CHP 10: Language Production & Bilingualism

CHP 10: Language Production & Bilingualism

1. INTRO

   • Both speaking and writing involve planning a message to convey, correctly ordering the parts of the message, and executing a response. They differ, however, in that speech usually occur under pressure.
   • Researchers conduct relatively little research on language production, compared to the research on language comprehension

2. PRODUCTION PROCESSES

   • PRODUCING A WORD
     • You can produce about 3 words every second
       • The average college educated North-American has 75,000 words in their vocabulary
         • Some researchers argue that speakers retrieve grammatical, semantic & phonological info of a word at the same time.
           • Other researchers argue that we access each kind of information independently, with little interaction between the 3 components.
           • Miranda van Turennout (1998) - time measured object labeling using the ERP technique. Results suggest we do not acquire all the different kinds of information simultaneously. Instead we use split second timing.
   • SPEECH ERRORS
     • SLIP-OF-THE-TONGUE: Sounds or entire words are rearranged between two or more different words.
       • SOUND ERRORS: sounds in nearby words are exchanged
       • MORPHEME ERRORS: morphemes are exchanged in nearby words
         • HOW ERRORS OCCUR: According to Dell's model of sound processing which is based on the connectionist approach and spreading activation. Incorrect items sometimes have activation levels that are just as high (or higher than) the correct items.
       • WORD ERRORS: words are exchanged
   • PRODUCING A SENTENCE
     • Requires a series of stages:
       • MESSAGE PLANNING: mentally plan the overall meaning of the message we intend to generate.
         • GRAMMATICAL ENCODING: the words necessary to convey the message are selected and the correct morphology is added to the words.
           • PHONOLOGICAL ENCODING: we convert the units of the planned utterance into a sound code which generates mouth and vocal cord movements during speaking.
     • PROSODY: an utterance or the "melody" of its intonation, rhythm, and emphasis
   • PRODUCING DISCOURSE
     • DISCOURSE: language units that are larger than a sentence.
       • NARRATIVE: A type of discourse in which someone describes a series of actual or fictional events.
         • NARRATIVE INCLUDES:
           • (1) A brief overview of the story, (2) a summary of the characters and setting, (3) an action that made the situation complicated, (4) the point of the story, (5) the resolution of the story, and (6) the final signal that the narrative is complete

3. LANGUAGE PRODUCTION & NATURALISTIC COMMUNICATION

   • USING GESTURES: EMBODIED COGNITION
     • GESTURES: visible movements of any part of your body which you use to communicate
       • ICONIC GESTURES: gestures with a form that represents the concept about which a speaker is talking. A manual simulation of the topic
         • DIECTIC GESTURES: pointing to some object or location while speaking
           • BEAT GESTURES: gestures that occur in a rhythm that matches the speech rate and prosodic content of speech. Helps the speaker maintain a current speech pattern.
       • Gestures can influence how you think: motor movements can sometimes help you remember the word you are trying to produce.
         • Gestures can facilitate learning: children who watched an avatar who made gestures solved math problems more quickly.
           • We frequently produce gestures while we speak to illustrate a point or when we have had previous experience with a relevant physical activity.
             • Gestures can increase listener's understanding
         • EMBODIED COGNITION: people use their bodies to express their knowledge
   • THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE PRODUCTION
     • PRAGMATICS: focuses on the social rules and world knowledge that allows speakers to successfully communicate messages to other people
       • COMMON GROUND: occurs when conversationalists share the similar background knowledge, schemas, and perspectives that are necessary for mutual understanding.
         • DIRECTIVES: a sentence that asks someone to do something.
           • DIRECT REQUEST: resolves an interpersonal problem in an obvious fashion
           • INDIRECT REQUEST: uses subtle suggestions to resolve an interpersonal problem
           • FRAMING: our mental structures that simplify reality

4. LANGUAGE PRODUCTION & WRITING

   • THE ROLE OF WORKING MEMORY IN WRITING
     • WORKING MEMORY: refers to the brief, immediate memory for the material you are currently processing (Baddeley, 2007)
       • Plays a central role in writing to guide us through the stages of planning, generating and revising
         • PHONOLOGICAL LOOP: stores a limited number of sounds for a short period of time.
           • VISUOSPATIAL SKETCHPAD: processes both visual and spatial information
   • PLANNING A FORMAL WRITING ASSIGNMENT
     • PREWRITING: the process of generating a list of ideas when beginning a formal writing project.
       • Good writers spend high quality time here. Outlines can help here.
   • THE REVISION PHASE OF WRITING
     • Writer's should emphasize organization and coherence, making appropriate revisions and diagnosing defective sentences
       • students overestimate the amount of time they spend on revisions.
   • SENTENCE GENERATION DURING WRITING
     • When people generate sentences during writing, their fluent phrases alternate with hesitant phrases.
   • Writing consists of 3 phases: planning, sentence generation and revising. Much the same with spoken language, these tasks often overlap in time.

5. BILINGUALISM

   • BACKGROUND ON BILINGUALISM
     • More than half of the world's population is bilingual.
       • BILINGUAL SPEAKER: speaks two different languages
         • MULTILINGUAL SPEAKER: speaks more than two languages
           • SIMULTANEOUS BILINGUALISM: learn two languages during childhood
             • SEQUENTIAL BILINGUALISM: native language first and then learn new language.
   • THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF BILINGUALISM
     • Research shows that motivation and attitudes are important determinants of bilingual skills
       • If people are fluent in a second language they tend to be more positive toward people who speak that language
         • Bilingual people tend to have more positive impressions of people whose language is currently being spoken.
   • ADVANTAGES (AND MINOR DISADVANTAGES) OF BILINGUALISM
     • Bilinguals have an advantage in their ability to communicate in two languages, their understanding of first-language structure, their awareness of the arbitrary nature of concept names, and their ability to pay attention to subtle aspects of language.
       • Bilinguals show superior ability in following complex instructions and forming concepts. they also tend to be more sensitive to pragmatics.
         • Those who get dementia have been shown to get it 4 years earlier if they are not bilingual.

6. PROFICIENCY & 2ND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

   • SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
     • People who acquire a second language during adulthood are similar to child learners with respect to acquiring vocabulary, but they are more likely to have an accent in this new language.
       • Age of acquisition is not consistently related to competency in grammar, and educational attainment may explain some of the discrepancies among different studies.
   • SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETERS
     • Simultaneous interpreters typically perform better than bilingual students and foreign-language teachers on two tasks that assess working memory.