Paper 2

Accent and Dialect


Giles' matched guise technique;

explored the feelings and judgements people had towards 
others based on accent and discovered that the most respected accent in the UK was Received Pronunciation as it was viewed as the accent of an intellectual individual.


M.A.K. Halliday, A. McIntosh and P. Strevens;

discovered that more rural accents are viewed as more friendly and approachable than urban accents which are viewed in a more negative light. They also concluded that no dialect is linguistically 'better' than another and that judgements on both accents and dialects are decided upon socially.


Martha's Vineyard study by Labov; 

explaining the Convergence and Divergence theory describes how a group of locals thickened their accents to seem different to the tourists who would visit to seem more distant from them


Dialect leveling;

The amount a person travels in their life is a key part in how they pronounce phrases, If someone travels a lot to places with strong accents they may pick up that accent and incorporate it into their own this is known as dialect leveling. This has been enhanced in recent years due to the ability to travel farther and much more easily around the world.


New York department store rhotic R research;

Labov studied people in department stores in New York it showed that speech patterns were something of a highly systematic structure of social/stylistic stratification. Labov studied how the letter 'r' is pronounced with a word and where it was placed in the word.The letter 'r' had only been reintroduced into the new york accent in 1960. He studied the language of employees in 3 different stores which were all different class. This was because he found that the pronunciation of 'r' occurred and its "frequent of use depended on the speakers’ membership to particular socioeconomic status" Findings: New York was found to be stratified in class, pronounciaion of the 'r' depended on their social status within the employees. People pronounced their 'r's more frequently if they were higher within their social class. 

Gender & Power

http://neveslanguageblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/gender-research-in-hallas-absence.html


Language Change

http://neveslanguageblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/world-englishes-language-change.html

CLA Paper 1

Stages of development 

prelinguistic 0-4months - crying

cooing 4-7 months - small noises

babbling 6-12 months -repeating patterns of consonant and vowel sounds

one word/ holophrastic 12-18 months - one word utterances

two word 18-24 months - two word utterances

telegraphic 24-36 months - incomplete utterances of two or more words

post telegraphic 36months+ - more complex spoken sentences

Skinner

Operant conditioning- where the strength of a behavior is modified by the behavior's consequences, such as reward or punishment

Positive reinforcement- Receiving a reward for behaviour ,often praise is given to encourage the child to repeat their behaviour

Negative reinforcement- Negative reinforcement occurs when a certain stimulus (usually an aversive stimulus) is removed after a particular behavior is exhibited. The likelihood of the particular behavior occurring again in the future is increased because of removing/avoiding the negative consequence.

Punishment- Punishment is a process by which a consequence immediately follows a behavior which decreases the future frequency of that behavior

Chomsky

Nativist theory- Language is innate

LAD- language acquisition device

Universal gramar- a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans not learnt

key points:
Children do not simply copy the language that they hear around them. They deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences that they have never heard before.

Vygotski 

ZPD- Zone of proximal development and CDS

CDS features;
- local topics
- child-led discourse
- turn taking
- higher pitch
- clearer pronunciation
- interrogatives
- reforming/echoing/recasting

Scaffolding-

More Knowledgeable Other- usually a teacher/ carer /adult who will offer help and support during scaffolding

Lenneburg

Critical period hypothesis- the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age.

the case of Gene and other wild children support this theory

Bruner

Goes against skinner and says if negative reinforcement works then why do children still use over generalisation

LASS (language aquisition support system) - child directed speech

Believes children's cognitive function advances and improves with age and that children are naturally inquisitive and thirsty to learn.