Group 4 Language Blog

Hey guys, my name is Andrea Testa, and like most of the rest of the group, I am also from New York. I'm from Buffalo, so I am obviously a HUGE Sabres and Bills fan. I'm a junior psych major and like Amy, I'm taking this class because I plan on pursuing Speech Therapy in grad school. Sorry it took me so long to put up an entry on here, but it's my first time ever blogging so I was having some trouble with it. Anyways, I can't wait for the rest of this class! :)

I completely understand where you are coming from with not being able to understand sarcasm. I wasn't able to understand it either until a few years ago. For me, I was able to tell if someone was being sarcastic by the intonation in their voice, but I wasn't able to determine what they were really saying. At times it was really awkward because I would be in a situation where I was at work and I would have a very sarcastic customer come through my line. And being me, I knew they were being sarcastic, but I didn't know what they were actually hinting at. Those situations usually ended up with a long, awkward pause, and a really weird look from the customer. When I came to Allegheny is when I really mastered the fine art of sarcasm. Sarcasm was the first language of my freshmen year roommate. I had to be able to understand it to converse with her in any way. (Think about how frustrating that was!) As the year went on, I became a pro at understanding it and even at using it myself! So stick in there! It's like a fine art form...it takes practice to perfect it.

Responding to Amy’s blog about sarcasm, I also have found the idea of words having multiple meanings interesting. I feel that having experience with it will really help someone understand sarcasm. The example I used in class involved me. I feel that I am a sarcastic person and my one roommate is not. For so long, she never understood what I was saying. But she has gotten increasingly better at picking up on it. Often times she will walk away from having a conversation with me and then turn around and say, “Oh I got it now!!!”

I also feel that looking at people’s facial expressions would help to understand when someone is being sarcastic. Some people are really good at keeping straight faces. But for the most part, I feel that the person would crack a smile or laugh if the other person really didn’t have a clue. Also, you could look at the facial expressions of other people around to see what their reactions are. That might help you figure out when someone is being sarcastic. I feel that overall; experience is the best way to help someone learn about sarcasm.

For my from the field entry, I found an article from my roommate’s women’s studies class. I apologize for not having a link or any way for everyone to see the article. I’ll be working on that over the weekend with the help of friends. Maybe I can get something up before Tuesday’s class…

Anyways, in an article written by Laurel Richardson, she discusses the gendering of language within our society. Our society as a whole uses masculine words as generic pronouns and nouns such as men, man and he. Because these words then refer to both men and women, children, as well as college students, can not connect both sexes to the generic word.

This article talks about how "in terms of grammatical and semantic structure, women do not have a fully autonomous, independent existence; they are part of man." What the author says is that often times, women are included under the generic man. An example is that when two people get married, often times the woman changes her name and therefore becomes part of the man.

In class, we have been discussing words that children learn. Lauren Richardson shows that children have problems when learning language because they can not discriminate between the word men as a gender neutral subject. An example from the text is, "an eight-year-old interrupts her reading of "The Story of the Cavemen" to ask how we got here without cavewoman." Another example is, "A ten-year-old thinks it is dumb to have a women postman." So children, literally visualize males when they see the word man.

The article also discusses how woman are defined in term of their relationships to men; men are defined in terms of their relationships to the world at large. An example: the words master and mistress- “He is the master of his trade.” And “She is his mistress.” Men are defined in terms of their power in the occupational world, women in terms of their sexual power over men.

I found this interesting because, in class, we talked about how words can have multiple meanings and how children learn to communicate. When I think about this article, I keep thinking of activation and I think that maybe this is what is happening to children while trying to understand the word men as a gender neutral subject. My feeling is that many words that are connected to men or man are activated in the children’s brain and they have a difficult time activating words associated with women. Any thoughts?

Dear Supercalafragelisticexpialadocious, I apologize for being totally blog-challenged & unable to figure out how to post responses on your page. Until I am able to figure this out writing on my own groups page will have to suffice...so here is my response to Jabberwocky...

Regarding the idea of learning a language, I agree with what Professor Knupsky calls the 'role of immersion.' The best way to learn a new language or enhance your vocabulary on a first language is to fully commit yourself to that language. This can mean attempting to use a new word throughout the day in different sentences or situations or on a bigger scale of having the opportunity to fully engulf yourself in a culture where you are surrounded by the language you are trying to learn. By placing yourself in such a situation you can then use the cues from your surrounding environment to help reinforce your new language.

