Do children really understand grammar?

When you hear a child using complex and intricate grammar or vocabulary, how can you be sure that the child truly understands the meaning of the sentence or word? After all imitation is very important in the development of grammar. In fact, According to David Crystal, the sentence patterns that children use are very often first imitated from older speakers before they are used in their own spontaneous speech. Imitation is a common bridge between comprehension and spontaneous language, so how do you know that the child isn't merely imitating and doesn't actually understand the true meaning of his language?

 

According to Crystal, one study showed that a two-year-old was recorded saying "hat on off", as if 'hat on' was the noun instead of just 'hat'. This thus proves that child did not understand the grammatical structure he was using, and taps into the theories of speech comprehension – Does the child associate one word with the action, or understand the whole sentence? For example, if you ask a child to "go get his pajamas from his bedroom", the child may only understand the word 'pajamas' but because he knows where the pajamas are kept he would still perform the same task as if he had understood the whole sentence.

 

When a child sees his father drive away in his car, a young child may say "go car". Upon hearing this, his mother may reply "yes, daddy is going in his car", expanding grammatically on her child's utterance. Brown's research project showed that expansions appeared in one third of mother's language and they were used as teaching aids - they would expand the grammatical structure of the child's utterance as a target slightly ahead of their child's performance. The only flaw with Brown's project was that there were always researchers present. How does that change anything?

 

Well, A project set up by Well involved no researchers. Well set up microphones in a house with a mother and child inhabiting it, and would record for 90 seconds at 20 minute intervals, so that the mother would never know when she was being recorded. Well found that the mother only expanded when other adults were present, suggesting that 'expansion' acts just as a gloss for the benefit of an observer and not as to provide the child with more grammatical information.

 

The problem with studying children's language is that it is very difficult to measure their level of grammatical comprehension. If you try and test a child, he may not understand the question fully and get confused. Take the lorry test for example. When a toy lorry is placed on a table in front of a child and you ask the child to place a coin at the back of the lorry, do you mean the back of the actual model or the opposite side that is facing you? What about if the child isn't on the same side of the table as you? It can be confusing. The other problem is that if a child knows that he is under exam circumstances he may react in an awkward way, for example responding with something irrelevant when asked a simple question. Researchers are always looking for new ways to test children, but will we ever truly know what children really understand? From the research I have found here, the clearest way to test children's grammatical understanding may come from undercover evidence; video, audio devices. Looking at a variety of sentences to test each individual word for comprehension.

Emily Meades

The Language of Texts

It is widely assumed that the younger you are, the more likely you are to text and this has been supported by recent research that suggests teenagers send on average 3,339 texts a month compared to adults aged 45-54 who send an average of only 323. In these texts, both children and adults will use some form of SMS language but who is more likely to use it and why?

There are many linguistic features found in text messages and these can be categorised into:

The shortening of words, ('TXT' for 'TEXT') 

Phonetic spellings of words, ('LUV' for 'LOVE') 

Letter homophones, ('C' for 'SEE') 

Number homophones, ('2' for 'TOO') 

Grammatical compressions in which determiners, auxiliary verbs and punctuation marks are often absent. 

Numerous people are quick to assume that teenagers are mostly responsible for using SMS language, like the examples above, and there are many negative opinions which have been formed based upon this assumption; John Humphries who has argued that texters are "vandals" who are "wrecking our language" and Michael Kwan who believes  it is "effecting teen language abilities". But personally I don't believe that teenagers are responsible for this. For me, when reading through the messages on my phone and I'm pretty sure this is similar to other teenagers, the only texts that use SMS language nowadays are texts received from parents, grandparents and other older people. In David Crystal's book "txting" he claims that only 10% of words are abbreviated in text messages and even though both adults and children use it, adults are more likely to do so. So how can teenagers be responsible for "raping our vocabulary" if this is true? And what is it that makes adults more likely to use it? Do they actually think it's how you're supposed to write a text? Or is It because the small keyboards and screens on phones encourage them to make their messages as short as possible?

Perhaps it is the size of the small screen which only accommodates for 160 characters that influences the texting style of adults. The small keyboard also encourages compression and the shorter the message is, the less time it takes to compose. Many teenagers have now moved on to predictive texting making it quicker and easier for them to send a text. The need to cut down the amount of time spent on a text isn't necessary as it would actually take more time to use SMS language. For most adults, sending a text is difficult enough. Using predictive text, which would decrease the amount of time they would actually need to spend writing the message, would just be another thing to struggle with.

Research carried out by a group of students (in which you can see the results here http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/00219/research_findings.html) found that the main reasons why people use SMS language is because it is convenient, it saves time and it is faster and easier. As many adults struggle to write a text quickly, maybe this is the main reason why they have resorted to SMS language.

Sophie Wormald.

Bilingual children

Do children have special capacities to absorb more than one language?

This is a question many ask, and the answers to the question will make many intrigued. A lot of children are exposed to multi languages at a very young age- especially children of a native background. One of the reasons children have the ability to learn more than one language at a very young age is due to the need to start talking and the fascination. Another reason is; children have to learn from those who already know how to speak, therefore they listen and they copy, and as children grow and mature they remember more and more.

