Part 1

According to linguist Nancy Bonvillain “studies of many distinct languages confirm hypotheses about universal tendencies but also reveal significant differences in rates of acquisition of various surface phenomena.” In fact, it has been determined that children of all languages learn to speak using similar strategies and by developing similar cognitive faculties.  These strategies include imitation and reinforcement, as well as innate abilities. As Professor of Linguistics Nancy McKee notes, imitation is evidenced by the fact that people from various cultures, such as French or Jewish people, learn to speak the language that they hear growing up. But that isn’t the whole story, as one experiment shows. After eight times of being told how to rephrase his statement, a child in one experiment discussed by Dr. McKee was unable to reform the sentence as it was told to him and instead changed the tense of words. If imitation were the only way that children learned to speak, children in similar experiments would be easily corrected.  Children’s language is not only acquired through imitation, parents and society also reinforce its use.  Often excited to hear an infant or toddler communicate, adults instinctively reinforce children’s language with affectionate responses.  Per Dr. McKee the importance of reinforcement in language acquisition becomes apparent when considering children that are raised by deaf parents.  In one instance, she notes, a child with deaf parents that is never reinforced only learned sign language and required classroom-based instruction to learn to speak fluent English.

Lastly, the “universal tendencies” described by Bonvillain have recently been demonstrated by Noam Chomsky, in what is described as “provisional grammar theory.” His innatism theories hold that kids are hardwired to talk.  That is, “children are not programmed to talk, they are programmed to learn to talk.” Chomsky theorized the concept of the LAD, or language acquisition device.  The LAD is merely a convenient way of referring to a complex process by which an innate human capacity interacts with the environment to produce the characteristic human communication system: language. According to Dr. McKee, the LAD can be likened to a pair of binoculars and as it focuses on a local language, on French or English, for example, it looks for patterns.  The patterns can be morphological, syntactic, or lexical.  For example, the first verb ending that all children learn is -ing.  Adopted early, this pattern is learned and then incorporated into sentences that are used to meet the child’s objectives.  Another example includes the verb ending -ed, in a child’s phrase such as “Yesterday, I goed to the ice cream store.” In this instance, children are learning to apply the patterns they hear when adults talk about events in the past tense to convey a similar meaning.

As important as this universal strategy for language acquisition of looking for patterns, imitation and reinforcement are still integral parts in the process.  Dr. McKee notes that imitation is involved, “because the kid has got to get his data from somewhere, and reinforcement, because if a child isn’t reinforced, she won’t learn to talk.” Dr. McKee goes on to say that this “provisional grammar” has taught a child that that’s the way that they need to talk. “We all know that there are little bits of this kind of provisional grammar and provisional lexicon left over even in the speech of school aged children who have memorized things like maybe the pledge of allegiance or prayers, and are completely unaware of what the words are but they are already locked in their head and they’re going to keep on saying them that way.”

Part 2

Richard Rodriguez, an American-born self-described Chicano with Mexican-born parents contextualized the outcome of this process of language acquisition as a child in his autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez by juxtaposing his upbringing in a bilingual but primarily Mexican-speaking family and his desire to learn about and participate in the modern world. Having experienced the effects of engaging in a bilingual education, including difficulty processing the English language and discrimination, Rodrigues grew to oppose bilingual education for children living in minority households and neighborhoods.  Through his own history and the story of himself and without denying his Chicano heritage, or the integrity or his respect for his parents, Rodriguez explains that the ability to appreciate a metropolitan culture is embodied in language.  As an example, Rodriguez recounts the story of a group of charity nuns that came around to his house when he was a child, advising his parents to use English in the home instead of Spanish.  “He loved the world of books,” notes Dr. McKee, and found himself gravitating toward “a change in intellectual, cultural, and personal orientation,” and so took the nuns message to heart. This strong rejection of bilingualism in his own life initiated a transition from an intimate family-oriented Spanish-speaking world to a modern and cosmopolitan American world.  Having studied in Britain as a young adult, he compares his experience there as an “exotic person” to what any young person coming from a small, family-oriented non-American family might experience in the U.S. school system.  By immersing them in a bilingual education instead of demanding a strict learning regiment of American English, parents are “systematically hacking off from their children’s lives a whole range of possibilities.” For example, Rodriquez admonishes Chicano parents who might prefer that they want their children to grow up in a Chicano-oriented neighborhood, where Spanish the primary language spoken, and similarly placed persons, ethnically and socioeconomically, make up the bulk of people with which children interact.

One could argue that this view is elitist or ignores the importance of maintaining cultural, family, and traditional ties in non-white communities.  On the other hand, Rodriguez may be right, in that today’s fast-paced, technologically sophisticated modern American economy and society, asking non-English speaking students to focus primarily on learning American English will provide them with an essential tool for success in that world.  Because of the poor socioeconomic conditions that are pervasive among many non-white communities in America, it might make sense to change policy in order that students are focused on American English, instead of using resources to build up bilingual education programs.  Children may have to compete harder to be successful in these English-only schools, and those that succeed may have similar drives to live cosmopolitan, economically bountiful lives.

Part 3

As it turns out, not only Richard but his siblings became successful people in America.  This experience contrasts sharply with the experiences of most minority children in the U.S. today.  Their success can certainly be attributed to their drive to be successful and to leave behind the community- and family-oriented upbringing that often defines Mexican American homes and communities in America today.  Many indigenous and foreign people instead cling tightly to these structures in their families and communities and place a much higher value on retaining cultural identities and aspects of their heritages that work to define them in this multiethnic nation.  Nevertheless, much more broad structural problems unrelated to language and culture affect minority communities, including wealth imbalance, trade policy, and other government policy such as privatized health care and a lack of women’s health services, which contribute to poor success rates for minorities in America’s public school system.  This then, is the root cause of inferior performance – where studies show that non-French speaking students placed in French schools eventually learn to be as competitive as their French counterparts, for example – the child learner is not to blame but structural problems in American governance at the local, state, and federal levels.  Students often come to school hungry, or they are homeless and/or living in abject poverty, or they come from homes where physical and drug/alcohol abuse is prevalent – system problems that could be fixed with broader social programs designed by the government.  As children continue to engage in the acquisition of language, they will nevertheless leverage the techniques that linguists have elucidated and continually adapt them to survive in an otherwise fast-paced world.

Bibliography

Bonvillain, Nancy. Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Pearson. 2014.