While learning a second language in a classroom setting is a good start we know that the things that stick with us the best are the things that we can first hand experience, such as being in a foreign country when you are trying to learn the native language. Vocabulary lists are a place to start but memorizing definitions as opposed to actually experiencing them will leave you with two very different degrees of a learning experience.

In chapter 4 of Um...I found the last paragraph on page 100 to be very interesting. It states that "In the United States, we often admire people for their brilliance when they're merely glib and smooth. Yet if we're interested in other qualities, such as honesty, authenticity, and charisma, then glib, uninterrupted speaking may not be what we want to hear. In fact, we might want to begin to mistrust perfect fluency." This paragraph made sense to me as there have been times when I've thought to myself 'this person is a smooth talker, are they telling me the truth?' If this is the case and perfect speech may be mistrusted why is it so strongly stressed in areas such as interviews? In this type of situation using words such as "um" and "uh" may be seen by the interviewer as one being ill-prepared and unable to think on their feet as opposed to someone who can quickly rattle off answers. However, with the paragraph on page 100 I am left to wonder if it is more important to allow yourself to say "um" and "uh" whenever you need to as opposed to having all of your answers come off too smooth and thus risk the chance of being mistrusted for what you are saying.

I found the relationship of verbal blunders and law enforcement to be quite interesting. Erard states in chapter 3 how liars will begin to blunder in the beginning of their story but make fewer mistakes or blunders the more they tell it and the more confident they become. He discusses further the typical behaviors of liars “…toss their hands, twirl their pens, scratch their heads, talk more quickly.” (pg 70). But then says we can’t we use verbal blunders and behaviors such as these to determine deception because people who aren’t lying have also been known to sound and act like the liars in that study. Why then, are we told that hand gestures, hesitating, repeating words and slips sounds genuine and trustworthy? And that speaking naturally or “smooth” sounds insincere or dishonest? I would have thought that the more a person uses the words “uh” or “um”, or any other pause or blunder would indicate lying, especially in an interrogation room. Aren’t we taught to speak fluently with few pauses limiting the use of “um” or “uh” in order to present ourselves in a respectful and intelligent manner? For example interviews…but that is another issue I will leave open for others to discuss. Still, one final question I have is: Are liars more aware of verbal blunders by rehearsing a lie, like others may rehearse and prepare for an interview?

The very beginning of chapter 3, Some Facts About Verbal Blunders, discusses verbal blunders as not only a part of life but also as mile markers (page 57). I was very surprised to hear that children's speaking may become less interrupted and fragmented as they mature, but as adults enter later life, they begin to sound more like children again. I would like to know what age roughly this starts at? I can see how older people would have longer pauses and changes in the way they speak due to memory loss or dementia, etc. I am curious to know how social class, education level and stress levels would effect a person's verbal blunders and/or language?

The author also talks about tip of the tongue or TOT experiences. It was said that the larger someone's vocabulary, the more TOT experiences they have. I'm having a really hard time believing this. I feel like if you have a large vocabulary then you would know many words with the same meanings. Therefore, I think that if you can not think of a word, then there could be a replacement so quickly that maybe you would not even notice that the original word was not used. Would this still be considered a TOT? I feel like it isn't necessarily one if this whole change happened so quickly that the person never even realized the switching of words.

In chapter 3, Erard talks about people using the phrases "um" or "uh" to fill iin gaps in communication while they are figuring out what they would like to say next. But why does that fraction of a second have to be filled? What is so wrong with just leaving a little bit of silence in the midst of the conversation instead of just inserting a sound to fill the gap? I'm wondering if maybe it is to keep the flow and fluidity of the conversation intact. In an earlier class we talked about how when speaking, we blend words together in one continous stream. Is this why we have to have a filler for the times when we are thinking what to say next? Does keeping the conversation going keep it less noticable that we're thinking of what to say?

And why the phrase "uh?" Why is this sound so universal? On page 55, Erard discusses some of the sounds that different languages use to fill the gaps in their languages. For example, in Britain they say "er" and in France they say "euh." But both of these sounds are very similar to our "uh." What about this sound makes it so universal to be used in many different languages?

This article starts off by comparing the acquisition of sign language to the acquisition of spoken language. Both, even though most would think differently, sign language and spoken language have similar structures and acquisitions. Both types of language even have the same developmental milestones. He then proceeds to talk about how languages come to be created and that it is easier for words to be created and language to change in sign language than it is with spoken language. He attributes this to the fact that manual modality makes it easy to invent representations (signs) that even naive observers could understand.

