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COGS 156 Exam 2 > Lecture 11 - Language and Social Context > Flashcards

Lecture 11 - Language and Social Context Flashcards

1
Q

communicative competence

A

using language in social situations appropriately

knowing what is and isn’t appropriate to say in a particular cultural context

knowing when someone needs to be provided additional info to understand what you’re saying

pragmatics/discourse/sociolinguistics (how language functions in social settings

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2
Q

topics, issues in pragmatics

A

understanding what others do/don’t know

knowing what language a situation calls for

dialect variation

difference language to difference people (hey bro, how’s it going? to a prof)

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3
Q

theoretical approaches to communicative competence

A

speech act theory

cognitive developmental theory

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4
Q

speech act theory

A

John Austin (1975)

some utterances convey information

other utterances do more: they are speech acts or performances

 - implicit meaning: telling a late student: it's 10:20AM

3 components

  • locutionary act (saying a sentence
  • illocutionary act (speaker means X - sarcasm or irony maybe: multiple layers)
  • perlocutionary act (listener understands as Y)
  • “That’s a great outfit”
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5
Q

egocentrism

A 
Jean Piaget (1926): studied development of cognition in children: how children understand what's going on in other's minds 
  - believed that the beginning of social thought starts at about 7-8 years

related to theory of mind

if you’re a little kid you have trouble understanding that people think other stuff that you do, so it might not occur to you to explain who an absent person is

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6
Q

cognitive developmental theory

A

egocentrism

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7
Q

things little kids do that show that they don’t understand other’s (are egocentric)

A
  • don’t allow turns in conversations: steamroll
  • don’t explain pronouns they use
  • leave stuff out
    • assume too much common ground: assume listeners have knowledge that they don’t actually have
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8
Q

are kids really egocentric?

A

not totally

get better over time

do better in familiar situations

evidence for non-egocentrism
- 2 year old’s asking for toy: they take the parent’s perspective into account

  • 4 year old’s address 2 year olds and adults differently

in UNFAMILIAR SITUATIONS, kids behave egocentrically (lab environment)

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9
Q

Requests (kids understanding of other’s thoughts)

A

some direct (go to your room now), some indirect (do you know what time it is?)

different locutionary acts
but same illocutions and perlocutions (same intent on the part of the speaker and understanding on the part of the listener)

also, semantic aggravators and mitigators

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10
Q

different locutionary acts

A

shut the window!

could you shut the window?

are you trying to freeze me to death?

    • -» different locutionary acts
      but same illocutions and perlocutions (same intent on the part of the speaker and understanding on the part of the listener)
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11
Q

semantic aggravator

A

“shut the window NOW”

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12
Q

semantic mitigator

A

“shut the window please”

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13
Q

how kids do at comprehending indirect requests

are they literally interpreted?

A

they comprehend indirect requests pretty well (even at age 2, they respond to indirect just as well as direct)

preschool: kids refuse indirect requests with explanations like “i can’t” or “i don’t want to”
- thus they were aware it was a request

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14
Q

what kinds of requests do kids produce?

A

they differentiate between statuses (adults vs. younger kids)

to parents: semantic mitigators (can i have a cookie please?)

to peers: use semantic aggravators

aware of status implied by different forms
- kids who use semantic aggravators are judged as “bossier” than those using semantic mitigators

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15
Q

kids are aware of status implied by different forms

A

kids who use semantic aggravators are judged as “bossier” than those using semantic mitigators

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16
Q

conversational skills

A

taking turns

maintaining topic

giving and receiving feedback

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17
Q

taking turns

A

can manage not to interrupt by preschool age

but, worse at predicting when it’s their turn

    • rely on obvious cues like pauses
    • thus, long pauses in kid conversation
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18
Q

maintaining topic

A
  • preschool: less soundplay, repetition
  • can elaborate on topics
  • talk about their day, favorite TV
  • long pretend-play
  • still difficult: phone conversations
  • cohesive devices:
    • link conversations to previous conversation
    • ellipsis: use of anaphors
    • connectives: because so, then
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19
Q

connectives

A

this happened BECAUSE

this happened SO we did something else

AND THEN we did this AND THEN we did that

20
Q

anaphors

A

things that refer back to other things

ex: pronouns: yesterday i was talking to one of my colleagues. HE said that…

21
Q

Feedback

A
  • if you don’t understand, you need to let your conversational partner know
  • kids can provide feeback if asked
  • worse if signals are unclear (quizzical look)
  • bad at requesting clarification (kinda don’t notice that they don’t understand(
  • bad at monitoring their own clarity (failure of common ground)
  • much later: back-channeling
  • full communicative competence develops for lots of lifespan!! (plenty of adults struggle with communicative competence - part of the challenge is that there are so many situations that you encounter that have a diff pragmatic setup than other situations that you’ve been in)
22
Q

back channeling

A
  • “Yes. Uh-huh. I see. Indeed…”
  • running feedback as to whether you understand what someone is saying
  • continuous indicator of attention and good comprehension
23
Q

social register

A

might use difference language/dialect for:

  • school
  • home
  • formal conference
  • superiors vs. subordinates
24
Q

variability

A
  • variation along social and ethnic lines
  • gender variation (many claimed gender differences in speech habits)
  • real variability, or just overstatement of stereotypes?
  • regardless, overall mostly the same
  • preschool: some studies suggest girls play more collaboratively than boys (although studies in China suggest the opposite )
25
Q

difference in gender

gendered phonetic variability

fundamental frequency difference?

