Blog - Paper 3 Section B

     

    Five-year-old Raina engages in a conversation with her mother as they walk alongside the countryside. At five-years-old Raina is able to have a conversation with her mother and seems comfortable as well as trusting as she assumes that her mom knows what is said. The mother is shown throughout this extract helping Raina and guiding her through the obstacles she had endured. The mother is also shown through the extract helping Raina by highlighting their surroundings and making them know. For example, the mother pointed out the ‘butterfly’ in the air; “see the butterfly (arrow) [points] LOOK.” Unfortunately, Raina missed the viewing of the creature, yet this still displays the mother's given aid. Raina’s mother assists her with another issue at hand. Raina wanted to, ‘go in this field’ but mother said ‘no.’ She said this because of the ‘long grass’ and how there could be ‘creepy crawlies’ in there. This mother helped her son so much and offered a lot of guidance. 

    Language Acquisition Support System is used. This system of language deals with the adults and older children who help a young child acquire language. Basically this system of in support of a ‘caregiver.’ This caregiving feature helps Raiana gain more insight into her surroundings. The mother helps Raiana countless times with seeing the animals and the area around her. For example, ‘see the butterfly [points] LOOK’, ‘over there (1) you missed it (1) LOOK (2)’, ‘look over in that tree there’, amongst many others. She acted as his caregiver and helped with his knowledge of his surroundings. 

    Considering Raina’s age, five, her language stage is preoperational. This Piaget theory focuses on ages two to five and deals with understanding the world through language and mental images. At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.

    Raina's main stage of early development in child language acquisition would be the post telegraphic stage. In this stage, the remaining function words are acquired and appropriate. The telegraphic stage deals with a caregiver or individual asking questions and keeping the child engaged. For example, ‘do you hear them?’, ‘do you think there's a lot of little birdies in there?’ Those questions are actively keeping Raiana engaged with the more information she learns.     

    The conventions and features of unscripted conversation and spoken language transcripts retained a vast amount of notations. Pauses in seconds, micro-pauses, speech overlap, underlying, paralinguistic features, upper case letters, phonemic representation of speech sounds, along with upward and downward intonations. Each underlined word deals with location; there and this. Raina uses this lexis by amplifying to his mother that he ‘wants to go this way.’ The mother used there when telling how Raina missed seeing the butterfly. The second pauses along with the micro ones are mostly used by five-year-old Raina, but at times the mother does as well. “Look (.) this way (.) i’m going to (.) going to (.) go over here.” In this comment, we can clearly see just how many breaks this child is taking. He is stuttering with his words, probably because of his language level. In between the conversation, italics are used which display paralinguistic features. As the mother shows the different elements and animals to Raiana, she uses italics to show how she, ‘[points]’ to them. Inline twelve the mother used this feature to quote, ‘[breathes in].’ The pair also use these italics to display their emotions. In lines, twenty-nine and thirty, share a laugh together about spiders on Raina's jacket. During their exploration, each time one of them spotted something they would say, ‘LOOK.’ By this word being in all caps intensifies the importance. When they speak about directions of either the animals or places to go they use upward and downward intonations. 

    There were multiple different functions of children's language used in this extract. Heuristic language is used to explore the world and to learn and discover – children use language to learn. This function usually deals with questions and answers. Raina and his mother frequently asked questions; ‘see the butterfly?’, ‘mum can we skip this way?’ Not only is heuristic language shown but elements of representational, interactional, and personal.