Note: most of this information comes from the textbook unless stated otherwise; any pictures come from Google if there is no source in the caption; theories have been individually researched i.e some theories you will not find in the textbook

Self-Identity

Self is the set of characteristics, such as personality and ability, that are not physical and make that person different from other people. Self-identity is a collection of beliefs about oneself/an idividual’s awareness of their own characteristics in relation to the social groups around them.

We are not born with a sense of self, or with any set of the values and behaviours which we display throughout our lives. It is during our early childhood development of our physical, linguistic, social, and cognitive development that we identify ourselves as distinct from others around us.

Our self-identity changes throughout our lives as it is influenced by our experiences and interaction with those around us.

Self-identity is a vital part of who we are and how we interact with others throughout our lives. These can be established discursively or through to day-to-day social behaviour.

Antony Giddens: “What to do? How to act? Who to be?“

Conversational Face

The conversational face was initiated by Erving Goffman in 1967 then developed by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson in 1987. They believed that in every conversation, people could impose upon, and even threaten, this sense of face. The effect is to make speakers feel intimidated, ignored, or ridiculed rather than supported and included.

Face is a concept in spoken language theory which refers to how people want to maintain their status and self-esteem in interactions with other people, and how they want to avoid offending other people.

The concept of face has two aspects:

• positive face — the wish to have an approved self-image

• negative face — the wish to not have other people impose on us

A face-threatening act is any form of words which creates a risk that our own face needs, or the face needs of anyone with whom you are interacting with, will be damaged.

There are four politeness strategies used by people to maintain a balance in protecting the positive and negative faces of each other and acting appropriately in social interactions. These are:

• off-record (least direct, most polite)

  • off-record politeness is used when you are not that familiar with the other person, or you know that they are the type who will be least likely to appreciate the coming conversation

  • e.g “Our vacuum cleaner just broke down! The floors are very dusty.“

• negative politeness

  • negative politeness is used when you want to maintain distance with the other person, observing their rights to their possessions and time, so you express your needs in the form of a yes/no to give them options

  • e.g “Could I, please, borrow your vacuum cleaner for just an hour?“

• positive politeness

  • positive politeness is used when there is less social distance between the speaker and the listener, they are usually close to each other

  • e.g “Susu, dear, I need to borrow the vacuum cleaner!“

• on record baldly (most direct, least polite)

  • on record baldly politeness is most appropriately used with people closest to you i.e a family member

  • e.g “Get the vacuum cleaner!“

People choose the appropriate politeness strategy based on the context as follows:

1. situational context

   1. size of imposition — the greater the imposition, the more polite (indirect) the strategy

   2. setting of the interaction — the more formal the setting, the more polite the strategy

2. social context

   1. social distance — the greater the social distance, the more polite (indirect) the strategy. This will increase or decrease according to;

      1. degree of familiarity

      2. differences of status

      3. societal roles

      4. age

      5. gender

      6. education

      7. social class

   2. power relations — differences of status, age, role, gender, education, and social class give speakers power and authority which can be expressed through linguistic choices a speaker makes

Face-threatening acts are sometimes unavoidable, but speakers usually redress their FTAs through the various politeness strategies. Disagreements are an inevitable part of discourse and the management of differences of opinion is closely related to face-saving strategies.

Paul Grice’s Maxims of Conversation

Paul Grice (1975) developed the four maxims of conversation. These were the guideline principles which are generally adopted in conversation to provide a general framework for managing conversation.

Other spoken language functions include:

• interactional language — the language of informal speech, has a social function; its purpose is to develop relationships between speakers

• referential language — provides the listener with information, used to refer objects or to abstract concepts; the speaker assumes knowledge from the listener while the listener has to understand the context before they can make sense of the references

• expressive language — highlights the speaker’s emotions, feelings, and attitudes; shows the speaker’s judgements or feelings about another person, event, or situation

• transactional language — getting information or making a deal, driven by ‘needs and wants‘ rather than sociability

• phatic language — used for social purposes rather than to convey serious meaning, also known as ‘small talk‘

According to Dan P. McAdams from the Northwestern University, his study called Self and Identity suggests three types of self:

• social actor

  • contributes to language variation

  • regional, social, or statistic

  • distinct accents, different slang

  • engaged, aware of their surroundings, socially aware

• motivated agent

  • act upon inner desires

  • direction and purpose

  • goals and values-oriented

• autobiographical author

  • connects their past with their present and future

  • beginning, turning point, climax, high resolution; plot

  • ‘life story‘

  • Cheshire (1987): It is becoming recognized that adult language, as well as a child language, develops in response to important life events that affect the social relations and social attitudes of individuals

Language plays a role in our self-identity. One, your voice is unique to you — your accent. Your individual speech pattern is known as your idiolect and the form of language you speak based on where you live or your social group is known as your sociolect.

