Question

What are the two main theories of language development? What role, if any, does culture play in developing language? Be sure to provide many examples on this topic.

Your answer should be a minimum of 3-4 paragraphs in length.

Answer 1

• One of the earliest theory of language development was given by Skinner,focusing upon environmental influences in language acquisition.He argued that children learn language based on reinforcement by associating words and meanings.When they utter a correct word it is positively reinforced,realizing the communicative value of the words.
• For example,if a child says milk and then the mother smiles at the child,the child will find tis outcome positively reinforcing or rewarding,enhancing his/her language development.
• Noam Chomsky criticized Skinner's theory and proposed his own theory called the Universal Grammar.He proposed that there are innate biological grammatical categories,like noun category,verb category etc. which facilitate language development in the child as well as the overall language processing in adults.His theory was a nativist theory.He said that we all are born with innate understanding how language works discarding Skinners view on environmental influences.
• For example,a child would instinctively know to combine a noun i.e a girl and a verb i.e. to dance into a meaningful correct phrase,i.e. A girl dances,based upon the innate grammatical informtion the child has.
• Language is also shaped by the culture we are brought up in.Language tends to relate common experiences,histories which inturn create words which are specific to a culture.For example,there are so many inside jokes we come across which are exclusive to a specific culture that you might not understand.
• All parts of language,whether its the words,dialects,accents etc. are all shaped by the culture.Culture is influenced by environment,shared meanings and histories,while language is created and shaped by the needs of the culture as it keeps changing.
• For example,English language accents differ in every country.Americans have a twang compared to Indians.Indians speak complete words of english as it is.
• Even vocabulary differs in every culture.For example,in UK boot is used for car trunk,while in USA boot is used for a shoe.Thats how individual meanings and accents are created specific to a culture.The same words could have different meanings which is why cultural competence is important to understand the differences.