Step One – Definition of Terms
The first step of any essay, particularly an introduction, is to define the terms one is using.
Defining ‘The Acquisition of Language’
Language is the system, or set of rules, by which one person attempts to communicate information (called ideas) to another person. Acquiring language is a reference to the moment when a person realizes that he or she has something to say, and finds the energy and ability to cross into the verbal world, and say it. But, I want to emphasize that words are not necessary to communication. I am being misleading when I continue to refer to ‘saying’ things. The acquisition of language is always a study of how and why and when a person attempts to communicate–whether or not it is in words or through some other ingenious form of communication (like throwing one’s sippy cup on the floor when it is empty).
Language
To begin, let me define what I mean by language. Language is a broad term used to describe many different things in our society. Some of my first memories are of different people saying, “You cannot use that kind of language around me.” I did not know they were referring to a small subset of impolite or rude words. I thought that there were “kinds” of language. I was right, but that is not what they meant for me to take away from the discussion. Therefore, the first thing that I learned was not actually true—it was a misunderstanding. As I get older, and better at communicating, I find that most learning begins with a basic misunderstanding.
The basics of language depend on it being a method of communication
Another thing I learned from the early discussion of “that kind of language,” once I understood what the person meant, was that there are subsets of words that make up ‘kinds of language ’ within our greater, official languages. But, this is another misunderstanding, of sorts, so let me state an authoritative, official-sounding definition of language. That way you, my reader, will not get bored and wander off.
For the sake of my studies, language is any method one human being uses to attempt to communicate information to another human being.
OFFICIAL-SOUNDING DEFINITION
Ground RulesEstablish authority
Identify audience
Express subject-specific standards
Establish my AuthorityEducation
General – establish Expertise
Specific – establish link to University project
Experience
General – establish Practical Expertise
Specific – establish Credibility
Credibility is the link between the author (person with authority) and the unique claims of the current project.
What Makes Me Such an Authority?
I have an undergraduate and Master ’s degrees in English Literature from major University in the United States.. When I began my doctoral work, like all experts in one ’s field, I departed from the study of English Literature. As a Master ’s Degree holder, I am a master of that subject. I am one of the authorities or experts to whom people appeal when they discuss the topic of whether to say we or us, who or whom.
Once a person goes on past a Master ’s degree, that person is becoming, not a better and bigger expert (that would be an unimaginable blowhard in my field). There is no expertise past expert, no Master past Master’s.
No, after that point one is becoming a specialist. The nature of most specialties is to re-enter the overall project of the University (as a concept). A doctoral candidate in English is the liaison between English Literature and other fields.
I chose Linguistics and Psychoanalysis as the other fields that I studied. My fellow doctoral candidates often referred to me as a critical theorist. That is a misnomer of sorts, because such a person would be telling people in English Literature what their jobs are and how to do them. I am interested in a broader audience when I start telling people what to do.
Overall, I am in the field of sociology—studying our society—
as well as the various fields caught up under the label of psychology.
Identify My AudiencePrimary Audience
Those who need this Expertise
Others involved in this aspect of the University project
Secondary Audience
Others with and/or who want this type of Practical Expertise
My work impacts the fields ofoccupational therapy,
special education,
general linguistics,
speech therapy,
human development,
“Everyone should care about your topic on some level. Choose an audience that allows you to also establish access for the General Audience”
Who Do I Think I am Talking To?
Thus, my authority is established. The next ground rule is to establish my audience. I already started that process by claiming to be in sociology, talking to sociologists. The audience I am trying to appeal to is everyone who uses language, that is, everyone that tries to communicate.
The mysterious disability known as autism, is an example of a group of people who are collected into a set based only on the characteristic of being unable to communicate. Those human beings and babies are the biggest part of the group that is learning to communicate. People working with that group are my first audience.
A secondary audience to this primary audience would be people working in geriatrics with patients that have, due to a stroke or other trauma, forgotten the mechanics of communication. We still say that the person is ‘alert ’ and has his or her ‘full faculties, ’ they are just struggling with the tools of communication. That is not completely true, but, as a valuable method of studying the problems involved in that effort, we will accept it as authorizing this group as part of our base audience.
The general audience includes anyone that finds some aspect of the subject to be pertinent to what specific issue is confronting them and/or someone who likes to read interesting essays. The topic should be one that many people wonder about.
Language & Communication
To communicate is to establish existence. To establish existence, one’s first obstacle is all of the gender choices.
An Apology for Appealing to the General Audience
But, I do not want to limit it to that audience.
