Children's Reading Essay Planning

Points that could be made in the essay

• Overview
• Lineation of the two texts
• Skinner - imitation, correction, positive and negative reinforcement, Nilem giving them the answers,
• Vygotsky - scaffolding
• Emphasis placed on different words - capitals, speech bubbles, exclamation marks,
• Context - classroom setting, teaching assistance not parent, giving the answer in order to not miss meaning, reading for meaning, reading for pleasure, reading schemes,  
• Context cues - Images
• Defective orthography - “bow” becomes "boo"

Paragraph
In both texts, the teaching assistant, Nilem, seems to be giving both Tom and Tania, the correct pronunciation of words such as “trusty” or even just finishing off a word that they haven’t finished saying in their utterance such as when Tania says “sher” and Nilem says “lock”. It is interesting that unlike some other caregivers, Nilem just gives the children the answer rather than letting them explore the possible answer for themselves using context cues and sounding out the words. There are many reasons why Nilem could have not scaffolded them but finished their utterance and let them imitate which may mean that the children are unlikely to remember how to pronounce those words, it could be because it is an educational environment and the teaching assistance may have little experience with helping children read and may have to read to several more children so by providing the answer it speeds up the reading process. However, it could be that by just providing the standard pronunciation it allows for the child to not lose the meaning of the story because if they were busy trying to correct themselves they would lose their place in the story and may begin to lose interest in reading and may find reading more of a chore rather than an enjoyable experience. Also, there are times during the readings where Nilem does give the children some time to figure out how to pronounce certain words and when they seem 'stuck' Nilem finishes their utterance. However, there are also times where it could be interpreted as Nilem interrupting the children and finishing their utterance because Nilem doesn't believe the child may know how to pronounce that word, maybe that particular word is harder to pronounce or Nilem knew they had difficulty pronouncing that word before.

Something on The British Library...

I was looking at this text on The British Library’s website. The reason I found this particular timeline interesting, even though there were others on the website, was because of how they decided to end the timeline. Although the last part of the timeline was "1900s - present day", many of the coinages that they included were quite old, such as "gasmasks" and "gobstoppers", and surprisingly didn't include any of the newer neologisms such as "selfie" or "duckface". However, this is likely to be the case because this aspect of the website is unlikely to be constantly updated possibly because of time which suggests this is a constraint of the text. Another reason why this text may not have included new coinages is possibly because of the audience which could possibly be older people and so newer neologisms may not have felt necessary to include and they may have given the timeline more an informal tone rather than giving the impression that the text is for informing purposes and may need to show a more formal tone. In the text I found the use of the noun "weirdo" which comes from the root word "weird" which is an adjective, the coinage seems to have come from the conversion of the root word to an adjective by affixing a non-standard suffix of “o”. This isn’t uncommon as this seems to have happened to other words too such as “sad” has become “saddo” and “psyche” has become “psycho”. This word could be evidence for both diachronic and synchronic language change because the root word’s denotations could be considered diachronic language change because when it was first coined it used to mean fantastic, bizarre and have connotations of the supernatural. Over time it seems to the adjective “weird” has become more pejorative and have connotations of “freak” and “strange”. “Weirdo” could be evidence for synchronous language change because this seems to be more of a recent coinage, and from the timeline, we can tell it happened during the 1900s.    

Shakespeare's Impact on Language - Then & Now

When Shakespeare’s impact on Language began between two major linguistic stages in the history of English - Middle English, the language written and spoken during the Middle Ages (most famously by Chaucer) and Modern English, the language in which we write and speak today. Prior to and during Shakespeare’s time, the rules of English including grammar were not standardised. At the time, Modern English was becoming flexible and this was because of the Renaissance. During this time, Language was constantly being invented which is evident in Literature at the time and Shakespeare was leading figure. At the time there was a huge inflow of other European vocabulary into the English Language as a result of Renaissance “cross-pollination” and borrowing.

