Media text example

Media text – preliminary activity

A men’s or women’s magazine:

Have you ever wondered where it comes from? What? This. Language.

Do you remember your first word? Do you remember your child’s first word? The answer is most probably yes. But where does it come from? There have been many arguments over where language comes from and how it develops, but how do we really know?

Here is an insight into suggestions made to attempt to answer this on-going unknown whilst peculiar question.

Many people believe that the way you talk to your child has a huge impact on the development of their language. One idea that has been developed and taught is the imitation theory. In other words: what you say matters. It’s a case of thinking before you speak, because your children listen. Not only do they listen, they copy.

Or, there is the concept that children are born with an inbuilt system that helps them to develop language. Not only to speak, but to read and write also. The child then hears examples of language from surrounding people – such as you, and can therefore make estimations on the rules of the language it is learning. The child will then work out grammatical rules such as saying ‘I drew’ rather than ‘I draw-ed’, which is a common error made by developing children. As their language continues to develop, alike every other aspect of their life, they will become more and more adult-like. 

Methodology - Edit

Investigation methodology

Rough title: ‘How does a child’s language change dependant on who they are conversing with?’

The data that I chose to collect is based on child language acquisition. Before collecting my data there were many factors that I had to consider, including:

• ·         Reliability
• ·         Confidentiality
• ·         Ethicality
• ·         Comparability

Reliability was a main factor that I thoroughly considered.  I had to collect enough data so that any unrepresentative aspects do not seem significant. To do so I:

• ·         Recorded for the same amount of time (ten minutes)
• ·         Recorded on the same day, every week for six weeks

As I was recording the child’s natural speech I had to consider ‘the observer’s paradox’. This states that people change their speech and behavior as soon as they know they are being watched/recorded. To ensure that I collected fair speech, I have only transcribed between four and six minutes of speech leaving me with six lots of two minutes conversations.  However, the child was not completely aware that I was recording him due to permission being granted from his parent as he is aged under sixteen.

This then leads me onto the factor of ethicality. I had to gain informed consent from the parent of the child, as well as the others that were included in the recordings through interacting with the child. To do so, I wrote a formal letter stating my intentions, which was then read through, agreed and signed by all participants. Informed consent allowed everyone involved to understand why I was taking these recordings, who will be accessing it and how I will protect their confidentiality.

Confidentiality was important to me as I wanted to ensure that everybody knew they could have an open, random conversation that will be kept anonymous. To do this, I have changed all names when transcribing the speech, and any personal details have been changed such as birthdays, addresses etc.

I am also looking into comparability between the recordings because who the child is talking to varies between each one. I am going to look at how the child responds and communicates with the different members of the conversation and also determine if it’s due to the language and techniques used by the adult. This is things such as questions and child directed speech. To be comparable, I took the recordings at approximately the same time every week. This was every Wednesday evening starting between 6-630 pm. This is to ensure that the speech was typical of an evening conversation between members of my family.

Methodology

Investigation methodology

The data that I chose to collect is based on child language acquisition. Before collecting my data there were many factors that I had to consider, including:

·         Reliability

·         Confidentiality

·         Ethicality

·         Comparability

Reliability was a main factor that I thoroughly considered.  I had to collect enough data so that any unrepresentative aspects do not seem significant. To do so I:

·         Recorded for the same amount of time (ten minutes)

·         Recorded on the same day, every week for six weeks

·         Recorded at the same time (tea time)

As I was recording the child’s natural speech I had to consider ‘the observer’s paradox’. This states that people change their speech and behaviour as soon as they know they are being watched/recorded. To ensure that I collected fair speech, I have only transcribed between four and eight minutes, leaving me with four minutes of speech. However, the child was not completely aware that I was recording him due to permission being granted from his parent as he is aged under sixteen.

This then leads me onto the factor of ethicality. I had to gain informed consent from the parent of the child, as well as the others that were included in the recordings through interacting with the child. Informed consent allowed the parent of the child and the others involved understand why I was taking these recordings, who will be accessing it and how I will protect their confidentiality.