There is a 'critical period' (lasting roughly from birth until puberty) during which a child can easily acquire any language that he or she is regularly exposed to. Under this view, the structure of the brain changes at puberty, and after that it becomes harder to learn a new language. This means that it is much easier to learn a second language during childhood than as an adult. Apart from the above, children do tend to develop more native pronunciation when bilingualism begins before adolescence.

There are two types of childhood bilingualism. The first is simultaneous learning of two languages. It normally happens when the language used at home is different from language used in the community or school. The parents, or other family members might not speak the language of the school or the community, or the parents could speak two or more languages but have made a decision about which language they speak with the child.

The second type of childhood bilingualism is called sequential or successive bilingualism. This happens when a child has one established language before learning a second language, whether in preschool or later. Some children and adults, of course, usually learn a second language formally through school or language classes. I also got this information from Jean Stilwell's book Child Language.

Like adult bilinguals, bilingual children often use words from one language when speaking the other. (This is called code-switching.) But this doesn't mean they are confused about which language they are speaking.Knowing two or more languages truly gives kids so many advantages in life. Bilingual kids have the advantage of knowing two cultures, of being able to communicate with a wider variety of people, and of possible economic advantages in their future. Research has even shown advantages in thinking skills among bilingual individuals. But deciding to raise bilingual kids is a decision that should be carefully considered as it affects children for the rest of their live. This research was taken from a book called Child language that Jean Stilwell Peccei   wrote.

Deborah D.K. Ruuskanen, a professor of English linguistic is has most answers to bilingual children she is also a mother of three bilingual children. She gives advice on what she has experience of herself which helps out other parents and also she has the questions and answers to what most parents need.

I also found an interesting article by Nadine Lichtenberger who experienced being a mother of a bilingual child as she believed the gift of language was priceless .Also it was important for  her kids to communicate in English and accept different cultures. She wanted the children to be fluent and active.

 

Shahana Akthar

‘How to speak to your two year old,’ – Talking to toddlers.

There's nothing like the anxiety of a parent, is my child developing 'normally?' The language we use towards our children is crucial for their language development, how else would they learn?

 

Keeping it simple. Keep to these simple rules and you will soon notice the difference in your children's lexical development. 

-       Be sensitive to your child's expressions and react to them – it's key to developing their response.

-       Take turns – Play interactive games, trigger reactions.

-       One word only – Do not confuse your child with many different words for one object.

-       Expand – From words to sentences. A child says "car go," so you say "the car is going."

-       Discuss, tell and ask – Discuss your day, tell a story and ask a question, keeping the grammar simple but developing more complex discourse structures.

 

Child directed speech is patterning of the speech used towards young children or toddlers by their caregivers or parents.

 

'Parentese,' is another name for child directed speech, or you may have heard of 'Motherese,' but this name is no longer used as significantly as before as it suggests gender stereotyping. Well related theories suggest that men use more –wh interrogatives and demand more response lexically from their child than women! But women tend to be more 'talkative,' using longer utterances.

 

What makes you similar to other parents? You all subconsciously use a variety of phonological features of language to gain responses from your child.

 

"Children's innate language learning ability is triggered by hearing language." Chomsky

 Although you may not realise you most definitely use high pitched intonation, melodic pitch and deliberate tempo to make your child respond. If you were to speak in monotone, your child would find difficulty in understanding the concepts of speech. It is natural to feel like you're over exaggerating!

The interrogative! There is nothing like the simple form of question and answer, it demands a response, so use it repeatedly with your child and you can't go wrong. Simplify grammatical constructions, elongate your words and your child will be understanding speech sooner than you think. There is truth in the meaning of "Enjoy it, as soon you will not shut them up."

 

"Children learn turn-taking and pragmatics before they can use words." Bruner

Pragmatics is to do with the social use of language, they understand when the language is used and in what context before using the words themselves. INTERACTION is the most important thing, other contacts to the child and yourself are the most important tool, YOU make their language develop! So play those early interactive games, its more useful than you can imagine.

It's normal to feel an itty-bitty bit anxious as a parent; you are more than likely to be using the theories and concepts of language mentioned above subconsciously, so for now stop worrying.

By Chloe Knott

 

Children’s First Words

 

Ever wonder what your child's first words will be? When are they going to arrive? And why those words are their first?

Waiting around for your child's first words can be annoying. A child's first word emerges between 12 and 18 months.

 

Children's first words are normally nouns. These consist of 'mamma', 'dada', 'cat' and 'dog. However according to the Telegraph 'dada' beats 'mamma' as the most common first word, which in my experience seems to be true. Children also learn the words of the objects that they are most interested in.

 

The little girl I babysit for is 16 months old so her speech is very limited. Her first utterance was 'dada' which was a proud moment, and 'mum' followed shortly after. Her next word, after 'dada' and 'mum' was 'shoes' which was such a delight to mum – who is now teaching her to say 'bags'.

