Mini Investigation:

To what extent can Skinner's reinforcement theory explain the language used by Evie and her Grandmother?

Introduction:

• My investigation is based on an early theory in child language acquisition which was proposed by Skinner. He believed that children learn language solely through their environment, imitating behaviour they see; he used the principles of reinforcement to explain language acquisition. He said that when a child’s behaviour (i.e. speaking) is positively reinforced they will repeat the behaviour. Positive reinforcement can be in the form of smiling to acknowledging the child to giving them what they want. 
• As the conversation is between Evie and her Grandmother theory suggests that Evie's language will improve/she will learn the adult form, when her Grandmother uses positive utterances/techniques. 

Collecting the Data:

• I am using a transcript between a child aged (2 years, 7 months) and her Grandmother. This is only a short recording of Evie and her Grandma and therefore it cannot reflect Evie’s language as a whole which compromises the reliability of the findings, for example if Evie had had a bad morning her language may be poorer, meaning it is not consistent with her usual level. The findings cannot be extrapolated to a wider population such as other children in different parts of the world as it is only exploring the language use of one female child. This research is ethically sound as the legal guardians of Evie gave fully informed consent to this data being used. 

Analysis:

• Evie's Grandmother says 11 positive utterances, for example“very good we’ve got five things in the picture…” “yeah that’s good” “that’s lovely” and “ah you’re smiling a nice smile”, to keep the conversation moving. Compared to only one negative utterance, “…no not that bath the house bath…” However the Grandmother quickly follows with “…oh yeah that’s it…” Suggesting that the Grandmother thinks Evie will stop co-operating if she is too negative, it could also suggest that in the past Evie has not responded to negative comments very well and therefore her Grandmother prefers to use encouraging language to shape her behaviour as this is more effective for Evie.
• Echoing can be seen as a form of positive reinforcement as it shows to the child that they said the ‘correct’ thing, (the adult form.) In this transcript the Grandmother echoes a lot of what Evie says in order to keep her talking. For example, Evie says “some more” and her Grandmother says “some more things” Although her Grandmother has added to the utterance with the plural of the noun “things” it is a way of showing Evie that she is on the right tracks and it leads her to pick out more toys to take pictures of. Instead of the Grandmother correcting Evie on mispronunciations she instead repeats the word in the following utterance, for example when Evie says, “a picture of [pit ɘv] tigger (.) picture of [pɪtɘ] tigger” she mispronounces picture twice and in the following utterance Evie's Grandmother says, “we’ll take a picture of tigger yep okay grandma’s got one so picture of wolf picture of tigger who else shall we take a picture of?” containing the word ‘picture’ four times. The next time Evie says picture she pronounces it correctly, “in the picture.” This suggests that instead of telling Evie her mistake (negative reinforcement) repeating the word in the correct form will give a child the ability to learn, which Skinner suggests is how we acquire language- through imitating.

Conclusion:

• This data displays a caregiver using positive reinforcement frequently. Although it moves the conversation forward, there is not enough evidence to suggest that it improves her language ability. 
• As this is a mini investigation I was unable to explore in depth Evie’s language, if I were to carry out a larger investigation I would hope to explore other situations in which Evie and her Grandmother are speaking to see if Evie's Grandmother always uses positive reinforcement during conversation.
• Skinner's positive reinforcement with respect to language acquisition may be able to describe many children’s language, however from exploring this data I would suggest that Evie's grandmother does not choose to use positive reinforcement to increase Evie's language ability, but because they seem to have a good relationship and therefore she will treat Evie nicely. 

COURSEWORK

Lakoff 1975: Women use; hedges + fillers; tag questions; apologetic requests, indirect requests, speak less; use fewer expletives, more intensifiers. She argued that these features of speech make women seem more inferior, weak and needy and prevents women from being taken seriously.

My Hypothesis:

• Women’s rights speeches written by females shortly before a significant change in a women’s right movement will contain less of Lackoff’s deficit features than those written/delivered at a period of no change.