Discourse communities: a grouping of people who share common language norms, characteristics, patterns, or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other

Accent: a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class

Speech sounds are produced as we breathe out. The air that we exhale is modified as it leaves the lungs, past the glottis in the throat, and through the mouth or nose. Noise gives it a voice by the vocal chords and individual sounds are shaped by the mouth and tongue.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardised way of pronouncing vocabulary in another language through common vowel sounds. The IPA can be used to transcribe sounds in non-Latin alphabets (languages with their own writing system).

• choral singers will often use the IPA to standardise their vowels in order to make the sound more pleasing to hear; it is also helpful when singing in other languages

Much like Received Pronunciation (RP), accents will either be linked to geographical area or status. Certain accents will carry more prestige. Broader regional accents are typically associated with lower socioeconomic groups. There are also assumptions that accents from rural areas indicate that the speaker is of lower intelligence.

Dialect: the accent, lexis, and grammar of a specific geographical area

Sociolect: the kind of language we draw on to display our membership of social groups e.g age, gender, social class, ethnicity, occupation, and interests

Idiolect: the unique combination of words, expressions, and constructions that an individual habitually uses

Social Identity

The language used by group members in a social group can influence an individual’s sense of selff as they aim to make their speech more desirable and like the group. This idea is discussed in Howard Giles’ cultural accomodation theory (scroll further for all theories for the topic).

There are many varieties of English language (see English in the World). These have evolved through complex historical and social factors and are continuing to change the forms of English in use across the world.

People will have idiolects, sociolects, and various other speech styles unique to us that portray our social identity.

Almost all societies have some form of group classification, or stratification, whereby some groups have greater access to a more favourable lifestyle than others. This can be seen in fuedal strutures (e.g Tsarist Russia, the Ancient Era of France of the monarchy) where slavery and peasants were denied permanent equality.

This inequality based on socioeconomic status is still present today but is now called the class system with the following terms:

• upper-class/nobility/aristocracy — the highest prestige a person can have; usually generational wealth passed on to heirs; prone to nepotism

• middle-class — neither high nor low prestige; earned their wealth and their place in society either by education, entrepeneurship, or philanthropy among various influential positions

• lower-class/working class — the lowest prestige a person can have; known to be in financial ‘harship‘; often found in minimum-wage jobs

Kate Fox: “class pervades all aspects of English life and culture“.

Studies on the Class System

The Fourth Floor Study by William Labov (1966)

Labov researched the pronunciation of a separate consonant /r/ after a vowel, which produces a distinctive sound, often heard in the accents of Scotland, Ireland, and much of North America.

At the time of the study, this style of accent were connoted to the lower classes.

Restricted and Elaborated Codes: Basil Bernstein (1971)

Bernstein’s theory related to the language skills of early years primary school children.

The restricted code does not refer to restricted vocabulary. Instead, the restricted code is shorter, condensed, and requires background information and prior knowledge. It is most suitable for insiders who share assumptions and understanding on the topic. This code will be used within friends, family, and other intimately knit groups.

The elaborated code does not refer to flowery language. Instead, the elaborated code assumes the listener does not share the same assumptions or understandings and must be more explicit in its information. This code will be used to foster a sense of inclusion.

Peter Trudgill (1974)

Peter Trudgill conducted this study in Norwich. He investigated a similar indicator of language and social class and found that working-class women were more aware of the more prestigious form of pronunciation. Language use would change depending on how conscious a person was of their speech.

His theory of language variation states that people belonging to higher social classes would use more standard language forms. The higher the social class, the closer to prestige varieties their language would be.

