Sara Hashizume

Even though we use pragmatics every day without even thinking about it, it’s amazing how we can assign different meanings to situations and let the listener know through tone, emphasis, and the wording of a sentence what we are trying to convey.  At first I thought that this could only be expressed vocally, but even children learning sign language use pragmatics. Not in the form of their tone or speech but in their facial expressions, and movements.  I think these are very important tools for communication, and because of this we are able to understand others based on the situation and queues that are given.  Does this mean there are universal pragmatics that let us communicate with people of other languages just by using hand gestures, facial expressions, and intonation of voice?

Here is a clip that I believe was created to teach children pragmatic language and associate a situation with vocal tone of voice and visual facial and body movements.  That is my guess of what this video is so please correct me if I am wrong or if you have any other ideas :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDFxr6dMJUE

Another thing I found interesting in the reading was about how a language learner’s ethnic affiliation and sense of identity are related to how they make the sounds and rhythms of a second language.  The book states that learners who kept a strong ‘foreign accent’ were sometimes characterized as being more loyal to their ethnic group and those who achieved high accuracy in pronunciation in their second language were thought to be less loyal to their ethnic group.  This reflects the learners’ desire for proficiency in the target language and shows how much your mental state can influence how you learn.  I always wondered how some people get great pronunciation in a short amount of time, maybe this is the reason.    

The first thing I found interesting about this week’s reading was the concept of interlanguage and how we can create something like our own language based on our knowledge of our L1 and L2.  I also liked how Selinder pointed out that language learning is not always progressing and sometimes we reach a plateau before we gain further progress.  When learning a second language, have you experienced a time when you feel as if you haven’t improved for a long time? And if you got over this, what triggered your new burst of learning?

I also thought it was interesting that even in second language learners there is a sequence of development.  I thought this would only be true for first language learners because they lack cognitive development and experiences.  This is related to a previous post, but when thinking about learning language, almost like babies, we sometimes develop a new way of thinking to allow our L2 to make sense.  I think some things cannot be translated through the eyes of another language.  naokon12 brings up a good question about language influencing ones thoughts and I think that it definitely does.  When learning a new language I believe we are also learning the culture imbedded in that language. In my sociolinguistics class, the teacher mentioned a quote “Another language, another soul”. When learning a new language it is almost as if gaining a new identity, in that the way you express yourself may change depending on the culture and way of speaking in your target language. 

People who are bilingual, especially those who are ‘simultaneous bilinguals’ are fortunate to have an opportunity for exposure to multiple languages at a very young age.  Though they probably don’t think so when they start school, it will definitely pay off as they get older.  I have heard of many incidents of friends and classmates who entered elementary school not having a firm grasp on English, as they spoke a different language at home.  They were often put in ESL classes and told by their teachers not to use their native language, as stated in the book.  Good thing they strived for additive bilingualism and kept using both languages (sometimes three, in the case of Chinese where many of them would attend Chinese school for Mandarin while they spoke Cantonese at home).  By the time we graduated from high school they were all valedictorians at the top of the class!  This follows what the book has said about how being bilingual correlates to academic success and metalinguistic awareness.  No wonder they were all so good at English too!

One question that came to mind when reading the chapter was: can a bilingual person not have a preferred language? I’m not bilingual so I can’t imagine not having a preferred language to use and I’m curious if some people are unbiased to their two languages.  Even if a person has L1 that they use at home and learned first, if they go through school using L2 that would probably become their preferred language. 

Lastly, I found an example through a Korean variety show, of what I think is the beginning of childhood bilingualism.  Just a little background information, this show is called The Return of Superman and it’s about fathers who take care of their children for 48 hours without their moms.  One of the fathers is a famous Korean-Japanese fighter and he is teaching his daughter Korean.  It’s a really cute show where you can see the progression of her Korean acquisition (she lives in Japan) from the first episode to the most recent ones. 

When reading the first part of this chapter, I really enjoyed learning about the different stages in which babies acquire language.  I have a 4 year old nephew and before reading this I didn’t put much thought into how he was learning language.  It’s interesting to read the examples and remember incidents that occurred in real life.  The most frequent one is asking “Why?”  Maybe a reason why children acquire language so quickly and effectively is because of their immense curiosity. They are new to this world and therefore want to learn more about it.  Although there is probably some physical growth element to why children learn so well, I think as we get older we lose some of our child-like curiosity and our information absorption slows as we become unconcerned, uninterested, or just distracted by other things in life. 

The next part of the chapter explained the three main theoretical positions that explain language development.  I think all three perspectives work together to explain language acquisition.  We need the behaviourist perspective because imitation is important when learning anything, especially language.  The innatist perspective, because I believe to survive as humans, communication and interaction with others is necessary, making us predisposed to language.  And finally, the interactionist/development perspectives, where exposure and interaction with people and objects, gives children the necessary understanding of language.  I don’t think language development can be achieved through only one of these perspectives but all of them together.