 

Twins on the other hand are late developers in speaking because they tend to talk to each other in their own babble language. Although the babble does not count as their first words even though they seem to understand each other, but others do not. This is known as "late onset of speech" according to speech-language-therapy.com.

 

Babbling is when a child tries to mimic the sounds in their environment which is how they get their first word by mimicking your voice in order to say a particular word. After babbling they then use some kind of 'nonsense speech' which is known as 'jargon' according to "Speech and language developmental milestones".

Jargon is when a child is constantly babbling to others in order to make a conversation, this is difficult when the other person has no idea what the child is saying. However, even if you don't understand them, they understand you. A couple of weeks ago I was surprised to find a 16 month old take orders from her mum to grab a book and hand it over to me. So why can't we understand them if they can understand us?

 

This is because their vocal cords aren't developed properly and they can only pronounce vowels and easy nouns with a maximum of two syllables.

"Most children have a spoken vocabulary of at least 50 words by the age of 18 months." I found this list on a language development site which contained this list of words used by children by the age of 18 moths according to research found in the 1980's.

The list is:

1. uh-oh 2. alldone 3. light 4. down 5. shoes 6. baby 7. don't throw 8. moo 9. bite 10. three 11. hi 12. cheese 13. up 14. quack-quack 15. oink-oink 16. coat 17. beep-beep 18. keys 19. cycle 20. mama 21. daddy 22. siren sound 23. grrr 24. more 25. off

26. tick tock 27. ball 28. go 29. bump 30. pop-pop (fire) 31. out 32. heehaw 33. eat 34. neigh-neigh 35. meow 36. sit 37. woof-woof 38. bah-bah 39. hoo-hoo (owl) 40. bee 41. tree 42. mimi (ferry) 43. s (snake) 44. ooh-ooh (monkey) 45. yack-yack (people talking) 46. hohoho (Santa) 47. bye-bye 48. doll 49. kite 50. Muriel

 By Chloe Hedges

A crash course in Cockney Rhyming Slang

So you would like to speak like a pukka cockney? Well in truth; you probably already have. I just did. To be 'pukka' is to be 'pukka spiel' or 'real'. There are dozens of these subtle little example that have snuck their way into the common lexis that we use today. For instance, ever told someone they are talking a load of cobblers? Well actually you are telling them they are talking a load of cobbler's awls, or balls. Also, have you ever wondered where a word like 'berk' ever squeezed its way into English? Well you will find it in the the dictionary defined as 'a silly or foolish person', the harsh reality is it came from 'Berkeley Hunt'. It begins with a C, ends in a T, and no it's not clot.

 

Well, there's enough fooling around with interesting and sometimes cringe worthy facts, lets get onto the fun stuff. Fiona McClymont from the Guardian says that the basic structure of cockney rhyming slang is that you think of a two worded phrase where the second word rhymes with the original word you were trying to write. Let's look at an example that almost everyone knows; Stairs. Some words that rhyme with stairs could include tears, cares, chairs or as many know it as; pears. Then you have to think of a second word that it can link to. This link can either be a name of a place with two words, like 'Hampstead Heath' (teeth), 'Eroll Flynn' (chin) or even 'the Khyber Pass' (arse). Or it could be linked like the in our example; with a semantic similarity, such as 'Apples and Pears' (stairs), 'Pen and Ink' (stink) or 'Trouble and Strife' (wife – how appropriate). Now that you have your couple, clip the second word off (or make an ellipsis, to those more familiar with lexical formation), and there you have your Cockney rhyming slang. Your stairs become apples, your wife becomes trouble, and your arse becomes a Khyber. Nothing could be easier!

 

However, now that you have gained this new skill, some will tell you that it is an out-of-date, obsolete and now useless Victorian antique that nobody uses any more, well those people will be wrong. According to the Guardian in 2009 a series of ATM machines have been made to request your 'Huckleberry Finn' (pin) and instead with give you a 'Speckled Hen' (ten). So if you are ever stuck in the middle of East London with no cash, with a bank card and you need a taxi home, now you know how to get hold of some of your Bugs Bunny! It's a service I provide, you know...

 

Chris Church

Is “Frape” Offensive?

If you are a regular user of Facebook, you are probably aware of the term "frape"- perhaps you yourself have fraped a friend or been fraped. Changing someone's status to something silly can be very amusing, (probably not for the person who forgot to log out) but the word itself has raised a linguistical dilemma for many. Is the word "frape" offensive, disrespectful and insensitive or simply a slang word that people are looking into too much?

 

 According to The Rice University Neologism Database (http://neologisms.rice.edu) frape is defined as:

"verb, blending of the words "Facebook" and "rape"
To gain access to another's Facebook account without the individual knowing and posting or updating the profile with things he or she would not. This arose as a comical prank among friends and became known as frape because it is an unwanted violation of one's Facebook account."