I will collect *famous feminist speeches, throughout a period of time in which women were fighting for equality i.e. the suffragette movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. I will carry out a longitudinal study, comparing and contrasting speeches throughout the movement, how the language in those towards the end differs from those at the beginning. I thought that I would compare speeches at different times as Lackoff argued that women cannot be taken seriously when using this ‘deficit’ language, so perhaps I will find that speeches toward the *end will contain more ‘masculine’ language. 

I will create a corpus of data and then possibly use systematic sampling to choose a random sample; i.e. giving each speech a number and then generating numbers on a computer. However, if there are not many significant speeches then I would have to re-evaluate how I would go about choosing the data I am studying.

I am aiming to quantify the amount of deficit features in each speech in order to create graphs to easily compare data. However, I think that it could become subjective as some of Lackoff’s deficit features could be arguable in certain situations, i.e. emotional evaluations rather than intellectual. 

Although it is ‘dangerous’ to have a strong opinion before acting the ‘neutral researcher’ in a study, I think that many of these types of speeches will not contain many of Lackoff’s features, because the aim of them is to appear strong and intelligent. However I was thinking that this in itself almost is on par with her ideas, i.e. to use masculine language to be taken seriously.

I may change my mind with the theorist that I choose to use because I think that there would be lots of interesting things to explore regarding language gender theories and women rights speeches.

In respect to my media text, I was thinking something along the lines of why women may have changed the way they speak. Why there is such a difference in the language of men and women. So if women’s language is deficit- I was thinking of exploring why. I was speaking with some people who are interested in feminism etc. and they suggested that when/if women had their power taken away from them by men in the past then they had to adapt their language in order to make ‘things’ run smoothly. For example if a ‘woman’ was not acting like a ‘woman’ they may not have gotten married? So lots of different aspects came together to create the “female”. But I’m not sure if this even makes sense. So I was hoping to talk about something interesting and slipping in some knowledge of language & gender theory as an addition or to back up my points. I think it would be purely an opinion article.  

(*Speeches which would be regarded as important, those which are well known and were said/written by well-known activists.)

(*when there was a final push and things started to change/governments noticed.)

  

SYNTHETIC PHONETICS

Synthetic phonetics is a way of teaching children to read and write by associating letters with their phonetics; linking ‘symbols with sounds’. The idea being that children will be able to ‘sound out’ new words they come across which they don’t understand. In a government data file uploaded in 2013 they described phonics as “…the most effective way of teaching young children to read.” They suggest that this method allows children to read much more complex texts because once they have mastered phonics they can sound out any word.

The disadvantages of phonics: studies have found that those who learn to read phonetically read at a slower speed to those who learnt with different methods. Some found that those who were taught phonetically were not so good at deciding if a word was real or not, (perhaps since they can sound out any word they may not have found patterns.) Research has also found that older people who were taught phonetically were worse at reading unfamiliar words which do not follow regular letter-sounds.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/194057/phonics_check_leaflet_2013_.pdf

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/culture/2011-07/04/c_13964553.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jan/19/phonics-child-literacy

Chomsky vs Skinner

Child Language acquisition (CLA)

Behaviourist psychologist’s theories of CLA:

Classical conditioning can be applied to CLA, this is the theory that we learn through association. Infants learning to talk may associate certain things with noises/words etc…

Behaviourist psychologists also believe that we learn through imitation and observation.

In his book ‘Verbal Behaviour’ (1957) Skinner proposed that language acquisition is a solely learned behaviour. (I.e. we are not born with language in place; we must learn to acquire language.)  And that we learn through operant conditioning; the idea that we learn through rewards and punishments. For example, a child learning to speak may be met with smiling and clapping when they say a word/sentence correctly and not rewarded if their sentence is incorrect. The idea being that they will repeat the behaviour which is rewarded.

