September 13, 2020
Language skills are divided into the activities we do with language (e.g. receptive/productive, or reading, writing, listening, speaking); however, the language skills all come together as a complete set. While some people may speak better than they write, their writing skill is lacking only according to the conventions of language. The spelling may have errors. Tense usage may be inaccurate or limited. Function words, like articles, prepositions and relative pronouns, may contain errors or be omitted. And, in the case where the first language dominates in bilingual speakers, code-switching can occur when the second language is deficient.
But, for everyone, their unique language exists in their minds and is comprehensible to themselves. It is when the language comes out in speech with pronunciation errors or in writing with poor word-choice that the level of fluency is evaluated and tested against an interlocutor or reader.
Intelligibility is an important part of success in communication. And, word choice also conveys a lot of information beyond the basic content of what is said. A person could be a native speaker, and use many words that don’t make communication precise, either resulting from the use of idioms or excess verbiage. On the other hand, a native speaker may simply, as many young people do, use words in a playful or uncommon way.
What does this say about language? The language that exist in our minds comes from a very mysterious place of interplay of past experience with our environment and prior input, and the need or impulse to express ourselves in the present moment.
My son went from crying to get something as an infant, to using language to do so in about a year and a half. From the age of two, he began producing sentences. And now by two-and-a-half, he is stringing together phrases to express ideas that were not responses to immediate stimuli. This particularly dealt with comparisons. For instance, he said, “Some mandarins are sour. But, some are not bitter. They are sweet.”
Where and how does language exist in the brain? These are the deep questions of linguistics that remain central to its field.
Where too does language play come from? It surprised me that my son, whose speech is almost always intelligible to me if not to others for lack of referents or shared linguistic base (Vietnamese, English and Spanish), did not begin to play with words, as in babble, until two-and-a-half.
Some of the play originated with sounds from books, like Dr. Seuss’s Mr. Brown can moo. Can you? As in, the sound of rain, “dibble, dibble, dop.” Or, from misunderstandings of lyrics of songs from Go Buster. As in, “Scout’s got stuck in the mud. A push will get her right out of the muck.”
Other wordplay has mysterious origins. But, play is fun, and in echoing his babble, I’ve teased him saying, “That doesn’t make sense.” And, jokingly asked, “How do you spell it?”
So, we have interchanges like, “A troodle. What’s a troodle. That doesn’t make sense.”
Even more mysterious than language production is the fact that the majority of our language has no communicative purpose. It is running about in our heads during both waking and sleeping hours. Thus, I have been quite surprised when my toddler son has woken up from sleep saying something. These clear and fairly loud utterances are usually in reference to some aspect of play or a favorite toy. But, this stood out one morning when he woke up saying, “How do you spell that? It doesn’t make sense.”
Reflecting on the quantity of robot-calls to our home telephone, my son picked up his toy phone one afternoon, and in response to my question, “Who is it?” he put down the receiver and said, “Spam…That’s weird!”
And, so it seems that a large part of learning is mimicry. Evidence of aptitude and mastery of language appears along with a sense of humor. And, as joking and jest require imagination, insincerity and even deceit in building up to the punchline, the communicative force of good jokes demonstrates adept inter-personal skills.
What should the goals of English language learners be then? Competence, precision and accuracy? Or, should learners rather aim for humor and fun in role-plays?