Social Interactionism

Question 1

What is social interactionism?

Answer 1

The belief that a child is born with a ‘blank slate’ and learns language based on their interaction with caregivers - often linked to the ‘nature vs nurture’ argument

Question 2

Who theorised social interactionism? What did they say?

Answer 2

• Bruner
• he believes that a child must interact with caregivers in order to learn how to use language
• he created the LASS (language acquisition support system) - a system designed to ‘scaffold’ a child in learning language (structuring responses in order to help a child to se language kore accurately)

Question 3

Catherine Snow

Answer 3

• coined the term ‘motherese’ to describe the language used by mothers to talk to their children
• she argues that language acquisition happens as a result of the interaction which takes place between the mother and her child
• interactions with fathers use ‘fatherese’ and anybody else ‘otherese’

Question 4

John snarey

Answer 4

• states that fathers interact with their children in different ways to the way their mothers do
• he says that ‘roughhousing’ with the father teaches that biting, kicking and other forms of violence are unacceptable and how to gain self-control

Question 5

John snarey - fatherese process

Answer 5

• believes that the following form part of the fatherese process:
  Tickling, wrestling and throwing the child in the air, chasing, loud volume, bouncing rather than cuddling and rough rather than gentle, encouragement of competition, promotion of independence over security, less simplification of speech, challenging the child to expand vocabulary and linguistic skills

Question 6

Jim case study - Bard and Sachs

Answer 6

• they studied ‘Jim’ whose parents were deaf
• Jim was exposed to various uses of language like the TV and the radio, but he passed the CRITICAL PERIOD (a term coined by Lenneberg to denote the period of time in which a child best learns language, after a child will struggle)
• but interactions with a speech therapist helped him to acquire language, proving the need for interaction to develop a child’s language

Question 7

Snow and bruner - strategies

Answer 7

• recasting and reformulation: the caregiver repeats what the child said containing anything missing and needed to make a grammatically standard utterance
• expansion: the caregiver makes the utterance more complex by expanding on what they said
• exaggerated prosodic cues - exaggerating intonation, varying pitch an using higher intonations
• expatiation- expressing what they said child said giving more information
• overarticulation - the caregiver stretches out vowel sounds in words

Question 8

Rhoades

Answer 8

Rhoades adds that the following are also used:
- short and simple sentences which are melodic
- focus on what they child is doing
- repetition of what the child and caregiver say
- pausing between words
- higher frequency of interrogatives and imperatives
- slower speech

Question 9

Grice’s Maxisms (1975)

Answer 9

1) maxim of quantity - contributions must carry enough information (+ not too much)
2) maxim of quality - contributions must be truthful
3)maxim of relation - contributions must be relevant and pertinent to discussion
4)maxim of manner - contributions must be clear and limit ambiguity

Question 10

De Villiers and De Villiers (challenge)

Answer 10

• they state that it is rare for caregivers to give direct feedback about the correctness of their language, so there must be something more innate

Question 11

Myzor (challenge)

Answer 11

• believes that CDS helps to aid social development but does not help linguistics development e.g. it may teach turn - taking but not aid their ability to use correct forms

Question 12

Chomsky

Answer 12

• in 1959, he published a paper criticising skinners theory on a number of flaws
• he questions how children produce utterances that are grammatically non-standard to the point where no care-giver would have said them - errors often happen that are not present in the template

Question 13

Cliff Pye (challenge)

Answer 13

• he researched how different cultures learn language
• his research detailed that children around the world acquired language at roughly the same time and that not all cultures used CDS
• for example, Samoan families do not speak to the children until they are around 18 months old, which implies that language acquisition may be more innate