 

Some people are outraged by the term and its misuse of the word "rape," particularly feminists. Instead, they suggest some more politically correct versions such as, "facebook hijack" or "facejacking." (http://community.feministing.com/2010/05/26/to-frape-or-not-to-frape-a-feminist-linguistical-dilemma/) But are they overreacting? I mean, it's just a word, right?

 

For Lucy Tobin, author of the dictionary for adults 'Pimp Your Vocab', it is just a word. It's an example of jargon adopted by British youngsters. Speaking to The Guardian, Tobin seems to recognise the word's serious connotations: "On discovering a pupil talking about being fraped, should you call the police?" But she passes it off as simply "teenglish" terminology.

 

For many people, however, "frape" is not a slang term to be laughed at; it is offensive and potentially triggering to victims of abuse. A post about the word on feminist blog, www.thefword.org.uk says,"it is worrying that for many young men and women rape is increasingly seen as something laughable." The author argues that people should "stop equating rape with a minor inconvenience or childish prank."

 

Similar arguments can be seen on various blogs with many suggesting that the word "frape" trivialises rape. However, views are fairly divided with one blogger commenting, "'I could murder a bowl of cornflakes.' Is that trivialising murder?" (to see this interesting debate click here) Language does change over time and a word's meaning can alter. Perhaps words such as murder and rape have gone through the process of amelioration. When people use the word "frape" they aren't literally referring to the crime rape, just the idea of, as the earlier definition stated, "an unwanted violation."

 

So what do you think? Are you going to continue using the word "frape" regardless of its possible connotations or will you opt for a more politically correct version?

 

Any young feminists might like to visit: http://thefbomb.org/, a blog/community created for teenage girls who care about their rights as women. They also have an interesting post on the word frape.

 

By Tayla Ansell

 

The linguistic game of politics

Since the first question asked in the House in 1721 many aspects of political language and discourse structure has sustained within discussions. As respected politicians, each Member of Parliament is elected by a proportion of the population to represent the voice of the individuals in their constituency. 

'Mr Speaker...'. 'Would my right honourable friend..'.The asking of a question with such formality focuses public attention on issues that may concern them whilst expressing identity with a party.  They are expected to make use out of every opportunity to steal voters from opposing parties and increase their chances of determining the future for the country.  Another purpose David Crystal proposes is to cause trouble for the opposing party; on the spot confrontation replaces the discourse structure of question/answer and violation of Grice's conversational rules takes place...

 

Quantity- Grice claimed that we shouldn't talk for more than what is required. Politicians tend to waffle in their responses in order to avoid more confrontations.

 

Relevance- In conversations we are expected to answer direct questions and talk about the topic of discussion. MPs often forget this in the Houses of parliament and try their best to dodge difficult questions.  A study of parliamentary oral answers to questions responded to in the House in 1986 demonstrated how over forty questions were asked in a session- 80% of which required a direct yes/no response, however  were not answered so directly. 

 

Quality- We assume that people tell the truth in conversations and respond accordingly; however politicians have the assumption that their opponent is full of lies and are known for challenging them on their policies and expecting explanations. Questions and answers should rarely be taken at face value within politics.

 

Manor- We should avoid repeating ambigious points and follow orderly turn-taking. This maxims is not violoated within the house of commons as there is presence of many rules all MPs are required to respect.

 

Leaders are particularly linguistically skilled in addressing their people; presidents of America for example have been known to make use of political metaphors using their charismatic personality to win elections. Respectable descriptions of their country are also used. A study of the metaphorical personification of America in political discourse was conducted by Ida Vestermark. She explains how strategies of language use to influence receivers toward a desired thought/attitude are evident within the conceptualising of America as human. Such presidents, such as George W. Bush have presented the nation as a human and the world as a community within his presidential speeches- supporting the listener's visualisations whilst increasing political participation- even when negative!

A report from the Telegraph in 2008 explains that a dictionary has been constructed in order to unravel political speech- Jill Kirby, the director of CPS, said: "This Government has - whether willfully or unwittingly - blurred the line between words and actions."Talking about a problem has come to mean the same as doing something about it."

 

 Do we still understand our political representatives, and more importantly- do we trust them? How can we distinguish between what is the truth on matters when their conversational rules differ to the norm of language we live by?  MPs have made a desperate attempt to attract their voters and have even resorted to tweeting. An article by the Times in 2009 claims how the Labour Party has issued guidance to its MPs on how to tweet; there is even a website, Tweetminster! Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg and Alastair Campbell are all twitterers- perhaps in an attempt to contribute to politics without confrontation...

Leanne Carty

Sports Commentary

Why is sports commentary so important and how does it work? Do we really need other people to tell us what is going on in a sport when we can clearly see it for ourselves?

 

The function of commentary is to describe a sequence of an event, which then gives listeners and viewers background information which can be classed as entertainment.

 

In sports broadcasting, a commentator gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast. Sports Commentary is one of several varieties which greatly rely on adverbs for their effect. For example; 'Now Smith passes beautifully to Gray, who heads it very firmly and deliberately to Pritchard.' This way each action is described the way it's actually performed. 