Once Shakespeare’s plays became popular in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the standardization of the English language to make it what it is today. Many Shakespearean words and phrases have become embedded in the English language, particularly through projects such as Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language which quoted Shakespeare more than any other writer. Shakespeare expanded the scope of English literature by introducing new words and phrases, experimenting with blank verse, and also introducing new poetic and grammatical structures. One of the ways in which grammar was changing at the time was through inflectional endings (suffixes that indicated the word’s grammatical functions in the way that many modern languages still have), they were beginning to disappear which is evident today as Modern English isn't a highly inflected language as it once was. Shakespeare helped to further develop style and structure to an otherwise loose, spontaneous language. Written Elizabethan English stylistically closely followed the spoken language. The naturalness gave force and freedom since there was no formalized prescriptive grammar binding the expression. While a lack of prescribed grammatical rules at the time introduced vagueness in literature, it also expressed feelings with profound vividness and emotion which created, "freedom of expression" and "vividness of presentment". It was a language which expressed feelings explicitly. Shakespeare's gift involved using the exuberance of the language and decasyllabic structure in prose and poetry of his plays to reach the masses and the result was "a constant two way exchange between learned and the popular, together producing the unique combination of racy tang and the majestic stateliness that informs the language of Shakespeare”. Another way in which Shakespeare affected language was through conversion for example he made fool, which was a noun, into a verb within his writing. Also, in Love’s Labour's Lost Shakespeare was able to exploit multiple meanings of one word to create a sentence such as “Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile”. In this sentence “light” has connotations of intellect, wisdom, daylight etc all connotations the word light has today. Among Shakespeare's greatest contributions to the English language, the most important must be the introduction of new vocabulary and phrases which have enriched the language making it more colourful and expressive. Warren King clarifies the number of words Shakespeare coined by saying that, "In all of his work – the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems – Shakespeare uses 17,677 words: Of those, 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare added a considerable amount of words to the English Language when compared to additions made at other times. He is also well known for borrowing words from classical literature and foreign languages. Some of the words Shakespeare coined which are still present in Modern English include: laughable, assassination, advertising and gossip. As well as coining new words, Shakespeare coined phrases some of which are still embedding in Modern English today. Phrases include: “it’s Greek to me”, “green eyed jealousy”, “laughed yourself into stitches” and “breaking the ice”.

One interesting word that Shakespeare coined was “swag” which is interesting because some people believe that “swag” is a relatively new addition to the dictionary and not one which people would believe to be that old or to have been used a long time ago. Shakespeare first used the term in Othello saying “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at, for thy beauty swags the heavens for I am not what I am”. By looking at the context which the term is being used it seems as though it has kept its denotation from many years and it doesn't seem as though it has undergone broadening in order for it to mean what it does today.

Language Change Research Task - The Feminist Movement

The feminist movements of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century consisted of promoting equality between the sexes. From this political movement, we have seen coinages and neologisms enter our language, most of which are still part of our everyday vocabulary. As well as new words, the feminist movements led to words broadening and narrowing in meaning, also some words have undergone amelioration and pejoration.

The word “feminism” is credited to have been coined by Charles Fourier, a French Philosopher, in 1837.  Before this, in 1872 the terms “feminist” and “feminism” first appeared in France and the Netherlands. The words were introduced to Britain in the 1890s and 1910 in the USA. The term “feminism” has three meanings: it is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men, it is an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women and it can also mean a feminine character. It can be argued that the term “feminism” has undergone narrowing as the last denotation attributed to “feminism” is one that is unlikely we would associate with today. However, if we look at other denotations of the word, such as the ones found on Urban Dictionary, it seems that “feminism” may have undergone broadening to an extent. Part of the Urban Dictionary’s denotation states that “Feminism… embraces the belief that all people are entitled to freedom and liberty within reason-including equal civil rights-and that discrimination should not be made based on gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, religion, culture, or lifestyle.” The ending suggests a broadening of the denotations of the word “feminism” in that in the future we may see it to have more associations with other groups in society that deserve equality and not just women. It can be argued that through diachronic language change, the term “feminism” has undergone pejoration because some people may associate feminism with negative connotations possibly because of views and actions of radical feminists which may have had a negative impact on the feminist perspective and views as a whole.

