Please check

1
Please check
2
Todays topic

• What is language?

3
Announcements

• Please turn in your summary.
• Reading questions for Skinner due next week.

4
Quick questions or quandaries?
5
Small Group Activity

• Provide a definition of discourse norms for the
  rest of the class. Then, provide some examples of
  how patterns of language use can differ for
  culturally diverse students from those expected
  in the mainstream classroom (the examples may
  come the assigned readings).

6
Quick Write

• When you think about someone who is a truly
  stellar communicator, what can this person do?
  What does this mean?

7
Language is a complex and dynamic system of
conventional symbols that is used in various
modes for thought and communication.
(American Speech-Language-Hearing Association,
1982)
8
Contemporary views of human language hold that

• language evolves within specific historical,
  social, and cultural contexts
• language, as rule-governed behavior, is described
  by at least five parameters phonologic,
  morphologic, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic
• language learning and use are determined by the
  interaction of biological, cognitive,
  psychosocial, and environmental factors
• effective use of language for communication
  requires a broad understanding of human
  interaction including such associated factors as
  nonverbal cues, motivation, and sociocultural
  roles.

(ASHA, 1982)
9
(No Transcript)
10
Definition

• Pragmatics studies the use of language in human
  communication as determined by the conditions of
  society.
• (Aguilar, 2001, from Review of Mey, Pragmatics
  An Introduction, (2nd ed.), on LINGUIST List
  12.2700)

11
Communication

• Any act by which one person gives to or receives
  from another person information about that
  person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge,
  or affective states. Communication may be
  intentional or unintentional, may involve
  conventional or unconventional signals, may take
  linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur
  through spoken or other modes.

(National Joint Committee for the Communicative
Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities, 1992,
p. 2)
12
Think-pair-share

• What have you learned language vs. communication?
• Anything new or interesting?
• Anything puzzling?

Take notes!
13
Linguistic Universals
14
Quick small group activity

• In small groups, review the list of language
  universals (handout on web site).
• Which provided now or particularly interesting
  information?
• Do they say anything important to you?

15
What does it mean to know a language?
16
Linguistic Competence

• Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an
  ideal speaker-listener, in a completely
  homogeneous speech-community, who knows its (the
  speech communitys) language perfectly and is
  unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant
  conditions as memory limitations, distractions,
  shifts of attention and interest, and errors
  (random or characteristic) in applying his
  knowledge of the language in actual performance.

(Chomsky, 1965, p. 3)
17
Communicative Competence

• the socially appropriate use of language.

(Paulston, 1992, p. xiv)
18
Communicative competence involves knowing not
only the language code but also what to say to
whom, and how to say it appropriately in any
given situation. It deals with the social and
cultural knowledge speakers are presumed to have
to enable them to use and interpret linguistic
forms...
19
Communicative competence extends to both
knowledge and expectation of who may or may not
speak in certain settings, when to speak and when
to remain silent, whom one may speak to, how one
may speak to persons of different statuses and
roles, what appropriate nonverbal behaviors are
in various contexts, what the routines for
turn-taking are in conversation,
20
how to ask for and give information, how to
request, how to offer or decline assistance or
cooperation, how to give commands, how to enforce
discipline, and the like - in short, everything
involving the use of language and other
communication dimensions in particular social
settings.
(Saville-Troike, 1989, p. 21)
21
Looking ahead

• February 14, 2008 (4)
• Topic Approaches to First and Second Language
  Development - Behaviorism
• Required Readings
• Skinner 1957
• Alberto Troutman, 2003
• Due Reading questions for Skinner, 1957

22

• .

Please take a minute for the minute paper.