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.