Chomsky reviewed skinners book, mainly disagreeing with him. For example, he said that learning to speak cannot be solely due to learning certain behaviours and the history of reinforcement, because we can say things and do things which we have not been trained to say/do. He also argued that we can understand things we have never heard before. Chomsky said that how we respond to certain things is a result of our views, opinions, understanding of certain environments and a wealth of knowledge in the region of linguistic rules and conventions.

Cognitive psychologist’s theories of CLA:

Noam Chomsky believed that we are born with a Language Acquisition Centre (LAD) which contains the basis of a language, including major grammatical structures. This means that children learning to speak only need to learn vocabulary and apply it to the *syntactic structures from the LAD (*arrangement/structure of a sentence.)

Chomsky argues that, as the language which adults speak is highly irregular, CLA cannot come from imitation/observation alone, as children do not copy speech which is grammatically incorrect. As well as this, children may try and apply grammar rules to verbs which are irregular, i.e. I runned instead of I ran. Suggesting that they understand how verbs are usually conjugated.

Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ to show that we have a built in awareness of grammar; we can explain why “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” is acceptable and why “furiously sleep ideas green colourless” is unacceptable. Chomsky argued that we can tell the difference between a grammatical and non-grammatical sentence without ever hearing the sentence before and we can produce sentences that no one has ever said before.

Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory is that observations of patients who have suffered damage to their brain (specifically the left hemisphere near the motor cortex) have suffered a loss of speech, especially in respect with grammar. They may put words together in the wrong order. Although this can be treated with language therapists etc… it is difficult to do so, technology has been invented especially for people who suffer this sort of brain damage in order for them to communicate effectively. This suggests that language acquisition, especially grammar, may have some biological origins. An example is that a patient could use the word ‘wood’ but not ‘would’ (grammatical). (This theory has mixed opinions; many now believe that it is too simplistic.)

Many argue that although it is somewhat obvious that language cannot be learned through imitation alone it does not prove that we have a LAD.

Chomsky’s ideas have been criticised due to the differences between languages, his theory suggests that we are born with the ability to learn any language seeing as the same principles apply, however he seems not to have taken into account the huge differences between languages such as sound, grammar, lexicon and meaning.

Daniel Everett (linguist, who wrote Language: The Cultural Tool) believes that human animals have language and non-human animals do not have language as they do not face the same sorts of problems which would necessitate detailed, effective communication, and that it has nothing to do with the LAD.  He studied the Pirahã community in the central Amazon to translate the bible for them as others “…could not work out the language…” for example they didn’t seem to talk about the “distant past or distant future” as this was not necessary for them. His experience changed the way he viewed language.  He disagreed with Chomsky’s ideas, in an interview he says that, “…language is not something mysterious that is outside the bounds of natural selection, or just popped into being through some mutated gene. But that language is a human invention to solve a human problem. Other creatures can't use it for the same reason they can't use a shovel: it was invented by humans, for humans and its success is judged by humans.”

http://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/psycho-linguistics/language-acquisition.php

https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/innateness-language/#ChoCasAgaSki

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/25/daniel-everett-human-language-piraha

Stages of language acquisition in children

1) Basic Biological Noise (0-8 weeks.) Non-conscious responses; manly reflexive noises. Child starts with vowel ‘A’ sounds.

 

2) Cooing & Laughing Stage (8-20 weeks) Recognise parents face and speech, they recognise that language has a structure. Learn to express themselves through laughing and ‘chuckling’. Start to string ‘cooing’ noises together.

 

3) Vocal Play (20-30 weeks) Able to adjust pitch. Begin to use consonant and vowel sounds.

 

4) BABBLING STAGE (25-50 weeks) 2 types of babbling sounds-

Re-duplicating - repeat sounds (e.g. woof woof)

Variegated- use different sound patterns and put them together. The words have no meaning to the child as they think they are just making sounds.

