Language Change - World Englishes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_q9b9YqGRY

David Crystal talks about how there are different types of English spoken around the world

Language Change - The Future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kvs8SxN8mc

David Crystal talks about the long-term and short-term changes in the future of the English language

Language Change - Texting

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79V_qUp91M

John McWhorter and David Crystal explaining how texting is not killing the English language, but enriching it.

Language Change - Mispronunciations

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language

This article explains how the way that words are mispronounced and accepted overtime as correct.

The Role of Schools in the Early Socialization of Gender Differences

Schools are major contexts for gender socialization, in part because children spend large
amounts of time engaged with peers in such settings.4 For nearly all psychological traits
on which young boys and girls differ (e.g., reading ability, play preferences), the
distribution of the two groups is overlapping. Schools can magnify or diminish gender
differences by providing environments that promote within-gender similarity and
between-gender differences, or the inverse (within-gender variability and between group
similarity).

http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/documents/Bigler-Hayes-HamiltonANGxp1.pdf

Gender Roles and Gender Differences

In addition to the influence on gender behaviors of biological factors, there are four principle psychological explanations of gender-linked behavior patterns: Freudian theory's process of identification, cognitive social learning theory, gender-schema theory, and Kohlberg's cognitive developmental theory.

The process by which children acquire the values, motives, and behaviors viewed as appropriate for males and females within a culture is called gender typing. Children develop gender-based beliefs, largely on the basis of gender stereotypes; the latter are reflected in gender roles. Children adopt a gender identity early in life and develop gender-role preferences as well.

http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/0072820144/student_view0/chapter15/index.html

Parental Influence on Children's Socialization to Gender Roles

In a society which is rife with gender stereotypes and biases, children regularly learn to adopt gender roles which are not always fair to both sexes. As children move through childhood and into adolescence, they are exposed to many factors which influence their attitudes and behaviors regarding gender roles. These attitudes and behaviors are generally learned first in the home and are then reinforced by the child's peers, school experience, and television viewing. However, the strongest influence on gender role development seems to occur within the family setting, with parents passing on, both overtly and covertly, to their children their own beliefs about gender. This overview of the impact of parental influence on gender role development leads to the suggestion that an androgynous gender role orientation may be more beneficial to children than strict adherence to traditional gender roles.

http://gozips.uakron.edu/~susan8/parinf.htm

Accessibility of Gender Stereotype Domains: Developmental and Gender Differences in Children

The present research examined developmental and gender differences in the relative accessibility of different gender stereotype domains. A 1988 Northeastern US sample of 256 children ages 3 to 10 years old provided open-ended descriptions of girls and boys. Responses were coded by domain to examine differences by grade, gender of participant, and gender of target. Analyses revealed that girls and older children provided a higher proportion of stereotypes, and that appearance stereotypes were particularly prevalent in descriptions of girls and activity/trait stereotypes were more prevalent in descriptions of boys. Results are discussed in terms of implications for research on the stereotype knowledge–behavior link and the need for more attention to the role of appearance stereotypes in the gender stereotype literature.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709873/

Pink v blue - are children born with gender preferences?

Guardian article with lots of useful links and info on gender preferences and nature vs nurture

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/dec/13/women-children

Biological components of sex differences in color preference

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(07)01559-X

The long history of color preference studies has been described as “bewildering, confused and contradictory” [1] . Although recent studies [1–3] tend to agree on a universal preference for ‘blue’, the variety and lack of control in measurement methods have made it difficult to extract a systematic, quantitative description of preference. Furthermore, despite abundant evidence for sex differences in other visual domains, and specifically in other tasks of color perception [4,5] , there is no conclusive evidence for the existence of sex differences in color preference. This fact is perhaps surprising, given the prevalence and longevity of the notion that little girls differ from boys in preferring ‘pink’ [6] . Here we report a robust, cross-cultural sex difference in color preference, revealed by a rapid paired-comparison task. Individual color preference patterns are summarized by weights on the two fundamental neural dimensions that underlie color coding in the human visual system. We find a consistent sex difference in these weights, which, we suggest, may be linked to the evolution of sex-specific behavioral uses of trichromacy.

Referring to the transcripts and ideas of C.L.A, analyse the language used by Lou and Ruby (DRAFT)

Referring to the transcripts and ideas of C.L.A, analyse the language used by Lou and Ruby

Lou often uses language typical to a caregiver, for example she starts off saying ‘shall we take your jacket off’. Here Lou is demonstrating her influential power over ruby, asking permission to take the coat, even though Lou is probably going to take it off her either way. She covers this with the politeness strategy of using ‘shall we’ making the sentence interrogative which creates the illusion that Ruby has a choice in the matter. Lou may have phrased it this way rather than using imperatives because it encourages confrontation less; if Lou had just told Ruby to take her coat off she would have been more likely to refuse, causing unnecessary conflict.

After Ruby corrects Lou, telling her that her jacket is actually a coat, Lou seems to respond almost sarcastically before asking Ruby if she’s going to be a ‘bossy boots’ all morning. This is usually a gendered, condescending term used to describe women that are assertive. By Lou using this pre-modified noun, we learn a lot about her views on gender, but more importantly it raises the issue of Ruby growing up to believe that women aren’t allowed to be ‘bossy’. However, in this instance Ruby just laughs and brushes the comment off.

When talking about Lou’s cats, Ruby says that one was ‘bitted’ by a dog. By applying a regular simple past to an irregular verb she is supporting Chomsky’s L.A.D. Naom Chomsky theorised that children are born with the innate ability to learn language and grammar. ‘Bitted’ supports this because Ruby has probably not heard an adult use this word before, but she understands that to talk about a verb in the past tense, often the suffix ‘ed’ is added to the end of the word. However, because this is an irregular verb, it doesn’t quite work, but her attempt shows that she has a decent grasp on grammar.

Ruby uses Assimilation several times in the transcript, changing the consonants in words to make them easier to say, ‘wiv’ instead of with and ‘bets’ instead of vets. This is common among children learning language, when they haven’t quite gotten used to all of the phonemes, especially consonants clusters like ‘th’. Deb Roy in the Speech Home Project highlighted that a child’s phonological understanding often outstrips their phonological ability. He showed this with his son’s pronunciation of the noun ‘water’ over a three month period, and is seen here in Ruby’s assimilation of language.