 

A lot of the time commentators speak from a text, but during live coverage they are required to describe and comment on events as they happen. The purpose of televison commentary is different to radio commentary because events cannot be seen on the radio so therefore the commentators convey an exact description of the developing action.

 

The structure of a commentary varies depending on what kind of activity is being commented on. For example when there isn't a lot of activity the commentators will start to give background information about the players themselves or the game. But when a lot of development is happening then the pace will change and so will the atmosphere to acknowledge the viewers. More reserved and emotive language is used when describing the event, this helps the commentators have more style to the way they present their comments.

 

Turn taking is essential in commentaries, often there will be two people who will do the talking, one will be the actual commentator and the other person will be a sportsman or sportswoman who will provide advice or will summaries. The two people will mainly interact in an informal way to show their sides of an activity. On TV commentaries the adviser pauses on a number of occasions and lets the lead commentator describe the scene. There are occasions when both speakers begin talking at once about the same topic, normally having a different point of view.

 

The present or past perfect may also be used to reflect the situation of the game. E.g. has changed, gone, hasn't passed yet. In many cases passive rather than active sentences are used, so that they can create an end focus by repositioning a long subject at the end of the sentence as an adverbial.

There is hardly any hesitation heard in commentaries, but when they do occur normally its by the adviser. Some of the distinctive features of a commentary are; that the audience have expert knowledge so they are able to fill in gaps missed out by the commentators. Also the structure is spontaneous so a lot of it is informal conversation, this means that the commentators have to be fluent and continuous throughout the whole event.

 

Stress and rhythm are used to enhance meaning, and pauses are tend to be used for emphasis or breathing when nothing significant is happening. The lexis that is used is subject specific and technical. For example, 'great position, and again hes causing problems.' Figurative language can also make commentaries vary characteristic, which enables commentators to develop a personal style. The grammatical features are distinctive and the mood is normally declarative. The clause structures are mainly simple or loosely co-ordinated.  

 

One of the resources I used was the second edition advanced english langauge book by Sara Thorne

The website I used was; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_commentator

 

Farhad Rahmani

Can people be Bi-accented?

Melissa Alice

Can someone be Bi-accented? This is a question that is frequently asked, despite the fact that we see people change accents, languages and dialects all the time- whether it's for entertainment or accommodation. Individuals that speak more than one native language tend to have the ability to switch from one accent to another, or even swap accents, languages and dialects around. For instance a French and English speaker who grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, can easily speak English with a French accent; however it is almost impossible even for experts to speak French with an English accent. I will go on to talk about the reasons it is almost impossible.

Firstly some native languages need to be pronounced in a particular way in order to make sense or mean what they are intended to mean. An example is the English language itself. In the English language or any language there are a lot of Homographs, e.g. 'Read'(present-tense) and 'Read' (past-tense). Although a sentence form can give away which way to pronounce the word, when pronounced wrong e.g. Read (present-tense pronunciation) in a past form sentence would not make any sense and sound very wrong. This is why some native language cannot be pronounced in different accents. Another reason is due to the Alphabet of both languages for example the English alphabet runs from A-Z, and the Shone alphabet runs from A-Z as well however L and C do not exist and you have additional words like Bah Bhe Bhi Bho Bhu and Za Ze... it goes on for each letter.  These sounds pronounced with an English accent would Sound wrong and possibly meaningless.

It has been said that some native languages have similar dialects due to this it would be easier for speakers of those languages/ dialects to learn the other language. For Instance speakers of Shona and Cantonese will find it easier to learn the other language more than others. Some Shona and Cantonese words are very similar in sound, pronunciation and spelling. 'Tanaka' is both a Shone and Cantonese name, despite having different meanings they are pronounced the same, and sound the same. This is due to the alphabet of the languages for Shona the sound 'C' amongst other does not exist, so Shona words are quite easy to pronounce like Cantonese Words. This is one of the reasons Native speakers of different languages have the ability to change Dialects, languages and accents easily.

It has also been said that there is a Syndrome associated with adopting a foreign accent after a major head injury. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome .Only 60 cases have ever been found www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11280005. However, having said that it is physically impossible to speak a foreign accent from the blue, an accent you have never attempted to speak before. We know as linguists that even a foreign person cannot just adopt an English accent by the finger, it takes practice and listening. Which brings me to the point that the individuals that have experienced this syndrome are/where speakers of that native accent in their earlier years. It is quite clear that perhaps the individuals have had memory loss hence the inability to talk in their usual accent again, and instead adopt a native accent they used to speak.

Actress Gillian Anderson is an example of an individual that was exposed to multiple accents a young age, and can now speak then both fluently http://dialectblog.com/2011/04/26/can-you-be-bi-accented/. Anderson grew up in England then moved to the U.S.A during her College years. When in England Anderson speaks fluently in the English accent, when in the U.S again she speaks the native accent fluently. This is clearly accommodating for speakers who may have trouble understanding, or it may be down to the individual him/herself- he/she may just prefer to speak in the native accent to other speaker of the accent. People who don't speak a particular accent also tend to pick up on particular ways of pronouncing words when speaking to a foreign speaker. It is similar to the theory that when people live together for a long time they start to speak like each other. This clearly shows that it is not hard to change accents, or impossible to be bi-accented.