The term “herstory” originated around the mid 1970s. The detonation of this noun is that it means the same as history but it was coined in feminist literature and in women’s studies as an alternative form in order to distinguish and emphasise the particular experiences of women. The term was coined by taking the noun “history” and splitting it as if it were a compound word into two separate morphemes, “his” and “story” and then by changing the “his” to “her” and placing the two morphemes back together it creates a new compound word meaning history from her perspective. This coinage has led to the broadening and the possible pejoration of the word “history” as it can be viewed as a word associated with androcentrism rather than a term that simple is knowledge of past events.

The term “feminazi” is a term used by the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s and he credits the term being coined by Tom Hazlett. The term is a portmanteau of the words “feminist” and “Nazi”. This term is obviously a pejorative term used to describe feminists that can or have been perceived to be extreme or radical. Ironically, the Nazis were under the rule of Hitler who was against the feminist movement, so by coining a word which is a portmanteau of “feminist” and “Nazi” can almost be considered an oxymoron although the intention of the coinage was to show how some feminists were just as radical and extreme as the Nazis.

Bibliography

• Wikipedia
• Cambridge Free English Dictionary
• Dictionary.com
• Urban Dictionary

Media Text - Redraft of the Beginning

Secret Teacher: Are boys losing the battle of the sexes?

Debates about female language has led to the voices of men being completely sidelined. Now we have to deal with the damage society and the media has left behind.

• More from The Secret Teacher

The stereotypes placed upon does affect our language, not just the girls but the boys too. Photograph: Aleutie/Shutterstock

Angelica King

Friday 23 January 2015 12.00 GMT

Almost 100 years ago, grammarian Otto Jespersen stated that male language was the “norm” and that anything that wasn't male language was deficient by default. However, a recent longitudinal study has been released suggesting that “girls do better in school than boys” and that the biggest gender divide can be seen in language. But to some of us this is not new information. Recent claims of a “boy crisis” within schools is now seen as inaccurate, as in reality this has been going on for over 100 years. So, is male language now being viewed as “deficient” within our schools? There is a suggestion that over time we have come recognise common female speech techniques, such as being cooperative with others during conversation, as being vital in order to succeed in education and that competitive language techniques, usually attributed to boys, may be considered obsolete.

Language & Gender Article

There are plenty of articles about Language & Gender as long as you know where to look (or what to type into Google etc.) and here is another one. I think my goal now is to find one that relates more to male language rather than articles about females wanting to change our still very sexist language (not that I'm being cynical and that I do not agree with the writer because I do to an extent.)

Fuel For a Language Debate

There has always been discussion on the topic of texting and whether the connotations of which are correct when they say that people who cannot spell. Here's an article that may either "preach to the converted" if you already agree with the writer's view or hopefully sway you.

Hilarious Article

I searched "language" on The Guardian's website and found a hilarious article about teenagers and their use of language. Good for Language Change and Language and Technology.

A Multi-Purpose Article

I found this article today and is very useful for Language and Gender, Language and Technology in some ways and is also good to look at as a Media Text.

How Children Read

There has been quite the debate as to whether the use of “synthetic phonics” is really the ideal method to use in order to teach children how to read. Through the answers given in an online survey, some teachers have said that synthetic phonics highly important in order for a child to learn how to successfully read. However, a majority of teachers believe that although synthetic phonics is important, there are other methods which can be just as good. Many people comment that synthetic phonics is not necessarily bad but that children need a variety of different methods in order to become skilled readers.

Many teachers emphasise the importance of reading for meaning, something that is not part of the synthetic phonics method. There has been concerns raised that the current strategy that the government have imposed, synthetic phonics, has led to unbalanced reading curriculums and that certain reading skills have not been developed in children such as the ability to make predictions within texts and being able to make contextual links. It is argued often that the use of synthetic phonics has led to children losing motivation in reading because the reading schemes are not as enjoyable as real books, children no longer enjoying reading and has also led to the development of a reading style where children are simply decoding texts. One of the biggest problems people have with synthetic phonics is that because children become fixated on pronouncing words that they miss all meaning in the text entirely. Children learn to read by engaging with texts and by using their cuing systems but through synthetic phonics children are missing out meaning and therefore not necessarily learning to read “correctly”. Some children may not like synthetic phonics so much that they may get upset as they cannot understand the “nonsense words” that they come across in their reading schemes. Since English is not a phonetically regular language, it make sense that some children may struggle with the teaching of phonics in a very clinical way and has therefore lead to some children set further behind as readers.