He determined that the more people felt scrutinised, the more they adopted standard language forms.

BBC: The Great British Class Survey (2011)

The BBC carried out a survey of 161,400 respondents.

An important result was that the concepts of upper and middle and working class in modern Britain, often satirised in comedy shows, are outdated. However, clear divisions still exist based on wealth and access to technical knowledge.

Contexts for Language Use

Jargon is also a form of language that is used in technical situations. It may be used by specialists in their field of work.

Teenage Language and Identity

Teenagers are thought to be inarticulate and express themselves mostly through social media. They are also prone to ‘text speak‘.

As teenagers are the primary adopters of popular culture, they are one of the first people to innovate language to suit the changing times. With the help of social media and instant messaging, this innovated language can be spread easily without physical boundaries and timezones. Teenagers will share different language styles based on their differing exposure to pop culture.

Teenage language is still thought to have lower standards than standard language. However, it is not about the acquisition of language, but the adaptation of language to more adult situations. Teenagers will code switch between different language styles and those who are unable to do so are the ones often subject to negative media attention.

ECKERT (2003)

Slang is used to establish a connection to youth culture, set themselves off from the older generation, and to signal coolness, toughness, or attitude. Linguistic change is far more common in teens.

ZIMMERMAN (2009)

Zimmerman argues that the following factors are influential in teen language innovation:

• media and the press

• new means of communication

• music

• street art and graffiti

VIVIAN DE KLERK (2005)

Klerk believed that young people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms in a need to be seen as “modern, cool, fashionable, and up to date“. They want to belong to a group that is different and whose “habits are different from their parents, other adults, and young people“.

TAGLIAMONTE (2005) - USING ‘LIKE‘ AS A DISCOURSE MARKER

Tagliamonte suggests, like Eckert, that the pattern of higher usafe of ‘like‘ among 15-16 years reflects an innovative use of language.

Underhill (1988): It is ‘neither random nor mindless. Instead, it functions with great reliability as a marker of new information and focus‘.

This is followed by a reduction in the 17-18 year olds, reflecting “linguistic change towards standards norms as adolescents enter young adulthood“. This pattern can be referred to as age grading, where there is a change in the use of language that correlates with life stages.

ODATO (2013)

Odato researched the use of ‘like‘ in children’s speech. Odato found that children as young as 4 were using ‘like‘. He identified three stages in the use of ‘like‘ as a discourse marker:

1. children use ‘like’ infrequently and ‘in only a few synctactic positions‘, mainly at the beginning of a clause

2. children use ‘like‘ more often and in a greater number of positions

   1. girls tended to move to this stage by 5 while boys tended to move to this stage by 7

3. children now use it more frequently in other positions, such as before prepositional phrases

   1. girls tended to move to this stage earlier than boys

Eckert (2003): using ‘like‘ and ‘okay‘ as a discourse marker also comes with rising intonation and multiple negation. Adolescents do not all talk alike; on the contrary, differences among adolescents are probably far greater than speech differences among the members of any other speech group.

Hitchens (2010): Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‘like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

GUMPERZ (1982)

Gumperz believes that people use terms called the ‘we‘ code and the ‘they‘ code to outline the way that language or a dialect can act as a marker of identity.

Users of a minority dialect or language perceive their own manner of speaking as the ‘we‘ code ties to informality and group membership. They perceive the majority dialect or language as the ‘they‘ code, tied to formality and impersonal relations.

JOOS (1968)

Joos created a scale/continuum for the five levels of formality.

1. intimate — language used in private/between very close friends/families/couples

2. casual — language used between friends

3. consultative — language used when casual is too informal or formal is too formal

4. formal — language used when there is no personal relationship between the speaker and the hearer

5. frozen — language used is fixed for that specific context e.g ANZAC Day speech formats

Inclusion and Exclusion

Language is linked to politics and social concerns where information and opportunities may be granted or denied. This has often been linked to power and the influence of dominant groups in society. There are many examples of exclusion based on language:

• the Anglo-Saxons and peasants were ridiculed for speaking Old English while the rest of the country spoke French when the Normans invaded England

• the Catholic Church opposed the first translations of the Bible from Latin to English as Latin was the language of the Church