5) Melodic Utterance Stage (10-13 months) Variation and rhythm is shown.

(12-18 MONTHS)

Developments occur rapidly, intonations used to show purpose or feelings. Children begin to develop at different stages. Single word utterances: concrete nouns. Child learns 10-20 words each month.

 

(AGE 18-24 MONTHS)

Have a vocabulary of 200 words – shows how quickly they are learning.

Pronunciation - some syllables dropped (e.g. tomato = mato)

Consonant clusters avoided i.e. sky - guy

Re-duplicate sounds- e.g. baby = baybay

no consistency of speaking

 

 

A2 Summer Reading

Nicole Mahoney.  Language Change. Available: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/change.jsp. Last accessed 13th Aug 2015. Report on factors behind language change such as social, economic and political pressures. Examples of language change due to migration and invasions. Mahoney says that the needs of the speaker play important roles in language change. For example, technology, words must be coined as items are invented. Social factors are important in language change for example, the fact that we pick up new words and phrases from all the different people we talk with, and these combine to make something new and unlike any other person’s particular way of speaking. How groups in society create their own way of speaking to create a 'group identity'.

The Linguistic Society of America. Is English Changing?. Available: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/Is_English_Changing.pdf. Last accessed 13th Aug 2015. Article/pdf mentioning the works of Shakespeare and Chaucer, and why some people today believe that their language was more sophisticated.  Language may be a result of misinterpretation for example bird used to be ‘brid’, until it was pronounced differently more often and soon blended in to create “bird”. 

Lemetyinen, H. (2012). Language Acquisition. Available: www.simplypsychology.org/language.html. Last accessed 13th Aug 2015. Website post discussing the differences in the theories of behaviourists and biological psychologists in language acquisition. Skinner believed that children acquired language through association, imitation and reinforcement. He believed that our environment affects how we learn language. According to this view, children learn words by associating sounds with objects, actions, and events. They also learn words and syntax by imitating others. He suggested that adults shape their children’s language by rewarding the, reinforcing the correct, grammatical way of speaking.

Child Language Acquisition Theory. https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/. Last accessed 15th Aug 2015. Blog post discussing Noam Chomsky. He disagreed with Behaviourists ideas of language acquisition and proposed a biological explanation of language acquisition. Chomsky points out that adult speech is very irregular, (adult language is broken up and often ungrammatical) making it difficult for children to learn solely through imitation.  Chomsky said that humans have parts of the brain which are responsible for acquiring language at an early age, a language acquisition device (LAD) This contains all the means necessary to form language, children only need to learn new vocabulary and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences.

Twitter Investigation

Hypothesis:
I predict that people with political power will use a higher level of formality in their tweets; one aspect which I will be looking at is the frequency of non-standard grammar.

Methodology:
In order to look at the level of formality in the tweets of someone with political power a radio presenter was selected for comparison. Fearne Cotton and Ed Miliband: Both are British, they share a similar age, both are in the media at the moment and both are influential.
Using tweets is an ethically sound method of studying language as they have been published and therefore consent had been pre-given.

Analysis:

	Miliband	Cotton
Non-standard English	0	12
The use of multimodal resources	1	2
First person pronoun	5	9
Emotive language	12	7

• Miliband uses much more descriptive language.
• Cotton uses 12 times more non-standard English.
• Miliband uses a lot of emotive language: we did not expect this. 

Conclusion and Evaluation:

There are comparable issues between the two chosen participants. The data gathered, mainly the use of non-standard English, supports my hypothesis. As Miliband always uses hyper correct grammar, this may be a sign of formality. The use of emotive language could in fact raise the formality levels as Milibands tweets could have been descriptive and useful whereas Cottons less emotive tweets may be 'empty'. However emotive language can be subjective as the audience will react to the language use in different ways.  

For the future: 

• Gather a larger data pool in order to compare more tweets.
• Avoid being subjective. 
• Quantify relevant things.