In choosing a topic for this project I realized when in class talking about children's language acquisition that I had the prime subject to study for it. My little cousin Ailish has been a great source of humor for my entire family for just the short three years that she has been here. Turning three on September 4 had to probably be the most exciting thing for her, now that she finally can sing “Happy Birthday” to herself rather than someone else after having practiced it all year long at numerous birthday parties. Having grown up with a very closely-knit, involved family, Ailish has developed that three-year old “chatterbox” syndrome that I was apparently plagued with as a child as well. She is able to tell you a story about anything, whether she made it up, saw a movie or is just recounting her daily activities.
Ailish has grown up in a very age-diverse group with one side of her family's cousins being four girls and five boys, ages ranging from six to twenty-two years old, and every age in between, and one younger sister Mara who rounds out the group at 18 months. Being one of the youngest and most recent additions Ailish definitely grabs the center of attention. She lives in North Carolina , on a horse farm with her ponies “Box” (affectionately named from “Chatterbox”) and “Pickpocket”, with her parents and Mara, with my grandparents being very close by as well. My family lives right next to the farm and her aunt (my mom, called “Noomoo” by the entire family, a name carried on by the rest of my family after being started by my other younger cousin Lucas), typically baby-sits Ailish and Mara everyday for a couple hours, allowing me to hear many of the “Ailish stories” of the day from my mother.
Ailish has a different situation in the fact that, up until just recently, she used to interact with mostly my 16 year old sister and I, as well as other teenagers, who work on the farm competing the horses. Quite possibly her range of vocabulary for her age, as well as her over-the-top expression may have been a result of her constant interaction with teenagers and the rest of her family, rather than younger cousins, with whom I grew up. As a typical girly-girl, influenced probably mostly by my sister, Ailish is obsessed with the Disney princesses, i.e. Cinderella, Belle, Ariel and others. She knows all the stories and everyday in her fantasy world she is a different Princess, and makes those around her one of the characters as well. I recorded her telling me a few of her favorite Disney Princess stories and remarked on the style of her delivery as well as her language choices.
Transcription
Ailish tells a story
Me: What happens in Snow White?
Ailish: She….uh the woodsman makes her in the woods and she gets scared and she finds some animals and she…she had a bad apple and then she went to sleep and then she she…prince charming and she lived happily ever after.
Me: What happens in Cinderella?
Ailish: She has mice...uh…two…uh Jack and Gus Gus.
Me: That's her friends?
Ailish: mm-hmm
Me: Yea?
Ailish: And she has mean stepsisters…
Me: What do they do to her?
Ailish: They rip her dress….
Me: And what else happens?
Ailish: Umm…she…umm…she…the fairy godmother comes and she she she says bibbity bobbity boo…and then she goes to the ball and she dances with prince charming and then she lives happily ever after!
Me: What about her shoe, didn't she lose her shoe?
Ailish: Yea…
Me: Did Prince Charming bring it back to her?
Ailish: No….
Me: Yes he did…didn't he?
Ailish: No, she just keeps running away.
Me: Oh…Does he bring it to her later?
Ailish: N...No..
Me: What about Dumbo?
Ailish: Dungo…ohh…he…
Me: What happens in Dumbo?
Ailish: Umm…he flies like this…like this…like an airplane like this…
Me: Like that?
Ailish: Yea.
Me: Wow
Ailish: He…He…[ don't know ] him ears…and he has a magic feather…and then…it's over!
Me: It's over?...That's it?
Ailish: Yea…that's all I watch.
Me: Hmm..
Me: What happens to Belle?
Ailish:Umm…ahhh…hmm…hmm…her father gets left in the woods and the…the wolves come… and then he goes in the castle…and the beast…the beast comes…and then…and then…ummm….Belle comes in and gets him…and then…they live happily ever after!
Analysis
One of the things I noticed about Ailish's recount of the popular Disney stories was the amount of repetition that was important in a child's narrative. For example the phrase, “happily ever after” recurs in most all fairy tales and therefore is instilled in the child who watches and hears these stories, as the repetition becomes useful in remembering stories. One could probably consider a child to be in their own sort of primitive oral society, and therefore one of the aspects of these societies is that the language, used to tell stories and remember facts, is very repetitive. Language repetition is important, however, so is narrative repetition especially in the development of the child's ability to use language to recap these narratives. According to a study and paper done by Junko Maekawa and Holly L. Storkel they state that, “Both word frequency and length influence expressive vocabulary development and also interact with neighborhood density in acquisition. Specifically, word frequency facilitates children's and acquisition of spoken words, with a high frequency advantage”. The words commonly used in these stories, which Ailish used in her version, were those like “Prince Charming”, “dancing”, “woods” and the phrase “happily ever after”. I know from personal experience that most of the words used in Ailish's narratives of the stories are repeated by my family when we ask her about these stories. For example the “bad apple”, Cinderella's mice friends Jack and Gus Gus as well as “bibbity, bobbity, boo”, all of these make up a part of her everyday life and therefore are continued to be used in retelling these stories.