• colonisation by Spain caused many Amerindian languages, such as Quechua, of South America to be reduced; Portuguese survived in Brazil while Spanish is widely spoken elsewhere

• Jamaican immigrants in England (1950s) found their style of speaking English less understood by the British and only reinforced their differences

• British colonisation of New Zealand led to the language death of Te Reo Māori; children were forbidden from speaking Māori and were beaten if heard speaking it

  • there have been initiatives to revitalise (all successful) Te Reo Māori, including Māori Language Week, implementation of Te Reo in day-to-day life, and education

• slaves during the Transatlantic Slave trade moved between America and Africa and they developed pidgins

  • these slaves were excluded from any rights in America and were mixed between those who spoke other languages to supress rebellion

  • pidgins were a mix of these languages to form a functional mix of lexis and syntax and then developed into a creole

• during the apartheid regime, the white government proposed that black children should be taught in Afrikaans but later sparked riots in 1976; the people saw education in English as an advantage and did not want to be denied that

• young male gang members often failed school because their style of English was not the same as the one used for examining

As a result, negative stereotypes have been produced. They have led to huge racial inequalities and unsolicited persecution.

Inclusion is important as it brings a sense of belonging and status for its participants. Celebrities and media figures will often use interviews to keep in touch with their fans and connect with them with a more casual atmosphere.

Case Study: Fansites

Fansites are a popular place that provides an inclusive community based on a common interest. All fan groups and websites have common characteristics. They:

• provide a forum for sharing interests and ideas, where specialist knowledge gives status to group members

• allow people with a very specific interest to meet like-minded people

• share a common language and jargon which gives linguistic cohesion to the group

Membership and language are important discriminators. Other fan material that adds to this inclusion are merchandise, fan art and fanfiction.

Language and Thought

Who would believe that language can be so influential in the way we actually view and think about the world?

Some questions that come under this heading include:

• does an individual first think of an idea or did speaking, hearing, or reading about an idea spur a thought?

• can thought exist without language?

• which came first? language or thought? are they separate and independent entities?

The fundamental idea behind linguistic determinism is that our language determines the way we think. Much of our everyday lives involve using language. However, our cognitive skills process and store information that helps us to create and maintain our sense of who we are. These stored ideas and memories are part of our thoughts and we use this selected information to interpret the language, actions, and attitudes of other people.

The relationship between language and thought has direct implications for individuals in the way that they relate to social groups around them.

Language and Social Equality

The ideas about the influence of language on people’s thoughts are relevant to behaviour. If people believe members of other social groups to be inferior, they may use inappropriate or negative language to express these thoughts.

Social (in)equality can be found still in our language in the following groups:

• gender — traditional words for employment imply that only men can do certain jobs (e.g policeman, fireman); they have since been neutralised to make them applicable to all (e.g police officer, firefighter)

  • there have also been traditional stereotypes on gender in a conversation; women are thought to be passive listeners with much ‘gossip‘ and men are thought to deal with more serious debates and discussions

    • social psychologists suggest that gossip has been used by women to form relationships and stay on top of things

  • men are also seen to interrupt and ‘hold the conversational floor‘

    • 1970s study by Don Zimmerman and Candace West: found in 11/31 conversations between men and women, men interrupted on 46 occasions while women only interrupted on 2

    • 1997 study saw reflexive pronouns highlighting gender stereotypes i.e ‘The ballerina prepared himself for the performance‘

    • men are less likely to give supportive feedback, women’s conversation is more cooperative and tend to do the ‘hard work‘ in keeping a conversation going through politeness principles

    • men’s language has been considered coarser than women’s

  • can be related to traditional stereotypes between genders e.g women being nurterers and men being the breadwinners

• comedy — certain types of comedy are now not acceptable, such as personal or derogatory comments at the expense of people’s physical appearance

• ethnicity — politically correct language combats many unpleasant racist slurs and insults; in many countries, it is illegal to use racist language, gestures, and acts

• workplace changes — the increasing number of women in senior roles in workplaces throughout the world breaks down the assumption that the boss will always be a ‘he‘ and that the secretary or personal assistant will be a ‘she‘

• age — in the European Union and other places, it is illegal to discriminate in terms of age and this is usually taken to mean older people; there is anecdotal evidence that older women in particular are subject to ageist discrimination

