The conversation between Anna and her family reveal several aspects of language related
to caregivers and their children. Since the purpose of the conversation was, primarily, to
recount how her day went, Anna uses representational language (according to Halliday’s
functions of language), whose purpose is to convey information, and so does her sister,
Kate. In addition to this, the children’s language is characteristic of the stage of language
acquisition each is in. Their parents, on the other hand, use English as expected of their age,
but this too is filled with various features pertaining to the language caregivers, in particular,
use, which is naturally quite different from talking to an audience of adults.
To begin, a look at Anna’s language usage can give readers a hint of the stage of language
acquisition she is in. Like many other children who are in the post-telegraphic stage, Anna is
able to use a wide range of grammatical structures, such as questions (eg. ‘how do you
know?’) and negations (‘i don’t know’). The small story she tells in lines 2-3 reveal that she
can also handle sentences with two clauses and use the coordinating conjunction ‘and’
correctly. This also matches Halliday’s function of imaginative language and shows that
Anna is able to demonstrate cause and effect with her language (ie. that the excited dog
‘knocked the postman off the bicycle’). This influence by cognition on language is effectively
summarised by Jean Piaget’s work, according to which Anna would fall under the concrete
operational stage, where children are able to think more logically about concrete scenarios
and use language for situations outside their immediate experience.
Although she does not make virtuous errors for most of the conversation, the ones made at
the start suggest that she is still learning how to use representational and/or imaginative
language and that she has occasional struggles with conjugating irregular verbs such as ‘try’
and ‘give’ in the past tense. These mistakes may also be born out of using a compound
sentence, as she might be too focused on narrating the story to pay attention to her tenses.
In contrast, Anna’s sister, Kate, is evidently further along the road of language acquisition.
She does not make any errors while talking, speaks using complete sentences and can also
emphasise on particular syllables while talking (eg. ‘i saw anna’). Comparatively, Anna
brings emphasis to her words by raising the overall volume of her voice (‘I DID’), a practice
that is common in children her age.
Another major difference between how Anna and Kate talk is the number of pauses they
make. Kate does not make any pauses while talking. Anna, on the other hand, evidently
talks quite slowly, sometimes needing seconds to think, such as in line 32. Additionally,
Anna speaks in rather small utterances such as ‘no’ and ‘alexa’ for most of the conversation,
without developing them further as Kate did. Some of her sentences are also fragments,
such as ‘snack.’ and ‘had a drink’.
Another thing to notice about the conversation is that Anna’s parents encourage her expand
more, such as when her father asks ‘what else did you do?’ when she describes what she
did at school. They also echo her words as a form of backchanneling, such as in line 39 and
42. A benefit of this is that this method can be used to model how some phrases should be
said, if Anna makes a mistake. Their repetition of her classmate’s names also indicates their
excitement about learning about her classmates, and may also be a prompt for Anna to tell
them more about those children, although unfortunately missed.
The most evident feature of the parents’ language is the use of questions to direct the
conversation, which primarily aid in helping Anna practice how to narrate events. Here,
another instance of modelling can be seen, wherein their use of intonation can be imitated
by their children. For example, her father asks ‘who?’ with an upward intonation and this is
mirrored just a few lines later when Anna asks ‘what?’ with an upward intonation, as well as
‘how do you know?’
The importance of Kate and the parents’ presence in Anna’s language journey is important
because they function as a Language Acquisition Support System. This LASS, as proposed
by Jerome Bruner, brings out the innate ability of the child through active interactions with
the caretaker. Therefore, Anna’s parents’ repetition, questions and backchanneling make the
conversation an active one where both their children can participate. By speaking thus, via a
process of trial and error, both children’s language can flourish. Indeed, it may only be a few
years before Anna is able to speak as fluently as Kate, and Kate as fluently as her parents.
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