In addition to the repetition of language in a child narrative I also remarked upon the amount of repetition of characters as well, and the importance for children to have basic characters in every story. For example the common characters in these “Princess stories” are the obvious Princess, the prince, usually called Prince Charming, the enemy to the Princess as well as possibly the animals involved in these acts. In addition to many of the stories having the same characters, Ailish usually assigns characters to all of family on a daily basis, depending on which Princess she is on that day (for example for some reason when she is Belle her mom is Garcon and her dad is the Beast). Every day it is a different Princess and the characters all correspond to that particular story. I think this repetition of characters helps her establish the story, as the characters are the main focus of any story. This is possibly the reason that she did not know the story of Dumbo as well as the others as Dumbo is a different type of story than that of the Princesses. The outlines of the stories that Ailish gave were similar as well. Each story began with an overview of a good number of the characters in the story, establishing who, what and where, this then was followed by one event that happened in the middle of the story, then followed by the resolution of the problem and the fact that they “lived happily ever after”. This simple formula helps the child construct the stories in which many of the basic plots are the same; just the characters and events need to be plugged in. Again the plot of Dumbo is different, causing the confusion in the story.
These similar plots seemed to cause trouble, however, as they promote a kind of forced order. The outlines of these stories must go in the same order every time in order for the child to be able to remember all these stories. This is seen in the questions I ask Ailish about Cinderella's glass slipper after she has finished telling the story; she is unsure of what to say and does not in fact get that part of the story right, possibly due to the lack of chronological order to the questions.
The amount of times these stories have been repeated and watched by Ailish in our family evidently contribute to her being able to recount every one of them to a certain degree, the more the story is repeated the easier it was for her to retell. This type of learning is probably similar to that of Motherese, in which constant, recurring repetition helps the child establish their abilities to acquire language as well as express it. Although in this case Motherese had already essentially been implemented and carried out by the mother, the repetition amongst the family is similar in the fundamental ideas behind it.
Sources:
Cozolino, L J. (2002). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain. New York , NY : W.W. Norton & Company Inc.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New York , NY : HarperCollins.
Maekawa, J. & Storkel, (2006). "Individual differences in the influence of phonological characteristics on expressive vocabulary development by young children." Journal of Child Development , 33 (3), 439-459.
Ong, W J. (1988). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge.
About the
Author
My name is Tiffany Foster and I was born in Hartford, Connecticut and lived in Glastonbury, CT until I was 15 and a Sophomore in high school when I moved down to Southern Pines, NC. My family are all from Connecticut and have moved down here one after another. I ride and compete my horses, hoping to follow in the footsteps of my aunt and uncle who are professional trainers and in my eyes experts. My international travel experience began when I was very young, travelling around with my family watching my aunt compete in England multiple times, Italy, Ireland and Canada.
As far as my language studies go I studied Spanish in 4th and 5th grade, which can hardly be considered as "studied", however, it gave me a chance to realize that I had a passion for languages. I have taken French since 6th grade and took the AP Language exam my senior year. I studied Russian for two years in middle school and studied Latin for two years in High School. I have always loved languages and think it is interesting how they have come to be and what triggers the learning in us.
I am probably one the most unartistic people ever, and although I love music I don't really have any musical talent either. I am computer literate, however, not really completely self-sufficient when it comes to technology.
In choosing a topic for this project I realized when in class talking about children's language acquisition that I had the prime subject to study for it. My little cousin Ailish has been a great source of humor for my entire family for just the short three years that she has been here. Turning three on September 4 had to probably be the most exciting thing for her, now that she finally can sing “Happy Birthday” to herself rather than someone else after having practiced it all year long at numerous birthday parties. Having grown up with a very closely-knit, involved family, Ailish has developed that three-year old “chatterbox” syndrome that I was apparently plagued with as a child as well. She is able to tell you a story about anything, whether she made it up, saw a movie or is just recounting her daily activities.
One of the things I noticed about Ailish's recount of the popular Disney stories was the amount of repetition that was important in a child's narrative. For example the phrase, “happily ever after” recurs in most all fairy tales and therefore is instilled in the child who watches and hears these stories, as the repetition becomes useful in remembering stories. One could probably consider a child to be in their own sort of primitive oral society, and therefore one of the aspects of these societies is that the language, used to tell stories and remember facts, is very repetitive. Language repetition is important, however, so is narrative repetition especially in the development of the child's ability to use language to recap these narratives. According to a study and paper done by Junko Maekawa and Holly L. Storkel they state that, “Both word frequency and length influence expressive vocabulary development and also interact with neighborhood density in acquisition. Specifically, word frequency facilitates children's and acquisition of spoken words, with a high frequency advantage”. The words commonly used in these stories, which Ailish used in her version, were those like “Prince Charming”, “dancing”, “woods” and the phrase “happily ever after”. I know from personal experience that most of the words used in Ailish's narratives of the stories are repeated by my family when we ask her about these stories. For example the “bad apple”, Cinderella's mice friends Jack and Gus Gus as well as “bibbity, bobbity, boo”, all of these make up a part of her everyday life and therefore are continued to be used in retelling these stories.
My name is Tiffany Foster and I was born in Hartford, Connecticut and lived in Glastonbury, CT until I was 15 and a Sophomore in high school when I moved down to Southern Pines, NC. My family are all from Connecticut and have moved down here one after another. I ride and compete my horses, hoping to follow in the footsteps of my aunt and uncle who are professional trainers and in my eyes experts. My international travel experience began when I was very young, travelling around with my family watching my aunt compete in England multiple times, Italy, Ireland and Canada.