  • changing attitudes about ageing have made people aware of words that reinforce stereotypes and the need to avoid mentioning age unless it is actually relevant

  • terms like ‘elderly‘, ‘old‘, and ‘geriatric‘ are increasingly replaced by ‘older person‘ or ‘seniors‘

• disability — laws against disability discrimination aim to remove the belief that people are defined by their disability; for instance, the term ‘handicapped‘ has generally been replaced by the term ‘disabled‘

  • a United States government paper states that the term ‘disabled‘ is less desirable than ‘people with disabilities‘ because the former implies that a person’s disability is the whole person

  • in Australia, the government-led National Disability strategy has, as one of its core principles, the inclusion and participation in everyday life of people living with a disability

• religious beliefs — these can be restricted in language usage; in a multi-faith society, for example, the term ‘Christian name‘ does not apply to all religions and so would be replaced by ‘first name‘ or ‘personal name‘

Political Correctness

Political correctness (PC) has worthy intentions of treating all people equally. However, some PC language has been ridiculed for being over-sensitive. The term itself has acquired negative connotations.

There are concerns that policing and controlling language denies freedom of speech, and that certain powerful groups are adopting dictatorial methods. However, if people are brought up to treat others respectfully, then, hopefully, this will bring about a more tolerant society.

Theories of Language and the Self

Accommodation Theory by Howard Giles (1970s)

Howard Giles’ accommodation theory is the theory where we try to make ourselves closer to our partner in a conversation by adapting our speech to be more like them. It is the study of “when we do this, how we do this, why we make our adjustments, and the consequences of those social adjustments“.

In some occasions, we will converge and make the social distance closer, but other times we will diverge and make the social distance bigger to emphasise self identity.

• There is also the possibility of mutual convergence where both speakers adapt language to make it easier for each other to understand.

Giles: People accomodate to where they believe someone else is, not what they actually are

In 1984, Coupland looked at a woman in a Cardiff call centre and noticed how she adapted her accent according to the person on the phone and her attitude towards them. This follows the ideas of:

• upward convergence — make our speech more like Received Pronunciation (RP) and less dialectal

• downward convergence — making our speech less RP and more informal

Case Study: Matha’s Vineyard by William Labov (1963)

William Labov was studying phonological variation, particularly in diphthongs. He conducted his study on an island called Martha’s Vineyard off the northeast coast of America.

Labov interviewed 69 different people of varying age, race, and social groups. The questions he used subconsciously urged the participants to use words that contained the desired vowels and diphthongs (/au/ and /ai/) he intended to study. Some interview questions he used were:

• “When we speak of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what does right mean? … Is it in writing?”

• “If a man is successful at a job he doesn’t like, would you still say he was a successful man?”

His results found that phonological variation was based on social loyalty. Those who intended to stay on the island spoke with a more centralised accent that was farther from mainland pronunciations while those who wished to leave spoke with less centralisation with the intention to go to the mainland.

Social Network Theory by James and Lesley Milroy (1987)

Source: Wikipedia

In sociolinguistics, social network describes the structure of a particular speech community. Lesley Milroy described it as a “web of ties“ between individuals, saying that the structure will depend on the types of connections it contains.

The structure consists of the participants and their relationships.

• anchor — the key participant who everyone is connected to; will have varying strengths of ties to other participants, represented by points

  • other participants in the network can also be referred to as actors or members

• relationships — can be described by four categories;

  • density: found by dividing the number of all existing links between members of the network and the number of potential links within the same set of members; dense networks are most likely to be found in small, stable communities where accents are reinforced

  • member closeness centrality: the measurement of how close an individual actor is to all the other actors in the community; this central actor are usually the ones under pressure to maintain the norms of the network and are not the type to adopt linguistic innovation

  • multiplexity: the number of separate social connections between any two actors; a multiplex relationship involves interaction in multiple social contexts

  • orders: there are three orders to define where a speaker is within a social network depending on the strength of their connection to the anchor

    • first order zone • directly linked to any given individual, this member has a large number of direct connections to the anchor

    • second order zone • connected to at least one actor within the first order zone but may not be directly or is loosely connected to the anchor

    • third order zone • newly observed individuals not directly connected to the first order zone but may be connected to those in the second order zone; peripheral members with the lowest member closeness centrality

Strong community ties are associated with identity. Strong accents reinforce community ties and, therefore, a sense of self.

