Language and Self-Identity Notes

Self: An individual's separate existence from other people.
Early Childhood Development: The physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development that takes place from birth to the primary school years.
Self-Identity: An individual's awareness of their own unique characteristics in relation to the groups around them.
Idiolect: The distinctive pattern of an individual's speech.
Sociolect: The style of speech shared by people in a particular region or social group.
Cooperative Principle: The principle that speakers usually mean what they say, and hearers accept this when trying to understand the meaning.
Conversational Face: The image that a person has of themselves as a conversationalist.
Face-Threatening Acts: Acts or words that appear to threaten the self-esteem of a speaker in conversation.
Positive Politeness: Friendly strategies to make the participants feel good about themselves (e.g., compliments, use of titles, mutually understood jargon, nicknames).
Negative Politeness: Strategies intended to avoid giving offense and imposing on others by showing respect (e.g., "I hope you don't mind if I…," "Would you mind if I asked you to…?")
Adversative Conjunction: A connecting word that starts an idea opposing the one that has just been stated (e.g., 'but', 'however').

Cognitive Skills, Perception, Language, Attention, Processing, Motor skills, Memory, Attention, Visual + Spatial Processing interlinked.
Key Terms:
- Cognitive Skills: Brain skills needed to perform any mental or physical task; concerned with mechanisms of carrying out these tasks, rather than with any knowledge.
- Perception: Recognition and interpretation through the senses.
- Attention: Being able to concentrate on particular mental or physical tasks and sustaining that concentration over other distractions in the environment.
- Memory: The storage and retrieval of information in the brain, divided into short-term and long-term memory.
- Motor Skills: The ability to move the body and to manipulate objects.
- Language: The skill that changes sounds into words to be spoken.
- Visual & Spatial Processing: The ability to understand relationships between objects and to visualize images and ideas.
THEORIES:
- Behaviorism: Development of child development sprang directly to behaviorists from observation & the world around them + language.
- Empiricism: Sense of self-identity comes from senses and personal experience.
- (Innatism): Something we are born with that helps us develop as children (similar to LAD).
- Nativism: Based in innatism, individual is born with genetic abilities which include development of language.

KEY TERMS:
- Linguistic Determinism: The idea that the structure of a language determines the thought processes of its speakers.
- Linguistic Reflectionism: The idea that language reflects thoughts, the opposite of linguistic determinism.
- Linguistic Relativity: The idea that the structure of language affects a person's view of the world, either very directly (linguistic determinism) or as a much more indirect and weaker influence.
- Stereotypes: A very generalized opinion or idea about a type of person or group of people; a simplified and biased image that often produces negative feelings about those concerned.
- Political Correctness: Avoiding offense to any group of people who may be seen to be at a disadvantage because of their race, gender, disability, or any social disadvantage.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:
- Claims that language influences thought, based mainly on American Indian languages (e.g., Hopi).
- Example: "chairman" etc.
- Mentions time period specifics
- "no adverbs of time"
Universalism Theory:
- Counters that thoughts can be influenced but not controlled by language.

Key Terms:
- Convergence: When we make our language style similar to those speakers around us
- Divergence: When we make our language more distinctly different from those speakers around us.
- Speech Communities: Groups of people who use the same variety of language and have a shared understanding of its style.
- Linguistic Prestige: The degree of respect and value given to a particular style of language by a speech community.
Examples:
- Texas: 32.1\%
- Nevada: 29.5\%, closer to Mexican
Theories / Studies
- Frozen Language: language is unchanging + full of archaisms, which are words + phrases used in earlier times but no longer in use, also referenced in the studly of lang change.

Key Terms:
- Patois: A particular variety of speech used by a group which may be regarded as having a low status; not to be confused with Jamacian Patois, which is an English-based creole language spoken by the majority of Jamacians and is a combination of English- and West African-based languages.
- Code-Switching: Switching between different varieties or registers of language.
- Computer-Mediated Communication: Communication between people by means of electronic devices, such as email, texting, and chat rooms.
Theory
- Standpoint Theory (Harding & Wood): Suggests that studies about women, including language, should be practiced from the viewpoint of women's lives and experiences, which are significantly different than men's lives.
- Muted Group Theory (Cheris Kramarae): Suggests that certain minorities in a society have much less power than others, and as a consequence of this lack of power, they are silenced as no one wishes to listen to them; women are dominated by male status and power.