A

at the sound level

corpus of words spoken by young boys and girls AND men (puberty longer vocal tracts = larger vocal folds = lower speech) &women

no difference in vocal pitch with young boys & girls (biologically don’t have different spoken frequencies)

26
Q

formant frequencies and gendered phonetic variability

first and second formant differences?

A

generally women have higher formant frequencies

boys and girls show differences in first and second formant frequencies: kids picking up on social differences? (malleable, not biologically determined. social factors involved)

27
Q

formant

A

an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract

28
Q

Variability in style

A

social, ethnic

gender variation

different roles

29
Q

different roles experiemnt: Andersen study 2000

A

act out a family situation with puppets (mom/dad/kids); school, doctors office….

kids used a lot of differences in:
 - sound (pitch, rate, voice quality)
 - vocabulary (lexicon): doctors used different word choices than mom and dad 
 - syntax
     = kid to dad: indirect request
     = dad to mom: direct request

(parent’s are peers so they can be more direct and “less polite”)

younger kids used mostly sound differences

old kids were better able to use vocab, and syntax

kids are aware that diff people speak differently

30
Q

Communicative “rules”

A
  • not as hard and fast as other domains
  • a bit more nebulous: harder to learn than other rules
  • opacity of words
  • contradictory situations
  • these rules change depending on what situations you’re in (variability across situations)
  • can i have a cookie? (more ok)
  • give me a cookie. (less ok)
31
Q

phonological rules

A

Fly (yes! obvious)

*Lfy (No!)

apply across the board

32
Q

syntactic rules

A
  • where are you going? (yes)

- *where you are going? (no)

33
Q

opacity of words

A

what does please mean?

34
Q

contradictory situations

A

Do I have to thank Grandma for giving me underwear for my birthday? Don’t I have to tell the truth?

35
Q

Variability across situations

A
  • Home vs. School

- Friends vs. Parents (

36
Q

how do kids learn communicative “rules”

A

shaping by society

  • parents: what do you say? please!
  • schools

their own inquisitiveness

37
Q

parental “teaching” study

becker

A

longitudinal study of 5 families: tracking over a long period of time to see how parents “teach” these communicative rules

found that most parental input is INDIRECT

  • prompts
  • modeling
  • reinforcement
  • hypothetical situations
  • retroactively evaluate behavior
  • respond to kid’s comment
38
Q

prompts

A

comment on an error, omission
- “You didn’t say ‘please’”, - “What’s the magic word?”

suggestion before error
- “Remember what we say to get a cookie?”

39
Q

family roles

issues?

A

mothers (primary care giver): better able to intuit what child means

fathers, siblings: are less able to do this

  • force kids to be more communicatively competent (gives feedback to the kid that others don’t understand what they’re saying so this forces them to try and explain themselves differently)
  • serve as a bridge to the rest of the world
  • siblings are especially bad
40
Q

modeling

A

do behavior for the kid

teach using a sibling

parents act out teaching situation
- “Daddy, what do you say?”

41
Q

reinforcement

A

“I like how you asked for a cookie!”

42
Q

older siblings

A

if you have one, there is more opportunity to watch interactions (parent + older sibling) and see more communicative styles

famously, older siblings have better vocabulary and syntax because they have more input from adult models

younger siblings have better conversational skills with mothers

(these are early differences that probably have less influence as time goes on)

43
Q

school roles

A

teachers and peers approximate to parents and siblings

44
Q

hypothesis testing

A

kids test out social language and occasionally get it not quite right

older kids ask or request verification about social language

45
Q

consequences of communicative [in]competence

A
  • easier to function in preschool, grade school,
  • predictive of later literacy skills (good narrative skills my make reading narratives more entertaining)
  • communicatively competent children are better liked (good politics)
46
Q

Thoughts/Actions

A

a lot of research on language development is:

  • correlational
  • based on very few (white, middle class, American) people
  • a little contradictory (one on one interaction with mom is good, but does that mean that shipping them off to daycare is bad? why then is shipping them off to school a year later good?)
  • not many interactions with dads happen on the level of interactions with moms! (influence of family involvement in children’s language development is ongoing experiment)

COGS 156 Exam 2 (8 decks)

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