In the future, many are hoping that the government change the strategy that teaches children to read from synthetic phonics to something that enables children to experience the rewards of reading and actually enjoy reading. It has to be understood that reading is much more complex than just linking sounds together.

If someone said the names Biff, Chip and Kipper, I would know exactly what they were talking about, would you? They are the main characters in a popular reading scheme some schools use in order to help teach children how to read. Some people think that these reading schemes are great as they stories that children can relate to and are quite engaging. Reading schemes are written in conjunction with experts who know what strategies to use in order for children to learn to read effectively, for example some reading schemes work with experts in synthetic phonics. However, not all schools use reading schemes. Some schools believe that reading real books leads to children engaging more with the texts because they will enjoy reading and then their reading ability will follow. There is much debate on the subject of reading schemes and whether real books would be better and although many believe they would be because they have much more interesting plots and hook more children into reading and enjoying to read, there is a harsh reality that a low budget a school has can mean that they will just use reading schemes. Another big issue some people have with reading schemes is the use of ability ratings on the reading schemes in order for the teachers to know at what level every child is reading at and some believe this can be damaging for a child’s self esteem as they may be aware of where they sit in terms of ability amongst their friends and it may affect their relationship with reading in the future.

Bibliography

Phonic Boom, By John Hodgson, NATE, Teaching English, Issue 4, Page 23

http://www.theschoolrun.com/school-reading-schemes-explained

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/may/05/literacy-learning-to-read

http://www.tremendouslytwo.com/2011/07/could-we-wave-goodbye-to-reading.html

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/04/reading-lessons-phonics-world-book-day

Interesting...

I found this article on the guardian website and it was an interesting read. This particular article addressed the difference between gender and sex and also other important issues.

A Christmas Grammar Quiz

Here is an interesting grammar quiz I found that you could take a look at and try for yourself.

This Article Caused Major Controversy...

This Guardian Article tells the story of major criticism being given to the writer of a story about Barbie which was written with intention of inspiring young girls to have careers in areas they wouldn't necessarily think about entering and also to empower them but instead made Barbie an engineer that couldn't do the job herself unless she had a man to help her. Read the article yourself and see how you feel about the issue and whether it was right that the writer of the book received major criticism from many people.

Anti-Heroes vs. Anti Heroines

Have a look at this article here. This article from the guardian simultaneously intrigued and angered me. Emma Unsworth, the writer of this article, explores anti-heroes and anti-heroines and the idea that readers are more likely to be intrigued by anti-heroes because they are more likable, mysterious, and dark all of which capture some readers even if they feel as though they must be disliked due to their actions. She then goes on to talk about anti-heroines and how readers react negatively towards them because they are likely to be characters that go against conventions of society and are unlike other female characters making them more unlikable. A great read. Made me look deeper into both my English subjects and is quite useful. Have you heard of any of the books in the list with famous anti-heroines? 

Child Language Acquisition Research Task

Even at an early age, most children learn to discriminate certain pairs of consonants and vowels. Examples of this are the syllables “pa” and “ba”. This is due to our biology, we are born with special “feature detectors” that respond to the speech in our environment. Some sounds that develop early on are “gu” and “ga”, this is because they relate to the babbling that babies do. Although in the past it was believed that there was no link between babbling and early language, recent research has shown that babbling allows them to practice sounds ready for when they begin to speak and the sounds they babble will be similar to the sounds they use in their early vocabulary.

Consonant + vowel sequences usually develop first, this is also due to their biology because the child begins to move their tongues, move their lips and just explore the use of their mouths to communicate.

There are different types of babbling that children do. One is reduplicated babbling which is where babies repeat the use of the same consonant sound. Another type is variegated babbling where there is switching between the consonants and vowels from one syllable to the next.

Once the child reaches a year old, they could potentially be able to recognise several dozen words involving a wide range of vowels and consonants but their ability to pronounce them is restricted to two or three consonants and a single vowel sound.