From the research I did on Multi/Bi- accents, I have come to the conclusion that anyone can do it, it is a case of just learning how to pronounce words in that particular accent, whether it's through phonetics, listening to native speakers of the accent/language or dialect.

Again it's not science, or magic, anyone can pick up an accent and speak it fluently.

What does our face hide in our words?

Are you the same person when nobody's looking?

 

It's a well known and parodied phenomenon that people's views of their own ability to win a fight and their confidence in insulting others greatly increases as the chances of such a fight get slimmer. And now in the age of the internet it is possibly to have an aggressive confrontation with someone who isn't even in the same country as you. So is it that our need to maintain our own positive face in social situations is what's stopping us from acting this way all the time? And that if we were made anonymous in our daily lives this is how life would be. Or perhaps it's that the distance from a situation gives us a chance to act out of character purely because it doesn't matter and it might be fun, interesting or a relief to be able to be a different, more expressive person for a while, consequence free.

                Think about internet blog posts. This system of communication has the potential to be either completely anonymous or completely informed of real life identity and character. One can literally write whatever they want about themselves. And readers can comment on it however they like with no issues of consequence. This is why it's intriguing to look at how many blogs keep true to the writer's "real life self" and how many weave a new identity to write as. Herring, Wright, Bonus and Scheidt (2004) found that about a third of the blog posts they investigated gave a full name and over half of them gave explicit demographic information such as age and rough address (David A. Huffaker and Sandra L. Calvert in the journal of computer mediated communication).  It's strange that in a world where you can pretend to be anyone you want this many people would keep to being themselves. Unless the feeling of freedom in revealing personal, possibly intimate details of their lives without having to maintain face with people they will see again is what they are after. But surely a certain amount of anonymity would make them feel more comfortable in revealing private thoughts and secrets.

                Of course some people don't use the anonymity afforded by the internet for revealing private secrets or talking about their boring day. Many people use the internet specifically to annoy people, goad them into arguments and insult them. Many new words have even had to be coined specifically because of the scale and diversity of the ways the internet makes it possible to cause trouble for people: "troll", "flame war", "noob". Some of this comes from the more "internet savvy" surfers trying to diverge themselves from less computer literate internet users with jargen that only they understand. This is often covertly insulting to the subject such as "newfriend" as a form of address. Seeming quite friendly, this actually came from "newfag" and is used to say that someone is stupid and inexperienced according to Urbandictionary.com And though this does happen in real life it is much more prevalent on the internet and much more effective as literally thousands of users could bully one victim like this. Maybe people are more vicious on the internet just so they're not the one being an outcast.

 

By Greg Rushton

Is Swearing Really as Bad as Everyone Thinks?

Swearing has been around for hundreds of years and has always had negative connotations and impacts, yet everyone still does it anyway? Shakespeare swore in his plays with phrases such as, 'God's bread', 'a pox on't'. Also a man called Ben Jonson who was around the year of Julius Ceaser used phrases in his books such as, 'Whoreson base fellow' and 'I am the rankest cow that ever pissed'; these were all shocking phrases at the time, yet they still used them? Bill Bryson author of 'Mother Tongue' claims, 'The gravity of swear words in any language has little to do with the words themselves and much more to do with the fact they are forbidden. It is a circular effect. Forbidden words are emotive because they are forbidden and they are forbidden because they are emotive.'

Different swear words and phrases have different impact and some are seen as unmentionable whereas others are harmless, but this is always changing over time. Blasphemy (deliberate swear words related to religion) used to be unspeakable and frowned upon but today in the 21^st century, this type of swearing has died out and we use more words of profanity such as, 'Jesus Christ!' to express ourselves. In this modern day and age, swearing can make someone appear to be of a lower social economic class and lower economic standing but I have discovered this is not the case.

Swearing is a very important part of the English language especially but people tend to avoid the subject especially when it's in a formal setting, for example; a lesson in school or business meeting. But, why is that? It can be used in so many different ways and has positive effects too. Timothy Jay (2009) claims, 'Swearing is like using the horn on your car, which can be used to signify a number of emotions (e.g frustration, anger, joy, surprise)'. Using politeness features, swearing can be an example of positive politeness where we seek to establish a positive relationship between ourselves and someone else. We respect a person's need to be liked and understood. Swearing demonstrates this as it shows awareness that the relationship is strong enough to cope with what would normally be considered impolite. It also articulates an awareness of the other person's values, which fulfils the person's desire to be accepted.