In an earlier class we had talked about how language is always changing. Slang words and new words come up all the time, and just as fast, other words and phrases fade away. The language we speak today is very different from the language spoken just centuries ago. But what brings about this change?

Goldin-Meadow discusses the development of new sign language that arose in Israel about 200 years ago. A completely new language had to develop because about 150 members (there was a total of 3500 members in the population) were deaf. ABSL (Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language) developed in order for these people to communicate. I was in awe when I read because when I think of language, I think of it being around for thousands of years. Yeah, I know it changes all the time, but to know that a completely new language just developed 200 years ago is amazing to me.

While reading chapters three and four I could not help but get a sense that using um and uh is a bad thing. That it is a mistake. These so called disfluencies supposedly disrupt the flow of our language. But is this really the case? Aren't these just useful mechanisms by which we can slow down and think about what we are saying; without accidentally giving the listener the impression that we are finished speaking? It seems to me that they help to keep the fluency of a sentence, while at the same time also allowing a pause to possibly eliminate verbal blunders. Blunders that could perhaps be caused by speaking faster than we can organize our thoughts.

A couple of the studies mentioned on pages 90 and 91 seem to support this positive perspective on um and uh. Page 90 mentions Pennebaker and Mehl's study in which they determined that people who used um and uh more were more conscientious, which by their definition meant more organized. I dont know about you but I would much rather talk to someone who is organized than someone who is all over the place. Mahl's study on page 91 suggests that all disfluencies other than um and uh correlate with anxiety. So those who used um and uh were more relaxed. And, again this seems, to me, to be a good thing. Still, I was confused because the author did not come out and clearly state the beneficial nature of um and uh. If any thing, from my understanding, he did the opposite.

So if uh and um can be so useful in our speech, then why is it that most of us view them as disfluencies or hindrances?

In chapter 3 of Um…there is a paragraph on page 56 that writes about how sign languages have ways of indicating pauses; the language allows for a way to say “um…” just as people without hearing difficulties can do. With this in mind I wanted to learn other aspects of how deaf people use language, including how they learn to actually speak aloud.

Within the deaf community there is a process known as oralism which involves helping the deaf learn to speak out loud. While this process of learning to speak uses the sense of hearing as a fundamental way to learn, those who are deaf obviously do not have this option. Instead they focus on two other senses, sight and touch, and work one-on-one with an instructor. The process involves the student placing their hand on the instructor’s throat while the instructor speaks different words. Through this process the student can learn how the lips move when speaking certain words and also how the muscles in the neck move when speaking.

This process requires a large amount of time and dedication for the deaf person to have a full learning experience. In addition to this hands on method computers are also becoming a useful tool for the deaf as they now have programs which emphasize facial and lip movements as words are flashed onto the screen. This helps the student to learn the movements that words make as well as teaches them to lip read. While not all of the deaf community use these tools or ever learn to speak aloud, for some this is a useful option in communicating with others more easily.

http://www.wisegeek.com/how-do-deaf-people-learn-to-speak-aloud.htm

In light of our recent class discussions concerning verbal blunders and speech disfluencies I was compelled to find an article pertaining to these aspects of speech. The article I found discussed the incidence of speech errors in Spanish. The authors were attempting to prove that Spanish speaking people do have a lexical bias (tendency for phonological errors to form existing words), in response to an earlier study that had come to the opposite conclusion, that there is no lexical bias in Spanish. It was not the final conclusion of the paper that interested me so much as it was the results they obtain during their study.

The experimenters used pairs of words which they displayed on a computer screen to observers. The observers were to read these pairs as fast as they could, one pair right after the other. Some pairs were target pairs (those pairs in which the errors were likely to occur) and others were primer pairs (those pairs which caused the observer to activate certain phonemes right before the target pairs). The most interesting result to me was that shorter words produced more errors than longer words.

The authors suggest this pertains to phonological neighborhoods. Phonological neighbors, according to the authors, are words that are identical, except for a single phoneme. Smaller words have more phonological neighbors than longer words, so there is a greater opportunity for an error to occur. Examples given by the authors include the following: cat has many phonological neighbors, such as bat, chat, fat, and so on; whereas paleontology has no phonological neighbors. Therefore there are more opportunities for errors when using shorter words.