Some consonant sounds such as “b” and “m” are easy to create and are usually among the first sounds to develop. More complex sounds such as “ch”, “sp” and “fl” are consonant clusters and develop later on. Many vowel sounds are learned at roughly two and half and by the age of four most children know how to use them in their speech.

Based on research done with one 13 month year old, the child new three phonemes - “b”, “d” and “a”. With these phonemes the child was able to create the sound “ba” and communicate words such as “baby” and “bath”. At around 15 months, the child had acquired the phonemes “m”, “p” and “u” and with these phonemes he created “up” which enabled him to say words like “cup” where the consonant is at the end of the word which some children do not acquire until later since it is difficult. It is hard to make predictions about the order in which children will acquire new sounds and one reason for this is because of every child’s environment, each child will grow up in a different environment and will be exposed to different names such as for sibling and pets and so some children will acquire some sounds much sooner than others simply because of their exposure to those particular sounds. Some children can have favourite sounds which leads some children to changing adult pronunciations of words to enable them to use their favourite sounds. Also, some children avoid other sounds like dropping certain consonants at the ends of words which is likely to be because they find those sounds difficult to pronounce and so avoid them completely.  

Although children are likely to acquire different sounds at different times, from research we have found some of the ways children change the sounds in words in order to attempt to use them:  

• They tend to replace fricative consonants by stopping, for example “see” becomes “ti:”
• They tend to replace the velar consonants with alveolar ones e.g. “gone” becomes “dɑn” (please note that the symbol may not be correct because I couldn’t find it on the list of special characters.)
• They tend to avoid consonant clusters like they will pronounce “sky” as “kaI”
• They tend to clip consonants at the end of words so “hat” becomes “ha”
• They tend to drop unstressed syllables so they may say “nana” instead of “banana”
• Consonant and vowel harmony is found with identical or near identical syllables e.g. in dog or window

At the age of 4, all vowel sounds and diphthongs may have been used but consonants, on the other hand, are likely to be first used correctly at the beginning of words. Consonants used at the end of words are likely to emerge later. Even after children have reached 4, they may still be experiencing the fis phenomenon (for example, pronouncing that as dat) as it is very difficult to learn due to a child’s biology and the way they use their mouths to create certain sounds. More complex consonant clusters develop later, children may say “stwing” instead of “string”. Children may also have a preference for “w” and “j” phonemes rather than “l” and “r”, some children will say jeg instead of leg because they prefer that phoneme or because they find “l” more difficult to produce.

Reduplication occurs in the second year and children say things like “wow” (water) and “bubu” (bottle). Children even reduplicate words that are monosyllabic, they might say “bobo” instead of “ball”. Reduplication could occur because they want to play with language but it is more likely done so that the child can cope with hard pronunciation of words. Children learn to master words in stages by using a phonetic outline and then perfect the word over time.

Bibliography:

• Crystal, D.C., 2006. How Language Works. London: Penguin Books
• Crystal, D.C., 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ministry of Education, 2000. Speech Sound Development. [online] Available at: <http://www.kidshealth.org.nz/speech-sound-development>. [Accessed 3 November 2014]

Child Language Acquisition - Analysis of a Transcript

In terms of activity, Z starts off in the beginning of the recording drawing a banana in his pad which H, the caregiver, uses to help stimulate a conversation using open questions. H uses 15 open ended questions in the transcript compared to 14 closed questions. Although there is little difference in the usage of both open and closed questions, some of the questions which I categorized as closed could be considered tag questions such as “we had some banana, didn’t we?” maybe used to get Z to interact more rather than for power. Also, some of the questions could be considered as just utterances H used to ask herself questions out loud that she didn’t need Z to respond to such as “(quietly) you think it goes there?”. These are a just a few reasons as to why there is little difference between the amount of times an open ended question is used in comparison to a closed question. So by taking these uses into account, it would highlight the difference in usage more clearly. This would prove the hypothesis that caregivers will ask more open ended questions to children rather than closed questions in order to stimulate more child speech.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD) was a concept introduced by Vygotsky which describes the difference between what a learner can and cannot do with help and in the case it is what the child can and cannot do in terms of language and their development. One way H scaffolds Z’s language development is by asking him questions like, “what are you drawing (.) Zach?” because by asking them H is making Z answer her and describe to her what he is doing even though he knows she can see what he’s doing and therefore he is expanding his use of language.  