Politeness Principles by Robin Lakoff (1973)

Lakoff suggested that conversational interaction is governed by what she called the politeness principle. She defined this by specifying three rules, or maxims, which speakers usually observed;

1. don’t impose

2. give options

3. make your receiver feel good, positive affirmations

It draws heavily upon Erving Goffman’s face concept.

Genderlect Theory by Deborah Tannen (1990)

Tannen studied conversational styles between men and women through the following characteristics:

• status vs support

• independence vs intimacy

• advice vs understanding

• information vs feelings

• orders vs proposals

• conflict vs compromise

She found that men’s conversations tended to be about the giving and receiving of information; they are often assertive with no strategies to avoid conflict. Women’s conversation reinforced teamwork and building ideas with one another to compromise over differences.

Teenage girls tend towards ‘male speak‘ during their teenage years; using assertive and non-standard language.

Standpoint Theory by Harding and Wood (1970s-80s)

Harding and Wood believed that language about a certain gender i.e women should be practised from their point of view. If one is to study women, the language used in that practice must be done in their style.

The theory suggests that women have a different type of knowledge, which may not be given equal status to that of men. However, it doesn’t take into account differences of lives between women.

The Muted Group Theory by Cheris Kramerae (1978)

Kramarae suggests that certain minorities in society have much less power than others and, as a consequence, they are silenced.

Deficit Theory by Otto Jespersen (1922) and Robin Lakoff (1975)

The deficit approach is the belief that the language used by women is inferior to that used by men.

Jesperson offered observations about women’s conversational strategies, arguing that women, much more often than men, break off without finishing their sentences because they start talking without having thought out what they were going to say. This typifies women’s language as ‘lively chatter‘ and their roles consisted of: care of children, cooking, brewing, baking, sewing, washing, and other things that “for the most part, demanded no deep thought“.

While Jesperson’s approach was criticised for being observational and not based on detailed evidence, it did bring about the change of making women a relevant linguistic study.

Lakoff published Language and Woman’s Place in 1975 where she looked at a specific group of women (American, white, middle-class and educated). Despite the narrow sample group, the findings were interpreted as relating to all women.

Lakoff labelled women’s spoken language in a way that implied an almost complete dissimilarity from men’s language and characterised it as having linguistic features that highlighted women’s uncertainty and powerlessness. She even used linguistic labels that seemed to confirm that women’s language was inferior to men’s.

Lakoff claimed that much of women’s language lacked real authority compared to that of men through:

• the use of specialised vocabulary centred around domestic chores

• precise colour terms e.g mauve

• weak expletive terms e.g oh dear

• ‘empty‘ adjectives e.g charming, sweet

• tag questions

• hedging

• intensifiers

Dominance Theory of Language by Robin Lakoff (1975) and Dale Spender (1980)

The dominance theory of language is the belief that the language differences between men and women can be explained by the hierarchal dominance of men in society.

Difference Theory of Language by Deborah Tannen (1990)

The difference theory is the belief that men and women have innate differences in the style and function of their speech and writing.

Audience Design Theory by Allan Bell (1984)

Source: Wikipedia

This theory suggests that we speak for our audience and adapt our speech accordingly to express solidarity or intimacy with them, or away from their audience’s speech to express distance. It is a sociolinguistic model outlined by Allan Bell.

The audience design framework distinguishes between several kinds of audience types based on three criteria from the perspective of the speaker: known (whether an addressee is known to be part of a speech context), ratified (the speaker acknowledges the listener’s presence in the speech context), or addressed (the listener is directly spoken to).

Bell defined the following audience types:

• addressee — listeners who are known, ratified, and addressed

• auditor — listeners who are not directly addressed, but are known and ratified

• overhearer — non-ratified listeners of whom the speaker is aware

• eavesdropper — non-ratified listeners of whom the speaker is unaware

Synthetic Personalisation by Normal Fairclough (1989)

Source: Wikipedia

Synthetic personalisation is a term coined by Fairclough that relates to written language changing according to the audience and creating a relationship with them. It is the process of addressing mass audiences as though they were individuals through inclusive language usage.

