Language and the self: Revision Document Section Summary EVIDENCE Useful studies to quote. Quotes. ETC 10.1 Roles of language in our sense of self-identity: ➔ Idiolect ➔ Sociolect ➔ Influences of gender, age, ethnicity, religion, education, work, and social patterns ‘Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions’ by John Donne. ➔ We are affected by the attitudes of others. ➔ Close links between ourselves and other people. Cooperative principle ➔ Express relevant information in a clear manner. Paul Grice’s Maxims (1975) ➔ Maxims of quantity: informative as necessary ➔ Maxims of quality: evidence ➔ Maxim of relation: relevance ➔ Maxims of manner: be orderly What is conversational face? The image that a person has of themselves as a conversationalist. Erving Goffman (1967) & Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987) ➔ The positive public image people seek to establish in social interactions ➔ Suggests that individuals are emotionally attached to the face they have constructed for social situations and feel good when their face has been protected or maintained. Strategies to manage face-threatening acts: 1. Positive politeness Being complimentary Make the listener feel good 2. Negative politeness Mitigate a request by the speaker 3. Adversative conjunction changes what has just been said in some way 10.2 Key terms: 1. Cognitive skills 2. Perception 3. Attention 4. Memory 5. Motor skills 6. Language 7. Visual and spatial processing Use the brain: ➔ Put meaning to the words and phrases learned ➔ Cognitive skills involving brain development + lexis and grammar of a language learned Descartes (1596-1650) ‘It requires very little reason to be able to speak.’ ➔ Philosophers had no awareness of cognitive abilities. B.F. Skinner (1938) ➔ Behaviorism theory ➔ Thought and emotions are explained in terms of encouraging desired behavior ➔ Language develops as a result of children trying to imitate caregivers ➔ Children have no innate ability but they rely on operant conditioning to form and improve understanding John Locke (1690) ‘Concerning Human Understanding’ ➔ Empiricism ➔ Knowledge comes through senses and experiences, not through reasoning or logical argument ➔ Mind at birth was a ‘clean state’ Philosophy of Plato (427-347 BCE) ➔ Innatism ➔ Mind is born with ideas against the ‘blank slate’ and given by a supreme being Chomsky’s ‘Nativist Theory of Language’ 10.3 The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ➔ Words of a language directly shape the thoughts of its speakers Ideas relating to the link between language and thought: ➔ Linguistic determinism: language determines the way we think ➔ Linguistic reflections: language reflects the thoughts of its speakers but doesn’t determine it ➔ Linguistic relativity: structure of language affects speakers (study of lexis and syntax) Boas-jakobson principle (1950s) ➔ Every thought can be expressed in every language ➔ Languages differ in the types of information they require speakers to mention when they use the language Theory of Universalism ➔ Language is a reflection of human thoughts ➔ All languages are similar with shared patterns and concepts ➔ Idea: humans share the same cognitive processes Examples of language changes that have reinforced greater social equality: 1. Gender: ‘policeman’,’ fireman’ 2. Comedy: personal or derogatory comments at the expense of people’s physical appearance are unacceptable 3. Ethnicity: illegal to use racist language, gestures, and acts 4. 5. 6. 7. 10.4 1. 2. Workplace changes Age: changing attitudes about aging have made people aware of words that reinforce stereotypes Disability Religious beliefs Convergence: the process through which an individual shifts speech patterns in interaction so that they more closely resemble the speech patterns of speech partners Divergence: make language distinctively different from those around us Prescriptivist view of language ➔ Prescribes how language should be and how you, as its speaker, must use it. ➔ A prescriptivist most often promotes Standard English. Main categories of different contexts for language: ➔ Formal: Standard English is followed on both speech and writing ➔ Colloquial/Casual: Everyday language is used ➔ Slang/Non-standard: informal variety of English ➔ Frozen language: unchanging and full of archaisms. Howard Giles (1973) ‘Communication Accomodation Theory’ ➔ Language used by group members can influence an individual’s sense of self ➔ People aim to make their speech more like that of the majority in the group ➔ People interact, they adjust their speech Research studies on language and social class: 1. ➔ ➔ 2. ➔ Peter Trudgill (1974), Norwich, UK Study Working-class women were more aware of the more prestigious form of pronunciation 3. Great British Class Survey 4. Basil Bernstein (1971), Restricted and elaborated codes Restricted code is most commonly linked to lower social classes, whereas elaborated code is linked to higher social classes. Bernstein believed that students from working-class backgrounds performed poorly in language-based subjects due to their use of restricted code. ➔ ➔ 10.5 Positive and negative features of teenage language: ➔ Early adopters of popular culture (innovators of William Labov (1966), New York Study Pronunciation of a separate consonant after a vowel Respondents from ‘working class’ and ‘lower middle class’ groups were more likely to change the way they spoke to reflect what felt was ‘right’ way of pronunciation ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔ 10.6 ➔ ➔ language) They talk a lot, their language may be unclear or even incomprehensible to those outside their group They may reduce their language from a lexis of several thousand words acquired in childhood Teens language acquisition is clearly not about learning language / they need to learn to adapt and use language in adult situations They can create online virtual lives, they use their own lexis Language can contribute to the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups in society Linked to politics and social concerns England in 2066 ➔ William the Conqueror invaded England ➔ Norman French replaced the language spoken by the defeated Anglo-Saxons ➔ French and English gradually merged into important components of present-day English Roman Catholic Church, in the 1300s ➔ They opposed the first translations of the Bible into English from Latin ➔ People were burned as heretics ➔ Became a matter of life and death -> langauge elected by a group for their religious worship was so important to their self-identity 10.7 Speech ➔ Primary medium of language ➔ Sounds are produced as we breathe out ➔ Vowels are sounds made with no restriction of air through the mouth ➔ Consonants are sounds made with some restriction to the airflow Irregularities and inconsistencies in sounds of speech : ➔ Words with same pronunciation are spelled differently ➔ Words with the same spelling are pronounced differently ➔ Words may diverge with the Engish or American system of spelling ➔ Many words have silent letters Additional Research Stuart Hall (1997) on Language and Cultural Identity : ➔ language, identity, and cultural differences are strongly connected due to the strong relationship between representation and culture ➔ as a group of shared meanings, is presented through language, which is a tool that works as a representational system. Grosjean (1997, 2016) ➔ Bilinguals usually acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people Sample exam questions (link if preferred).