Anyone that wonders about misunderstanding and miscommunication, or who is fascinated by the ability of people interacting that speak different languages than one another, or has any other interest in how and why we communicate the ways that we do, any of you should find this interesting.
In addition, I will directly be discussing such fun topics as contemporary movies, modern educational practices, video gaming, chat-server types of activities (that ’s what us old-timers call social media like Facebook and twitter), and any other methods of communicating.
In fact, my father-in-law is a subsistence-level hunter, which means that the food he gathers from hunting is a critical part of the food that his family has to eat. It is part of his job, more or less, as a provider.
He uses a turkey call to talk to turkeys.
Even that sort of communication will be touched on in my work.
You think that he just calls them by pretending to be a female turkey, and then shoots them. He actually talks to them, as a female turkey, about what is happening around them in the woods today. His goal is to talk one turkey into coming away from the flock, so that he can quietly take that turkey ’s life, without alerting the rest of the flock and making it decide to avoid this part of the world from now on.
Sometimes, he just chats with the toms as they go by on the game trail.
I am not interested in how the turkeys feel or what they are trying to communicate. That would just be silly. My point is that this hunter, Dad, is using the idea of communication as the analogy for the task that he is accomplishing in his efforts to feed his family. That relationship to language is what I am interested in.
When I Say General Audience ….
So, my audience is broad. But, I want it to be even broader than that. Even if my reader is Chinese, I want him or her to be able to understand and gain insight from what I have to say.
In the United States, one of the first efforts we make is, oddly, teaching our children the alphabet. We begin with alpha, which a Chinese translator might recognize as a Greek letter. And, we end with Zed—a letter we made up to complement C and S, apparently.
We do not teach our children what these letters mean, usually, Mostly, we just chant the letters in their given order (and an arbitrarily-chosen order at that). Sometimes, we make up songs about those letters.
But we stop well short, usually, of explaining what these strange shapes are that we are assigning this epic value to. We feel as if we cannot teach anything until we establish this basic foundation of knowledge in our child’s head. Once you have these letters memorized, we are implying, we a can use them to teach the rest of our language.
That is our introduction to formal language in the United States. Most of us do not associate it with communication for another three to five years after we learn it.
As I understand it, Mandarin (for example) is based on a system with over four hundred (400) characters. And, these characters have pretty much zero parallel to our alphabet.
The English alphabet refers to the sounds each letter makes. The Mandarin character set refers to concepts. Each character can stand alone as a word.
That is a different concept entirely than English. A Mandarin character is as if we took the letter A and said, “This means beginning,” and THEN drew another little line on it and said, “That is a tongue. Now this character means beginning to speak, or the Acquisition of Language.”
That seems like it would be hard to learn.
Express my Subject-Specific StandardsTell your audience what it is that you are going to be adding to the overall conversation. Do not leave them guessing or they will leave your explanation.
That will be my last ground rule.
Human beings are capable of learning incredible things. If you confronted an adult with the idea of learning the English language, that adult would probably be overwhelmed with the idea.
That feeling that you felt as I described how a Mandarin character works, that is the feeling that adults get when confronted with the task of learning English.
My peer-group partner in Advanced English Grammar, as an undergraduate, was born in Thailand. His initial language was some regional language. I am not sure which one. His second language was Cambodian. His third was French.
When I met him, he was tackling English—the two of us spoke English to one another. He occasionally corrected my English. He told me that English was easily the hardest of those languages to learn. None of the rules in English are consistent.
Having said all of that, consider this. Babies learn English.
Therefore, my last ground rule is that babies are substantially more intelligence than adults. This thing that makes our intelligence deteriorate is the very thing that makes us think of babies as stupid—language!
But, as we learn these strict rules about one language, we stop being able to accept as easily the strict rules about another language. It is fun to think about Mandarin characters and how they can be built by adding little, seemingly-diacritical marks to a picture. If I told you that you had to learn it by next year, you would probably freak out.
So, let me review the ground rulesI established my authority on the subject.
I stated that my primary audience is people working on helping other people acquire communication skills. But, I also want to reach out to a broader audience that includes all human beings, because the acquisition of language is an experience all of us have in common.
And, third, babies are the most intelligent that humans ever get. Do not confuse wisdom with intelligence.
Hypothesis
Like all science, even social science, once one defines the terms and establishes ground rules, it is important to move on to a hypothesis. My general proposal is that a person, at the point where it is about to communicate, decides two things: I exist and I am a certain gender.
Tune in Next Time
Let me send you away with the hope that you will go on and read the rest of this series of essays about the acquisition of language. The next section will discuss the overall Hypothesis that is guiding my work.
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