Fairclough: “a compensatory tendency to give the impression of treating each of the people ‘handled‘ en masse as an individual. Examples would be air travel (have a nice day) [and] restaurants (welcome!)“

It is also known as the way that texts relate to an imagined reader; the imagined reader has particular values and attitudes. It is a way of imposing a particular idealogy or a set of beliefs.

Behaviourism by B.F Skinner (1938)

Skinner believed that children learn language through imitation and reinforcement. Children will imitate from their parents and other caregivers and it is important that they are rewarded.

Another researcher Katherine Nelson (1973) found that if parents were more rewarding and accepting, their childrens’ vocabulary would advance more quickly than those children who’s mothers kept correcting them.

• Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi (1969) found that parents are more likely to respond to a child’s utterances if they are true rather than correcting them

  • Child: there doggie

    Parent: Yes, it’s a dog!

  • v.s

    Parent: No, there is a dog.

However, it can be argued the behaviourist theory is not true thanks to Berko and Brown (1960). Their study is known as the ‘fis‘ phenomenon.

Brown spoke to a child who said “fis“ instead of “fish“. When Brown corrected him, the child repeated the word back but in the same way he knew (“fis“). When Brown said “fis“, the child repeated it. When Brown said the word again but correctly (“fish“), the child responded with “fis“ as always.

This shows that children phonologically develop differently and hear themselves differently, meaning no repetition of the correct word will change this until they develop their ability to pronounce the more difficult consonant clusters.

Empiricism by John Locke (1690)

Source: study.com, John Locke and Empiricism

If something is empirical, that means it is based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. Empiricism is a philosophical theory that believes all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses.

Locke’s theory of empiricism is built on the idea that there is no knowledge innate to the mind. Because of this, sensory experience of the material world is how one must attain valid knowledge.

Locke believed in the idea of the tabula rasa, or ‘clean slate‘ from Latin. It represents the mind of the child as being without innate inborn ideas or knowledge of any kind.

This is done through the interrelationships of universal simple ideas, composition of complex ideas, and interaction with material objects in the world through their primary and secondary qualities.

Empiricial Idealism by George Berkeley

Also known as subjective idealism, is a concept that only minds and mental contents exist. It rejects dualism (subject and object), neutral monism (mind to matter; reality is neither mental nor physical), and materialism.

He defends two metaphysical theses: idealism (everything that exists either is a mind or depends on a mind for its existence) and immaterialism (matter does not exist).

Innatism by Plato (427-347 BCE) and Descartes (1637)

In contrast to the empiricism school, the innatism theory argues that the human brain is special in the way it is able to deal with complexities of language. The mind is simply born with ideas; it is ‘innate‘.

Not to be confused with idealism, innatism is a psychological explanation of the origin of human thought which contends that thought generates its own content.

Plato and Descartes believed that these ideas were in the mind at birth and given by a supreme being.

Descartes: ‘it requires very little reason to be able to speak‘

Nativism by Noam Chomsky (1957)

Chomsky believed children had an inherited ability to learn language as soon as they are born. This is due to something he coined as the language acquisition device (LAD) which already has predisposed information, particularly about grammar and sentence structure.

Evidence to support this theory include errors by children with past tense verbs.

• Many children will add ‘-ed‘ to any verb e.g “I drawed“ v.s “I drew“ to make it past tense, even if it is incorrect, which shows they are not imitating their caregivers when they use past tense verbs. They understand that adding ‘-ed‘ to a present tense verb will make it past tense, but that it is not the case for all past tense verbs. These are known as virtuous errors

However, critics do not agree with the innateness theory as it is proven that children don’t just have the LAD alone, but they need imitation to understand basic social interactions such as turn-taking.

Linguistic Determinism by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf (1920s)

Also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, linguistic determinism believes that reality is embedded in a culture’s language and that language then controls thought and cultural norms. Sapir and Whorf believed that words and grammar shape a speaker’s thoughts and subsequently the language shapes their view of the world.

Steven Pinker: “Words are part of reality rather than labels for reality.“

Determinism is the complete opposite of universalism; determinism believes language determines thought.