HR Magazine Article Extract

Employers Etiquette - Why you should value different types of speech in the workplace

Angelica King, 05 October 2014

It is inevitable that the workplace will be composed of people from a variety of backgrounds, so why would we expect them to all speak the same? http://www.housingea.co.uk/new_course_equality_diversity_for_contractors_getting_it_right

For years, employees and employers have been told that in order to work together they must “speak the same language” despite our (gender) differences. However, this article should help battle the common misconceptions of speech and help make employers understand that “different” doesn't equal bad.  

Ladies First

Studies into gender differences in language has led to theories being produced that could be applied to the workplace which has highlighted issues, especially in terms of communication - thank you Robin Lakoff. One major difference in communication, inside and out of work, is between men and women. It’s the age old story; boy meets girl, girl likes boy, boy and girl cannot understand each other. This arguably biological variation has meant that for years the genders have not been able to communicate effectively which can be seen in your workplace - if you look hard enough. This is a major contributing factor to why there is a perceived gender based power inequality in the workplace, one which men have the advantage. A classic example being women’s use of tag questions. Theory suggests that women’s use of them is to convey avoidance of commitment, that the speaker is unsure of their opinions, that they are looking for confirmation from the listener and possibly have no views of their own. However, there are serious flaws in this theory. One, male readers will no doubt realize that they also use tag questions in their speech and research has shown that they even use them more women do at times. Secondly, tag questions can be used to  help involve others in discussion which can be a helpful tool for company discussion and help make dialogue more cooperative and could potentially lead to more changes for the better and more diverse voices being heard within the organisation.      

Commentary

In the extract from my article on diverse speech I used the phrase “(gender) differences” in the strap line because the whole article would discuss different types of people and their different types of speech but I wanted to make it apparent that gender differences would feature mostly in the article and that it would be the first issue that would be discussed in the article. I made this explicit by putting the word “gender” in parentheses, hopefully conveying to the audience that although there are other differences, e.g. your racial background, gender is still a hot topic in terms of “differences” especially when linked to the working environment. Also, in some companies sexism may still evident but more covert today so by focuses on gender employers would be more likely to read the article because it could give them some advice about women in the workplace linguistically speaking.

Also, I decided in my article not to gloss the term “tag question” because I think that my target audience of employers and employees, although they may not be linguistic experts, may know what the term means. I thought that if I tried to explain the term, I might be patronizing the readers. Also, even if glossing the term “tag question” would not patronize the audience, it is unlikely that they will need to know the term so glossing in unnecessary. However, in the re-drafting process I might find out that the term “tag question” is not actually self-explanatory and I will change the article so that the first time the term is mentioned there is information afterwards in parenthesis so that everyone reading the article will understand what is being discussed in the article.

Sample Data

Sample Data

This data was collected by Judith Baxter from an experiment which am I am going to recreate for my investigation but with some changes. Her experiment involved having two separate groups, a girls group and a boys group and then gave them both the same stimulus which was a task involving ordering objects by usefulness if they were all you had and you were stranded on a desert island. The speakers in Baxter’s study were between the ages of 14-15 and at first I was thinking of doing a younger year group but I think participants of the age range she used would give significant data however the risk of the observer’s paradox would be greater.

Group A

S: wouldn’t you need the sunglasses?

C: yeah, that’s what I think

S: because it would be really hot and protect yourself from the sun and you’d be able to see more

G: yeah, but if you’re trying to live, does it matter [whether you can see?

C: [you could go blind

G: exactly, but if you’re trying to survive, does it really matter?

C: (sounding irritated) I wouldn’t [want to go blind

S: [it does, because if you were blind you wouldn’t be able to see what you were doing and you would end up dying anyway. You’d have less chance of surviving anyway.

G: yeah, but you’re not likely to go blind unless you’re looking right up into the sun.