Timothy Jay (2009) a psychologist has studied deep into swearing and he found that swearing is beneficial in ways that people may underestimate or take for granted. Swearing is often cathartic – it often frees us of the feelings of anger and frustration we hold and allows expression for them. It prevents us from acting out with physical violence. It's also used in a positive manner for jokes, sex talk, storytelling, social commentary and allows us to easily convey our emotions to others. Swear words also aren't just an effect of being of a lower socioeconomic class, they have deep emotional ties within our brains which allows them to be sustained even throughout the last stages of Dementia and Alzheimers, long after the rest of our vocabulary has been forgotten. Our brains limbic system which is involved with our emotions and fears is activated in a way that isn't when using other standard words from the English language. He did an experiment and found that whilst having your hand in freezing cold water, you could keep it in there for longer whilst uttering a swear word compared to a standard word which is used to describe a table. This demonstrates that swearing can also be beneficial in the fact is lessens our feeling of pain.

Some other positive effects that swearing has in our society is that it can create group identities, group membership, solidarity with others, trust and intimacy, humour and emphasis and they're useful when people wish to camouflage their fears or insecurities. All these factors are essential to provide cohesion in society and this form of language which is usually shunned upon is a big part of that. Finally, Jay (1992) and Foote & Woodward (1973) both came up with similar theories that those who swear successfully are usually mindful of the social restrictions placed on them in most situations. They're sensitive to the status relationship they have with the person they're swearing to/at. And also, they swear among friends where social status isn't a primary worry. They evaluate their listeners and assess whether swearing is appropriate.

 

Alex Thomas

Hidden message?

English Language, we use it every day and sometimes we don't even realise that for other people some words may be surprising. Did you even wonder what people for whom English is a second language think when you use the word class or peacock? Agnieszka Zielinska, who was learning English as a second language and was really shocked when heard some words for the first time, decided to find some information about that.

For us, people who speak English since they can remember, those words sound perfectly fine, because we use them on a daily basis and we know what's the meaning of each one, but people who are learning English may wonder why did you say pea cock just now. There are over a hundred of words including cock. Shocking, isn't it? What will you say about 813 words with the word ass then? Did you even notice those words hidden in class, assume, assess etc? I don't think so. Now you are probably trying to think of any words that contain "bad words" aren't you? There are actually over 1500 words that contain a swear word but have nothing to do with its meaning. What do those mean then? Why there are swear words in there? Did it mean anything bad in the past? I will try to answer some of these questions.

Let's start with the word ass then, because of the great number of the words containing it. That word comes from Greek "asinus", which was fundamental of the creation of  "ass" and "anus". The word was a taboo word since it came into use. On the other hand, the word class was never even considered as a swear word. It comes from Latin "classis" which means "division". What's surprising, from the very beginning, this word was used by the English as a word meaning social class or group of students, and there were no objections about that. Does it mean no one even noticed what would have happened if we took two letters, c and l? According to Robert Stockwell, it was because the word came from the other language, which was Latin. Therefore at the beginning it was used mainly by upper class and people just accepted that.

What was the most interesting for me, was why there are two words that mean something completely different in the word peacock? I would understand that if the bird looked anything like either one, but I don't think it does. Why did someone call the poor bird like that then? The answer for that question was much more simple than I thought it would be, but somehow surprising as well. It was created by compounding po and cock. Pocock comes from Middle Eastern language and was first noticed in 1300. In English we write it in a different way because of how we pronounce it. In her book, Donka Minkova states that the word peacock was first used in 1390s. I was very interested in why people did not oppose. Calling the poor bird pea and a cock? Come on, they must have said something about that. But the word cock didn't mean anything relating to what it means now until 1610. Actually, it was a common name until 1500. Before that it was a nickname for "one who strutted like a cock". For us it might sound a little bit awkward, but in XV century people didn't know that one day something that means a male bird will change its meaning into something... Well, let's say still relating to a male bird, but in a kind of different way.

 

 

*For everyone interested in finding out their own words-with-a-swear-word, the website is     http://www.allwords.com/
*The history of the words comes from the book "English Words: History and Structure" by Robert Stockwell and Donka Minkova

Children’s Language Development- 0-2 years

Children respond to language from birth. They become aware of sounds in their everyday environment and tend to cry when they hear an unfamiliar sound.

 

0-3 months babies can recognise known voices, which will comfort them. At this age they will turn their heads when they hear voices to face the person communicating.

 

4-6 months babies can respond to certain words they become familiar with. For example, when a baby hears the word 'no' they will recognise and respond to it. Babies at this age will also recognise changes in the tone of a person's voice; therefore understand a person's mood.  Babies can recognise other sounds at this stage, other than speech. They can enjoy music and rhythm and other interesting sounds such as the toaster.

 

7-12 months is when a babies language becomes exiting. Babies at this age can look at you when you call their name; therefore recognise their name. Games such as 'round and round the garden' and 'pat-a-cake' become discovered and enjoyed by babies at this age. Babies can now recognise familiar objects such as: 'phone' 'keys' 'Mummy' etc. They can also respond to requests such as: 'Give it to Daddy' for example.

 

1-2 years is when a toddler can follow simple commands such as: 'push the button.' The toddler enjoys listening to songs and rhymes and usually like them repeated many times. At 18 months toddlers are known on average to have a vocabulary of around 5-20 words. They use a lot of jargon with emotional content.

