women's inferior social status, and made it worse by making them seem somewhat indecisive and needy. In conclusion of her findings, she claimed that women's language is weak and compared to men’s language, and therefore this prevents women from being taken seriously.

DOMINANCE THEORY - Zimmerman and West.

This is the theory that within mixed sex conversations, (according to Z+W) men are more likely to interrupt conversations and tend to speak out within conversations, and as a result of this, theorists resulted in naming this as females being the subordinate participant, due to the patriarchal actions going on within mixed-sex conversations. This is evident as they found that almost 96% of interruptions were made by men, this then suggested that men are much more dominant in male-female conversations. they argued that this reflects male dominance in society.

DIFFERENCE THEORY: DEBORAH TANNEN:

Tannen described male and female conversational style in terms of difference.

She has summarised her findings and as a result came up with specific terms that have been paired, which describes a male and a female. For example:

• STATUS VS SUPPORT

Men grow up in a world in which conversation is competitive - they seek to achieve the upper hand or to prevent others from dominating them. For women, however, talking is often a way to gain confirmation and support for their ideas. Men see the world as a place where people try to gain status and keep it. Women see the world as “a network of connections seeking support and consensus, as well as being more cooperative.

• Independence vs intimacy

Women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy. Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence. These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views of the same situation

• Advice vs understanding

Tannen claims that women tend to show more understanding by compromising, and offering support rather than solutions, in order to seem more gentle, whereas with men, they may want to be seen as 'knowledgeable' and 'powerful' therefore they tend to give more advice to others and show their status, rather than being more 'inferior' and asking for support, according to tannen.

Conflict vs compromise:

This shows that since men tend to be more 'vocal' they may find solutions to problems by involving conflict in order to show their masculinity, whereas women may tend to find a more calmer, humble solutions by compromising and finding agreements and solutions in a peaceful manner.

Horizon - Notes.

Within the human brain, we use thousands of thought decisions, which is seen as a more unique ability. Accoring to partiuclar expers, language and our way of communicating defines us as humans, as we are the only ones who have the ability to do such incredible interactions, since we have a variety of different ways to interact to each other. When we communicate, particularly to babies and younger children, they comprehend and listen to the sequence of noises that we give to them, and during the process of this, their cognitive development begins to articulate, in a slightly more understanable way and reply back to our message, through the intonation of our voices.


INTONATION
      ɪntəˈneɪʃ(ə)n (noun)

''the rise and fall of the voice in speaking.''


In terms of communication, speech and language distinguishes us from each other, this tends to make us different, as each and every human have sophisticated skills. If a grown adult had attempted to learn a new language, this is particularly difficult in adults despite the fact that we learn in a natural process, however, within children, they acquire such advanced language skills with minimal effort, and being explicitly told.  According to Lennenberg, a critical acquisition period is a maturational time period during which some crucial experience will have its peak effect on development and learning, for example, Genie.

However to other experts, the answer to knowing how to speak is still currently unknown.

DEB ROY - Cognitive Scientist.
Deb Roy has created the Speech home project, which he designed in order to seek better understanding of how children learn the meaning of words through analysis of observational recordings of child-caregiver interactions in natural contexts.
As a result, our understanding of language acquisition hinges on surprisingly sparse and incomplete data. Motivated by this basic problem, Roy has begun a pilot project in which he is recording his son's development at home by gathering approximately 10 hours of high fidelity audio and video on a daily basis from birth to age three.

Roy then discovered different types of stages followed by the speech of children.

The first stage is from babbling to use single words
And the second stage is the two word stage.

Parents simplify their speech and converge towards child’s language, therefore they begin to speak and intonate their voices in the way children may do, in order to encourage them to interact further, as their phonological outcomes outstrips their semantic awareness.
 By the time a child reaches the age of 5, they will then be able to understand at least one thousand words, and mainly use determiners in order to get attention to certain nouns, such as 'that desk over there'

All of these noun naming, as well as using determiners is slowly pointing towards being born with the mechanics to speak and interact with others.

NOAM CHOMSKY 
Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human language. He claims that certain linguistic structures which children use so accurately must be already imprinted on the child’s mind. Chomsky believes that every child has a ‘language acquisition device’ or LAD which encodes the major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children have then only to learn new vocabulary and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences.

AQA Link - http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/as-and-a-level/english-language-b-2705 

This AQA Website includes a wide range of sections which is highly useful to me as well as my academic studies, as it includes useful past papers that I can work on throughout the year and enhance my exam skills gradually, as well as the examiner reports, which are additionally a source which helped me throughout my AS course, in terms of what I need to achieve to fulfil a particular grade, and since A2 examiner reports are on there too, it will help me throughout the way to achieve the grade I desire. In addition, this link also includes further information to students on the type of skills gained when they choose this course, this includes skills such as developing knowledge on key concepts and theories, using the Audience, Purpose and Form in a more advanced manner, and realising how the context, APR and cultural values impact on the language chosen within a text. These skills are ones that I have developed within my AS year of English language, and in terms of A2, it includes information about the coursework I will have to produce within this year. The coursework element, according to AQA is ‘very popular’ as students investigate an area of their choice that particularly fascinates them and independently allows them to independently collect and evaluate data.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/may/08/singing-children-development-language-skills

Here's an interesting article about how experts say that children may be able to develop their language acquisition skills if they were sang to much more often. According to consultants, singing traditional lullabies and nursery rhymes to babies and infants are a major benefit towards their intellectual development, rather than attempting to speak ordinary words. Personally, I found this fascinating because I have always thought that singing would have a somewhat emotional impact to a child, due to the melodies, tone and pitch of a song, rather than an intellectual impact to babies and infants. According to Blythe, a song is a special type of speech. For example, lullabies, songs, and rhymes of every culture carry the ‘signature melodies’ and inflections of a mother tongue, preparing a child’s ear, voice, and brain for language.