I found this extremely interesting. I would have thought the exact opposite, that longer words would produce more errors because they are more complex, syllabically speaking. I thought this article was very appropriate for our recent class discussions and I hope it will generate some thoughts that can be carried over into our future classes.

The title of this article is Spoonish Spanerisms: A Lexical Bias Effect in Spanish. The Authors are Robert J. Hartsuiker, Bjorn Roelstraete, Ines Anton-Mendez, and Albert Costa. The article was found in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2006, Vol. 32, No. 4, 949-953.

According to Erard, in chaper 11, “studies have shown that over the last several years, pre-scripted disfluencies have begun to appear in advertisements, obviously in order to manipulate the listener’s trust.” He talks about telemarketers pre-recorded messages and how they have changed over time to incorporate uhs and ums. With these messages, he said that he now listens longer than he used to, even when he does not need what they are trying to sell. I would like to know why this is because our society has many implications of uhs and ums and I feel that our society looks at our leaders and expects them to have “proper speech.” Based off of our society’s implications, wouldn’t someone trying to sell you something want to seem proper, professional, and intelligent? If the person is these things, shouldn’t they be speaking without uhs and ums? I just feel that according to what our society tells me, I shouldn’t pay attention to someone who uses uhs and ums. So why then are advertisements using disfluencies?

From chapter 11 in Erard he quotes Jean Fox Tree on page 251 in saying "in our lifetime we will accept that these (pause fillers) are meaningful. Forty or fifty years from now, if not sooner, you can talk about this stuff in high school and people are going to think it's obvious." My question regarding this statement is how is this going to happen? As we have talked about in class there is still a lot of negativity around pause fillers as well as a correlation between them and a lack of intelligence. Unless everyone starts reading books like Um... and learns how prevalent pause fillers really are, how are we going to teach future generations and bring them to a point where they are going to see using them as an obvious way or life. In the future, are the stereotype we seem to have established of using "um", "uh", etc no longer going to be associated with one having poor speech or not being very smart like Tree predicts?

On page 246, Erard states "doctors add words like "well," "anyway," and "now" when giving previously published remarks at medical conferences. Even though these disfluencies are planned in order to seem more approachable, this fact still unnerves me. I guess I go along with most of the mainstream US by automatically judging people (without knowing I'm doing it) as being somewhat less intelligent. This isn't a quality I would like in my doctor. So I guess my question is where to draw the line when determining when to be professional and when to be personable? If being given a diagnosis by my doctor, I don't want to hear the words "uh" and "um" being uttered from his mouth, or I would probably seek a second opinion. But if he were to speak to me without any disfluencies, in a somewhat robotic, and unnatural way, he would seem cold, and I wouldn't like that either. I guess I'm just baffled on how we balance the two extremes.

In chapter 11, Erard talked a lot about artificial intelligence and teaching machines to understand speech errors, pause fillers, and verbal blunders. This, to me, was almost frightening. Is it really possible to teach a machine to understand? It may comprehend what we are trying to communicate; but still, is that understanding? And even if machines could understand us would we want to communicate with them? Speech errors and blunders are characteristics of human imperfection. Robots cannot replicate that, which would make for a very disconnected relationship. It is the predicting and anticipation, produced by speech errors, that we can experience from, and produce in, other people that makes human relationships attractive. Are speech errors something that we could not only teach machines to comprehend but also to use themselves; and if we could, would it be authentic enough for us to feel close to machines? Sincerity comes from being able to read and interact with the person you are communicating with. Can we ever find that with a machine or robot?

In a study done by Catherine E. Snow and Marian Hoefnagel-Hohle, the critical period for language acquisition was studied by looking at second language acquistion. The researchers expected that second language acquisition would be relatively fast, successful, and similar to first language acquisition as long as it takes place during the critical period (usually before puberty). English speakers of different ages, who were learning to speak Dutch, were used for the study. It was found that participants in the age groups of 12-15 and adults made the fastest progress during the first 12 months of learning Dutch, but that the 8-10 and 12-15 year old achieved the greatest control of the language. Participants of the 3-5 year old age group scored the lowest on all tests. The results found did not support the hypothesis being studied.

What do these results mean about the critical period? Is there even a critical period? If there was, wouldn't it make the sense that the youngest participants would have had the best experience at learning to speak the Dutch? I also would have thought that the adults would have had a very difficult time, but they actually made the fastest progress. What do you think causes the difference between first language acquisition and second language acquisition?

