Transcript Analysis

Transcript analysis:

The text is a conversation between an 18 month old baby and her mother. The conversation seems to be had whilst Katherine (the baby) is getting dressed.

Katherine begins the conversation by saying: “I stuck” instead of saying “I am stuck”. This process which Katherine uses is deletion. It often occurs in child language acquisition and is part of phonological development.  She perhaps says ‘I’ instead of ‘I am’ as it is a shorter way of saying it as syllables are missed out. By missing out the primary verb of ‘am’ her sentence doesn’t make complete sense, and therefore her mother corrects her subtly by saying: “You’re stuck”. By correcting her language throughout the conversation her mother is also helping Katherine’s language acquisition. This is an example of re-castings from Katherine’s mother which is a feature of CDS as well as her constant asking of questions such as: “What colour are your slippers?” which is another feature. Katherine’s virtuous error indicates she is in the two word stage or perhaps the early telegraphic stage which is part of David Crystal’s theory. She is in these stages and not the late telegraphic stage as she has left out the primary verb and used deletion.

Katherine’s mother has a hidden agenda to help her learn language and more specifically colours. She does this by talking about her clothes whilst she is putting them on by asking her daughter what colour the different items of clothing are. The mother also expands Katherine’s utterances after Katherine answers the question of what colour her socks are with the one word answer of ‘Pink’ by saying: “Yes, they are pink”. This use of utterance expanding is yet again a feature of CDS. By interacting with her daughter by helping her develop language the transcript supports Vygotsky’s theory of social interaction which suggests children need to interact with others to develop their language. There is also a link to BF Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning where throughout the transcript her mother gives positive reinforcement to Katherine when she uses language correctly, for example: “Yes, your slippers are red and blue. They are red and blue slippers” by repeating the information which her daughter has already said correctly; Katherine is more likely to repeat the language correctly again, as opposed to if her mother had said she was wrong. The use of repetition is also a feature of CDS.

Michael Halliday’s taxonomy is evident in the transcript. For example, regulatory speech is used by Katherine. This sort of speech is used according to Halliday to persuade, command or request things to other people to do things that the child wants the other person to do. This is revealed when Katherine says: “I stuck” which would indicate that she wants her mother to help her get out of the situation as she is unable to do it herself. Her mother does so, but at the same time corrects her language. This is an example of BF Skinner’s operant conditioning theory, as Katherine receives praise when she says a word properly and is corrected by her mother when she says a word incorrectly.