• in 1984 by George Orwell, Newspeak is the language of Oceania

• Newspeak has a very limited vocabulary and words are made just by adding prefixes and suffixes as needed; no synonyms are made

  • e.g bad = ungood, very good = plusgood

• the vocabulary of Newspeak does not include any words for concepts such as freedom and democracy

• it supports linguistic determinism by limiting words; if the word does not exist, the concept cannot exist

Linguistic reflectionism: language reflects the needs, views, and opinions of its users

Linguistic relativity: the particular language we speak influences the way we think about reality; a particular aspect of language influences a particular aspect of cognition

Universalism by Rik Pinxten (2011)

Universalism is the opposite of determinism where the view is that thought comes before language. Thought determines language completely.

According to cognitive universalism, all human beings unconsciously impose structure on the world through the same fundemental mental categories. In linguistic universalism, people believe that we can say whatever we want to say in any language and that can always be translated into another (translatability.)

• Boas-Jakobson: theoretically, all thoughts can be expressed in any language. However, different languages require different information to be mentioned

  • in French, objects are gendered, English has no gendered objects, while Vietnamese has no gendered lexis

Cognitive Development by Jean Piaget (1920s-1930s)

Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence to observe their cognitive development. He came about his theory in the 1920s-30s following his job at the Binet Institute to create French versions of questions on English intelligence tests.

Piaget believed cognitive ability is in-born. Once children were able to think in a certain way, they developed the language to describe those thoughts.

[Full notes on the stages can be found in my other note, Stages of Child Language Development]

Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development by Lev Vygotsky (1978)

Source: SimplyPsychology, written by Saul Mcleod, PhD

Vygotsky stated that language has two functions: inner speech for mental reasoning and external speech for social conversation.

At first, language and thought are independent. Before the age of two, a child employs words socially and possess no internal language.

However, once they converge through development i.e social language is internalised and assist the child with their reasoning, the social environment is ingrained within the child’s learning. You will learn to use them at the same time.

Video Notes

Lena Boroditsky — TED Talk

• “to have a second language is to have a second soul“ — Charlemagne vs. “what’s in a name? a rose by another name would smell as sweet“ — Shakespeare

• “if your language makes you do it, then you can“

• writing direction can affect how you view something e.g with the phrase “he pushed the ball“, an English speaker would picture it as the boy pushing the ball from left to right; a Hebrew speaker would picture it as going from right to left

• sense of direction can be egocentric based on language

• number, colour, gender, events

  • in Spanish, you don’t refer to the person in an accident vs. in English, you refer to the person in an accident

  • “the vase broke“ vs “he broke the vase“

• “the language guides our reasoning about events“, “change and hone to suit our needs“, “the language you speak shapes the way you think“

Keith Chen TED Talk — Could language affect your ability to save money?

• futureless languages → higher savings

• 30% more likely to save in any year

• retire with 25% more in savings

• futureless language speakers 20-24% less likely to smoke, 13-17% less likely to be obese, 21% more likely to use condoms

Texting is killing languages - John Whorter

• “texting is not writing at all”

• speaking casually → word packets of around 7 words

• language is speech

• speaking like writing → writing like you speak

• texting is … fingered speech, write the way we talk

• represents a sort of decline in language

• ’lol’ is being used as a marker of empathy

• a whole new way of writing that young people are developing

• expansion of linguistic repertoire

Framework

TED Talk: Television and Gender Stereotypes

• female character - always in trouble, needs saving, “damsel in distress“

• 2008, media analysis of children’s TV, found twice as many male than female characters, 32% of main characters were female, females more likely to be seen as teenagers, 15% female characters thin waists

• Dr Stacey Smith & Crystal Cook, > 28% of all speaking characters were female, hypersexualisation of female characters, five times more likely to be seen in sexually revealing clothes, a quarter seen as extremely underweight and thing waists

• gender schemas: mental models how children percieve and intepret information in their environment

• HALLOWEEN COSTUMES

• stereotypes are everywhere in media

Gender-Specific Conversational Rituals: Deborah Tannen

• high-status and low-status boys, using language to top each other

• girls are trying not to be the center of attention, cooperative

• girls mirror syntax, girls are trying to prove they are the same

• showing they like each other by saying they’re the same