After skimming through People magazine I came to an article about a child who suffered from selective mutism. We’ve been talking about many different aspects of language but have not looked at those who are unable to utilize these aspects. With this being said I found the article on selective mutism to be very interesting and decided to look up more information on the subject.

Selective mutism, usually found in children, is not caused by misunderstanding language or not knowing how to speak well. Instead it is a psychiatric disorder where the child does not speak in major social settings for at least one month. They do however speak in other settings, most commonly in the home to their parents and a few others. This disorder becomes noticeable usually when the child enters school and is expected to speak in the classroom. It may be related to issues like extreme shyness or a phobia of social embarrassment or social settings but dramatically interferes with the daily life of the child. Forms of treatment include various medications in addition to behavioral treatments like desensitization, positive reinforcement and rewards.

People magazine presented a quote from the child suffering from selective mutism that states “When I try to speak, my bones feel like glass, my skin feels like paper, and my lips are glued shut.” I found this quote to be powerful and made me want to learn more. There are a lot of different websites for this condition but the one I found most helpful was
http://www.selectivemutismfoundation.org/about.shtml

For the topic of my paper I am looking at how bilingual patients with brain damage recover faster than those who are monolingual. While searching through articles I came across an article in the magazine Scientific American Mind, that while it did not necessarily pertain to all aspects of my topic of interest, still grabbed my attention to further read.

This article titled Freeing a (Locked-In) Mind and written by Karen Schrock demonstrated that current studies are being done in which vegetative patients may soon be able to communicate their thoughts. I became immediately interested because it had seemed that until now brain-damaged patients were thought of as “there is nothing we can do”, and there was no way to determine if a patient with brain damage would ever come to or not. It is interesting to think about this because while we have discussed in class the different verbal and non-verbal ways we communicate, we have not discussed the inability to communicate with others, and after reading about these recent studies I thought that more discussion on this topic was worthwhile.

This article explained how we can now detect when somebody is consciously aware. Through new advancements in fMRI scans researchers can see which areas of the brain are most active during thought processes. Adrian Owen of the University of Cambridge discovered that a vegetative patient was indeed conscious when they asked her to imagine herself doing various tasks, such as playing tennis or walking through the rooms of her home, while they scanned her brain using fMRI. They did the same with healthy controls and found that when both the vegetative patient and the healthy controls were asked to perform the task, their brains showed similar activation in motor and spatial navigation areas. Owen then used this same basic principle to devise a protocol for talking to a vegetative patient. If the patient imagined playing tennis, it meant, “yes”. If they imagined walking through the rooms of their home it meant “no”. Through practice on healthy subjects, researchers have learned to tell apart thought-only responses of “yes” and “no” in under a minute, and are now preparing to test this technique on a vegetative patient whom they have already found to be aware. Succeeding would mean that we can “converse” with a lock-in person for the first time ever. I find in amazing that patients will soon be able to communicate without having to say or do anything. This puts a new meaning on the phrase of reading one’s mind.

This article came from a language journal, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. This article caught my eye because as a student teacher, I am interested in helping educate children the best way possible. This study examined 2nd grade teachers' perceptions of the academic, social, and behavioral competence of students with speech sound disorders (SSD's). Results of this study showed that a majority of teachers have negative attitudes toward children with articulation disorders. It appears that speech intelligibility influences teachers' perceptions of the academic, social and behavioral competence of students. It has been reported that Teacher's perceptions regarding the behavioral and academic competence of students be the best predictors of teachers' referrals for special education. Improving a student's intelligibility may have an effect on a teacher's referral decision for academic, social and/or behavioral special education services.

I feel that teachers can impair children at a very young age by putting them into special education. By segregating the children, teachers are reinforcing the stereotypes society gives people with SSD’s, which are behavioral problems, academic problems, and social problems. The study showed that some teachers believed that SSDs cause these stereotypical problems. Therefore, there is a need to educate teachers that there is no known direct causal link between SSds and school-based problems. Although children with SSDs face a risk for academic problems, many children with SSD’s experience no school-based problems. Should teachers have to go through special training to counteract society bias concerning children with SSD’s? Also, for the student being segregated in the special education classroom because of a speech impediment, how would this affect him/her, especially if there is no reason for them to be in the room other than a speech impediment?