Finegan chapter one

Finegan presents an overview of languages, their patterns, structures and their complexity. All languages are patterned and all language evolve. Language is a three sided triangle that is concerned with meaning, context and expression. Language can be seen as an umbrella that encompasses many dialects. Grammar, simply put, is how language is organized. Communication involves writing, speaking and signs. Some attempts have been made to connect the manner that chimps learns signing to how children acquire language, but there is no conclusive evidence of a connection between the species. Corpus linguistics has made it possible to examine informal speech on a large scale.

I don’t have much to add to this summary because it is fairly straightforward. Some of the points, like “is there a proper English?” worked very well with the American Tongues video. Also, the point that all utterances are grammatical (in that they are patterned, meaningful and are evolving), is interesting, but can cause a quandary for people who want to teach a language in a manner that will most benefit an individual. As American Tongues stressed, dialect, and grammar choices carry connotations. It’s just a delicate balance between recognizing how closely social identity is connected to language, and trying to create the optimal success for students.

American Tongues

I love this production and all my Wisconsin friends who talk about ‘bubblers’ and ‘signal lights’☻- It’s a great way to demonstrate the variety and richness of English dialects. The main point that I appreciated was the stress on what is considered ‘proper’ and how people tend to base opinions/impressions based on dialect. Also, I simply liked hearing all the different ways of speaking. The fact that dialects can be traced to immigrant populations from early settlers’ points of origin is fascinating. I don’t know if any of my fellow classmates are insomniacs like me, but I have caught a PBS program called (I think) ‘How to Speak American’ late at night a few times, and it is very interesting and reminds me of this video.

How do we learn these attitudes? That’s also very interesting. I have been reading “Strawberry Girl” by Lois Lensky with my daughter – it takes place in Florida in the later 1800s and is written in a strong regional vernacular.- and my daughter commented that she was afraid she was starting to talk like a ‘hill-billy!’ I have no idea where she got the idea that one dialect was inferior to another (not from me!), but she just turned 8 and already has very clear ideas about what is ‘proper English’. Interesting.

This video went well with the Finegan chapter, especially the idea of the triangle and the living nature of language.

Freeman chapter two

Again, this is a review for me, but I confess that I have to re-look up terms like behaviorism and constructivism from time to time. The main tension that seems apparent is that some schools tend to stress teaching grammatical forms that forms habits (Krashen). The sociolinguistic approach seems to see language learning as more embedded social context, and that thought and speech are intertwined. This divide in language instruction seems to even exist in my TESL coursework at times, as some instructors stress formal grammar knowledge and other advocate a ‘meaning and context’ approach, if that makes sense. I noticed than some of my classmates who have learned another language did not find the learning of structures to be particularly helpful. I do agree, but would like to add that when I learned French academically, all those structures came into real use when I went to the country. In other words, some of the drilling did embed itself in my mind and became automatic for social/communicative purposes. The chapter mainly appears to discuss whether language is learned or acquired; I have never been able to take a firm position on this because it really seems to be a little of both.

Freeman chapter one

Much of this was review for me. I have enjoyed other texts by Freeman in the past few years. I especially like the form/meaning/use concept, because it illustrates the dynamics of language acquisition in a comprehensive manner.

Freeman discusses oral language acquisition in terms of developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics. Developmental psychologists often (like Chomsky) believe children have an inborn capacity to learn language ( language acquisition device - LAD). Sociological and anthropological approaches focus on environment and culture. The linguistic approach looks at generative and universal grammar, and I find this a bit complex. However, the point that children do not acquire language by pure mimicry seemed relevant. As children learn to speak, they often make mistakes that suggest they are following a pattern For example, my daughter used to say things like “mommy boughted it” indicating that she understood the past tense pattern, but applied it in an over generalized way. This little example seems to indicate that there is a universal grammar because even though the grammatical knowledge may not be built in, there seems to be a capacity absorb and conceptualize patterns.