Child Language Acquisition

Texts A and B are transcripts of Jess (3 years) with her mother. In Text A they are making a jigsaw. In Text B they are looking at picture cards together.

Referring in detail to the transcripts and to relevant ideas from language study, analyse the language used by children and their caregivers.

It is clear that Jess' mother is using Child-directed speech (CDS), as she uses an interrogative "where does this one go?" to begin the conversation with Jess. Jess has realised that when she is asked a question it is polite to answer and reply to her mother in adjacency pairs, showing effective turn-taking in the conversation that the two have. CDS is used to aid children in their child language acquisition. 

The conversation supports Social Interactionists theories as it shows how Jess' language has developed from the start to the end of the conversation through the interaction with her caregiver (mother). It also supports the Behaviourists theory that language is acquired through imitation and reinforcement.

The fact that the mother starts the conversation with an interrogative shows that she has the power in the conversation. Although the mother has the power, it is very influential as she is using politeness strategies like saving face to recast Jess' errors and give her confidence in speech. We see this as Jess tells her mother "it go in middle" where she omits an article, and her mother repeats the phrase, recasting it to tell Jess "in the middle". Jess' mother also refers to her as "Jessie" showing a very personal term of address, which could have been used to make Jess feel more comfortable in the conversation.

Jess seems to be in the Telegraphic stage of language acquisition, as she is still omitting auxiliary verbs - Jess says "I not know" instead of "I do not know". This is explained by Roger Brown who found that morphemes are acquired later in the Telegraphic stage or in the early Post-Telegraphic. We can see that her mother is trying to use short elliptical sentences and two word utterances like "you do" to really encourage Jess to speak, even if she makes virtuous errors.