Group B

C: (pointing) right, what did you put?

M: compass

C: (pointing) what did you put?

T: I put sunglasses

C: right, I put the parachute (gives long explanation for choosing it)

Other voices: mirror, mirror… the torch

C: and you could use a gun, couldn’t you? You could shoot-

H: you could shoot the pilot

C: right. So has anyone changed their mind? (pointing) What do you think?

H: I say compass

T: I say sunglasses are quite important because you have to be able to see what it says on the compass for a start (laughter from the group)

H: you could just go like that (mimes shading eyes) shut your eyes for a moment

C: right. You go (pointing) Say why you thought the first aid kit.

Judith Baxter just looked to see which of the groups cooperated and which competed more. From the results I get in my experiment I intend to look at all the aspects of Deborah Tannen’s Difference Pairs that include cooperative and competitive speech. From Baxter’s data it could be said that Group B shows more status because speaker C is directing everyone in the group, however it could be argued that he is not trying to gain status but is trying to be supportive and that Group A is trying to establish status because all the speakers within that group are arguing and being competitive in order to gain status. Speaker C in Group B seems to be giving orders to the others which is common in male conversation according to Tannen. Group A seems to have the most conflict because in their conversation they seem to overlap competitively the most whilst in Group B the speaker C who had the most air time was only interrupted once. Contrastingly, Group B seems to comprise more because the dominant speaker seems to allow everyone to state their opinion and reasoning behind it and then allow them to change their mind after hearing what everyone else had to say.

I am hoping to do a mini investigation myself soon in order to find out whether my investigation idea will work and give me good evidence to analyse for my coursework and whether there are any pitfalls I need to fix before I do the real experiment.

Practice Methodology - Language Change

I was looking at Language Change in the lesson and my practice methodology is based on the hypothesis that the Language used in children’s books has changed over time. My chosen corpus of data would be the works of Hans Christian Andersen and particularly the works that are aimed at children. I would do a Longitudinal study. In the data I would be looking for changes in the use of phonology, lexis and grammar. I would also look at the frequency of particular words in relation to social context. I would also look at the use or absence of stereotypes in his work because many of his pieces are fairy tales so they may or may not be evident in his writing. To sample the data I would systematically choose every 3rd text when all of the texts are ordered chronologically. All the texts in my pool of data would be texts with a primary audience of children. If any significant pieces in my final sample that may affect my results then I will study them but I may exclude them from my final results and explain the reasons why in my evaluation and analysis. The comparability factors are that all the data in my pool are written by the same author and for the same audience. It might be hard to operationalise what texts are considered to be written for a primary audience of children so I might hand out a list of my sample data and ask the general public in a questionnaire which pieces are more suitable for children in order to help overcome this issue however more issues could arise e.g. some people may not have come across certain texts in my corpus of data. My data pool is large because Andersen has plenty of texts suitable for my investigation so even if there are anomalies it should not affect the rest of the data. There are no ethical issues with this investigation since Andersen's work is open to the public and informed consent is not necessary.

An Idea For My Language Investigation

One idea that I have for a Language Investigation is based on an experiment that I read about in the book, "The Myth of Mars and Venus". The experiment done, by someone whose name escapes me, was in short, a focus into the Language & Gender of children by getting them in two small groups, one a boys group and one a girls. The researcher then provided each group with a stimulus which was a list of items that each group had to order in terms of necessity in order to survive on a desert island. The researcher wanted to find out whether the boys would be competitive about how to order the list and whether the girls would be much more understanding of each other and be more tentative in the discussion. The researcher’s results however were quite the opposite and the researcher also conducted interviews with the children and the teacher who was present to find out why the girls were so argumentative and why the boys were quite co-operative. I would like to re-create this experiment in order to find out whether this was just an anomalous incident or whether our beliefs of gendered conversation are wrong and that the previous evidence is proof that genders do not follow stereotypes in language. I would also like to conduct to a questionnaire in order to find out what people think the evidence that I will collect and look at their answers in comparison to the data I’ve collected. I would like to do an investigation into Deborah Tannen’s Difference Pairing in Gendered Conversation and I hope my proposed research will shed some light onto this topic.