Confidentiality was important to me as I wanted to ensure that everybody knew they could have an open, random conversation that will be kept anonymous. To do this, I have changed all names when transcribing the speech, and any personal details have been changed such as birthdays, addresses etc.

I am also looking into comparability between the recordings because who the child is talking to varies between each one. I am going to look at how the child responds and communicates with the different members of the conversation and also determine if it’s due to the language and techniques used by the adults. This is things such as questions and child directed speech.

My investigation

For my investigation, I am focusing on child language acquisition. This investigation is based on my four year old nephew (Oscar) interacting with family members.

To collect my data, I have used my mobile phone as a voice recorder. I have six recording approximately 8-10minutes long of a conversation between Oscar and other members of my family. To make sure that I have reliable data, I took one recording every week. This is instead of doing day to day recordings as a particular event may have taken place which would change the conversation and affect my data. I have also made sure that I have enough data to look at to try and spot patterns and link my data with theory. I have also had permission forms from the parents of Oscar, and all of my family to confirm that they understand why I will be taking a series of voice recordings as well as an agreement.

I am interested in child language acquisition theory. I will be looking into the work of theorists such as Piaget, Chomsky and Bruner. I hope to find techniques used by both Oscar and the adults involved in the conversation that link to theory I have found.

Stage 1

Your own investigation.

Stage one: before looking at my data, I can make predictions on what I expect to find in the data. 

(Child language acquisition linked with my data).

In my data, I expect to find that the child will confuse his tenses. For example 'goed' rather than I went. This is because the rules of irregular verbs. This is because we usually put 'ed' on the end of a word to denote past time. I also expect that the adult will encourage the child's speech by asking questions, making prompts etc. I expect to find evidence of David Crystals child language aqisitipn theory stating that the child will ask questions like 'but why?' In order to gain explanations. 

Data: 

O- Oscar (4 years of age) 

M- My mum (44 years of age)

O- when you die (.) do you come back (1) alive^

M- why^

O- grant died

M- who's grant then

O- my rabbit

M- oh yeah (.) that's right (1) wow you have a good memory (.) that was a long time ago

O- I know (.) will he come back (1) alive^

M- no mate (.) when you die (.) that's the end of your life

O- who does

M- everybody will one day

O- I don't want to die

M- well 

O- I don't want to die

M- not for a long time yet(.) your only little (1) aren't you

O- yeah (3) where do they go (.) when they died

M- well I don't really know (.) but I have heard (1) that good people go to heaven

O- I'm good boy nanny

M- you are a good boy sometimes (.) but sometimes you are a miserable little monkey 

O- [chuckles]

Analysis

Commenting on my own analysis

 

Task: Comment on your own analysis about whether the data you suggested you would collect would be suitable and why/why not. 

 

After looking into what makes reliable/comparable data, I think that the data I would choose to collect, analyse and investigate would be suitable. I considered getting permission from my own family members (which includes a four year old boy) to record their conversations over a period of time (around 10 conversations). I would then transcribe the data that I collect, and analyse this. I would look into whether or not the child changed the way in which it speaks depending on who he is interacting with. I would look at the way adults use speech to encourage him to develop his own speech. Then I would research theories associated with child language acquisition, such as Piaget, to try and apply it to my own data.

 

I think that this data would be suitable, as it is easily accessible for me. I have also gained permission from my family members to record their every-day conversations to help me in this study.

Ethicality Task

Ethicality

Task: look back at what you decided you could collect to investigate further after looking at the sample data. How could you make what you collect more comparable/ethical/reliable? Write a list of all the factors you consider including problems.

 

The data I decided that I could collect was the way in which a four year old interacted and talks with others. As I have already discussed, in order to make this data more reliable, I could collect it myself. I could take a series of recordings of conversations, and then transcribe them. Once transcribed, I could analyse my data, and look into relevant theories to try to apply them to the data that I find. This data would be unpublished, so I would need personal permission to do this investigation. When considering the reliability of my data, I considered the fact that the data may not be too reliable. This is because I would ask my family members if it was acceptable to record their conversations, and once they know I am doing this, they may begin to talk in different ways or act. This would affect the reliability of my results and the way in which language varies between ages as the conversations would not be natural.