LANGUAGE
ACROSS
THE CURRICULUM-BEd Notes
Unit 2 – Understanding language across the curriculum
Prepared by
Sabarish P
Contents
Dialect - Deficit theory - Discontinuity Theory
Dialect
Deficit theory
Discontinuity Theory
Implications
Dialect – Deficit Theory – Discontinuity Theory
Dialect
Dialect is the local language, the language used by the people of a specific area, class, district or any other group of people. The term dialect involves the spelling, sounds, grammar and pronunciation used by a particular group of people and it distinguishes them from other people around them. Dialect is a very powerful and common way of characterization, which elaborates the geographic and social background of any character.
Deficit theory
The deficit theory emerged in 1960 as an attempt to explain why disadvantaged students tend to experience high rates of failure in school. This theory suggests that children from lower socio economic homes are verbally deprived due to economic disadvantage. Because they lack verbal stimulation in their homes, they enter school without the linguistic resources needed for success.
The deficit theory further suggests that children from the lower socioeconomic classes "cannot speak complete sentences, do not know the names of common objects, cannot form concepts or convey logical thoughts". Thus deficit theory claims that children from disadvantaged populations are intellectually disadvantaged as a result of inferior linguistic development. Research in the early 70s essentially refuted the deficit theory by demonstrating that the children from lower class cultures are highly competent language users when they are permitted to talk in their own vernacular in situations where they can maintain some degree of control.
In other words 'what we say' and 'how we say' is largely determined the context of situation in which interaction takes place between the topics being discussed in light of personal relationship of participants.
Discontinuity Theory
There is no consensus on the ultimate origin or age of human language. Continuity-based theories stress that language is so complex that it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among pre-humans. Discontinuity-based theories stress that language is a unique human trait that appeared fairly suddenly in the transition from pre-hominids to early man.
Some theories are based on the idea that language is so complex that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form, but that it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among our pre-human ancestors. These theories can be called continuity -based theories.
The
opposite viewpoint is that language is such a unique human trait that
it cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans and that it
must therefore have appeared fairly suddenly in the transition from
pre-hominids to early man. These theories can be defined as
discontinuity-based.
When chimpanzees are raised in a human
environment for years, they still do not acquire human linguistic
skills. However, deaf children with limited linguistic input can
still create a complex language on their own, clearly not from
something they heard, but rather something that is within them,
something that they were born with and already understand how to do.
Discontinuity theory depicts language as too complicated to have ever come from mere animals, expressing that language is unique to humans and far more complex than other forms of communication on earth. Noam Chomsky defends this position and suggests the concept of a “language organ” .
Chomsky suggests that language could be due to a sporadic mutation in our species.
'Sporadic' –scattered or isolated
'Mutation' - the changing of the structure of a gene,
Language is unique among the communication systems of the biosphere, and that to claim continuity between, say, bee language and human language is to claim ‘evolutionary development from breathing to walking’ as pointedly remarked by Chomsky. Language is a task and species-specific module in the human mind, a language organ. Sociological theories often separate human biological nature from human social nature. The culturists argue that basically human beings are unconstrained learning machines who create a culture from which all relevant properties of the human mind (including language) derive. Neither Chomsky nor the culturalists have developed a detailed account of language origins. Chomsky has suggested a mutation or plain accident, whereas culturalists have sometimes hinted a 'leap; from the natural order to the social order must have taken place.
Implications of above theories
The method of learning one follows has a crucial role in one’s learning. It also helps one to acquire ideas in a natural way. It is a set of competencies that enable an individual to approach knowledge or objects, to collect information and to analyze them.
Competencies like:
Intervening in group activities
Participating in activities
Establishing relationship with others
Solving problems,
influence one’s method of learning.
A recognition of the method of learning will help the teachers to choose the responsibilities to be allotted in the process of learning. It will also help the teachers to select the tools that can be used. Teachers should be aware that students have different methods of learning and that the experience of learning should be suited to the individual's unique method.
Prepared by
Sabarish P