 

2 years a toddler will understand contrasting concepts such as: 'hot/cold'. The toddler will notice sounds such as the telephone or doorbell ringing and become exited and attempt to answer. At this age words will gradually become short phrases. The toddler will manage to use two pronouns and the vocabulary level has risen to around 150-300 words.

 

In the first few years of a child's life, they need to learn and acquire a set of new skills, which are learned through interaction with other people. Main skills include: taking turns, waiting, anticipation, listening, paying attention and interacting with others.

 

Lack of communication between parent and child will lead to problems in speech development. This may have an effect on the child for life. Parents communicating with their child allow a social and emotional relationship to develop, which will minimise potential problems in the future.

 

It is said that children do not develop language through imitation. Children work through linguistic rules on their own, which is proven when children say phrases such as: 'I see your feets.' Children eventually learn themselves the rules of English syntax; parent's constant correction is said to be unproductive. Learning to talk requires time for development and practice in everyday situations.

 

References:

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language- David Crystal P. 230 +

http://speech-language-therapy.com/devel2.htm

 

By Mia Hopkinson

The Language of Fanfiction

The Language of Fanfiction Fanfiction is a exactly what it says on the tin- fan fiction. The whole idea of fanfiction is where a fan takes a show or a book, a film or cartoon and manipulates the characters to their imagination and creates a story out of it. Near enough everyone knows EastEnders, so take two characters and write about them, or write about a storyline that could have gone differently, once you have done that, you have created a fanfiction. Now, fanfiction is relevant to language as there is a whole lexical register to 'learn' and use. For example, there are blendings of characters' names to show what pairing they are. For example, the Christian and Syed storyline (in Eastenders) would be known as 'Chryed' to those that like this pairing. But, not only are there front and backend clippings and blendings, but there are other words to categorize some of the fiction and what is in the fiction. 'Mary Sue' is a character made that is basically the author in their own story, 'Marty Stu' is the male equivalent. The types of fic fit into genres like romance, humour, hurt/comfort and drama, they are pretty self explanatory. Then there are 'drabbles' and 'one shots' that are structures of fictions. Drabbles are fictions that only contain a set amount of words, while a one shot is as long as you want it to be but is complete when it is posted. Whilst the lingo is pretty helpful and useful there are more parts of writing a fiction you have to look at, for example, you need a plausible storyline, you need to make sure the characters you are manipulating are reasonably 'IC' (in character). Perhaps something that would help would be theories that influence the language of writing. Tzvetan Todorov theorised that there a five stages of narrative; a state of equilibrium at the outset; a disruption of the equilibrium by some action; a recognition that there has been a disruption; an attempt to repair the disruption; a reinstatement of the equilibrium Whilst Vladimir Propp thought that the characters in the narrative have a set job and function in the fiction. For example, the villian would create a quest for the hero, ultimately making the point of the fiction. The two theories differ but both of them have good qualities, maybe a mixture of both of them and your favourite characters would inspire you to create a fanfiction of your own? Just mind the lexis fanfiction uses, it's easy once you have a general grasp on it J April Sources http://www.watershed.co.uk/east/content/narrative.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A632062

Slang Of The Sixties

How many hippies do you know?

 

You may not know it, but it is very likely that someone in your family or at least someone you know was a "hippie" in the 1960s and if not, it is likely that you have heard of ex-hippies Ben and Jerry, the creators of 'Ben and Jerry's' ice cream and others featured in this BBC news article. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/695976.stm

 

We, as the younger generation, use slang more than most, but how is our slang different to the slang used by Ben and Jerry back in the 1960s? You may have a stereotypical view of the kind of words hippies use by seeing stereotypical hippie characters such as Neil in the TV series 'The Young Ones' or even by watching 'South Park' .

 

The most common hippie slang word we know is 'groovy' which you may know from watching 'Austin Powers'. This word has been around long before the 1960s but peaked massively around the hippie era, as you can see from the graph above. It seems almost that the word barely existed before the 1960s and its usage decreased rapidly between the 1970s and 80s. Since then it has had a slow increase in use as perhaps it could be coming back 'into fashion'. Other words associated with the hippie culture like 'cool' and 'dude' don't have much of an increase in usage in the 1960s compared to any other time period. The usage of the word 'cool' in fact started to decrease around the 1940s-1950s and as the meaning changed to become more positive and used more to praise something rather than describe the outside temperature, its usage began to rise again but not until the 1990s.

 

Some words they used were just synonyms for words we already had, for example, they said 'bread' instead of money, 'The Man' instead of the boss and called the police 'The fuzz'. These words you may recognise, but how about words like 'bogart', 'padiddle' or 'melvin'?

 

http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar/slang/1960s-slang.html This site contains a list of slang words used in the 1960s, some you may recognise and others you will not. The usage of many of these words is unknown to many and the only way to find out what they really mean is to ask a real hippie yourself.

 

Hayley Dolan