1.

Ability to interact in a foreign language speech community depends on

communicative competence of sociolinguistic rules which are an important aspect.
Elaborate.
Speech community and competence facilitate thinking about a language with regard to
grammatical system and the people who use it as a powerful intellectual means in their everyday
life. Linguistic anthropologists suppose that speakers must be members of a community in
which those skills are transmitted and acknowledged (Gumperz). Moreover, in order to
understand the nature of language, its boundaries and what makes communication possible or
impossible, the link between utterances and their contexts of use are to be considered. A truly
anthropological understanding of a speech community and its members' communicative
competence comes not only from describing language use, but the need to come to an
understanding of how speakers acknowledge their own language and see it related to their history
(Morgan).

Generally speaking, the term communication refers to giving information or sharing ideas.
However, most of dictionaries and various linguists defined it differently. For example,
according to Longman Contemporary English Dictionary, it is brought as “communication is the
process by which people exchange information or their thoughts and feelings” or “the way
people express themselves so that other people will understand them”. Stekauer (1995) defines
Communication as an activity which some sorts of information is transferred from one ‘system’
to another through some physical embodiment. Following Parigin (1971), in his book “The Basis
of Communicative methodology” Passov stated that the communication is a versatile process,
which simultaneously comes out as the process of interaction among individuals, and as a
relationship of the people, and as a process of their interaction.
In support of the ideas of Breen and Candlin (1980), Morrow (1977) and Widdowson
(1988), Richards and Schmidt (1983) characterized the nature of communication as follows:
communication:
a) is a form of social interaction, and is thus normally acquired and used in social
interaction;
b) is highly unpredictable and creative in form and message;
 c) occurs in discourse and social contexts which pose limitations on appropriate language
use and also clues as to correct interpretations of utterances;
d) is bound to psychological and other conditions including memory constraints, fatigue and
distractions;
e) is purposeful;
f) involves authentic language;
g) Actual outcomes judge it as successful/unsuccessful.

Moreover, communication refers to the exchange and negotiation of information between

at least two or more individuals by the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols (Richards &
Schmidt, 1983).
Having examined all the definitions provided by various linguists, it is necessary to focus
on the main concept of communication which is information exchange between individuals or
expressing thoughts to each other which is considered the purpose of the language teaching
In general, it was in the middle of 1960s or beginning of 1970s that the word competence
has been brought to linguistics or become the central word for linguists and teachers of foreign
languages. Chomsky (1965), introduced competence to applied linguistic and distinguished
between competence (the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language) and performance (the
actual use of language in concrete situations). Furthermore, the word competence generally
refers to the ability of doing something in a satisfactory or effective way (Macmillan English
Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2007), the ability or skill to do something well or to a
satisfactory standard (Longman Business English Dictionary, 2007) and the ability to do
something successfully or efficiently (Oxford Dictionary of English, Revised Edition, 2005).
Moreover, considering language or linguistics, competence refers to one’s underlying knowledge
of system of a language – its grammar, its vocabulary, all the pieces of a language and how those
pieces fit together (Brown, 2000); competence is our intuitively knowledge about a language to
be able to use it. It is the kind of innate knowledge that provides us with the means to distinguish
well-formed from ill-formed sentences (Thornbury, 2006); linguists use the term competence –to
describe roughly what we have so far rather ponderously been calling knowledge and skill
(Jonson, 2001).
 In the last three decades of the twentieth century applied linguists were dealt with finding a
new methodology of foreign languages teaching that emphasizes more on the effect of learners’
interactions with each other rather than individual development. This is the aim of
communicative language teaching. Foreign languages acquisition began to be viewed as a
making meaning through interactions among foreign languages learners. Afterwards, there
appeared a new term known as “communicative competence” that has gained value amongst
applied linguists and foreign languages teachers, who made CC a predominant term in teaching
foreign languages as well as an appropriate term in applied linguistics that captures current issues
in English teaching. CC involves phonology, grammar (morphology and syntax), lexis,
pragmatics, discourse and communication strategies (Yalden, 1987).
In order for a speaker to highly performing in particular interaction contexts it is necessary
to acquire the communicative skills required of a native skills speaker. Therefore, applied
linguistics scholars have focused on the concept of communicative competence (CC). To
succeed in the sociocultural contexts, L2 speakers are required to process and interact with the
language they experience. No matter in the classroom, the grocery store, or the workplace, L2
speakers is required to have access to this language. CC is a goal, which allows L2 speakers the
cultural and linguistic knowledge needed to manage the interactional challenges they faced. In
order to fully demonstrate CC, the intent of communication, embedded in specific cultural
settings is to be taken into account.
It is claimed that students who study English as a foreign language waste six or seven
period of studying the language at school. They believe that the English language courses they
have been introduced to do not meet the necessary needs to take part in a real communication in
English. In addition, they claim that they face difficulties in expressing their emotions, feelings,
their agreement, disagreement, likes, dislikes, etc., in an English social context. They have
difficulty in ‘not knowing enough words'. However, their main problem is that they don't know
the appropriate words to use in a communicative sentence or utterance. This lies on the fact that
they have mastered the formation rules of the language rather than acquiring ways of using the
language in meaningful situations to produce meaningful acts of communication. To summarize,
they have mastered the one, language usage, without the other, language use.
 According to Light (1997)0, CC should serve four main purposes: expressing wants and
needs, developing social closeness, exchanging information, and fulfilling social etiquette
routines.
CC refers to the speaker's ability to communicate in a society as a speaking member and as
a communicative member (Hymes, 1967). Sociolinguists use CC to include both knowing a
language (linguistic competence) and knowing how to use it, i.e. in addition to grammaticality,
the notion of competence should include contextual appropriacy or knowledge of sociolinguistic
codes and rules.
In addition to language macro skills, the CC consists of all the competencies mentioned in
Canale and Swain model (1980) and Canale model (1983), while the language macro skills refer
to the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. These interrelated skills and
competencies interact with each other to form the cc. The researchers believe that the
grammatical knowledge and sociolinguistic rules is useful when a learner have the skills to use
such knowledge for communication. So they believe that language macro skills stand at the core
of the communicative competence and form a major part of it (Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale,
1983). For instance, some learners may know how to apply grammatical rules in their writing
and in the same time, they may know how to use social and cultural rules according to the
context because of the knowledge of the use of sociocultural rules or being aware of such rules
as it is similar to their mother tongue, but they find themselves unable to express themselves
fluently unless they have mastered the speaking skill.

Figure 1: Model of CC
 The adaptation of CLT approach and its activities, together with modern technologies and
cooperative learning are ways for achieving a good level of communicative competence in
English as a foreign language at schools and universities.

2. In what respects does the language which is characteristic of each of the following
groups, mark each group off as a separate speech community: adolescents; women;
linguists; air traffic controllers; priests? How useful is the concept of “speech
community” in cases such as these? Discuss.
Not all communication is linguistic, however, language is by far the most powerful and
versatile means of communication; all known human groups has language. The verbal system,
unlike other sign systems, can, be made to refer to a wide range of objects and concepts, through
the minute refinement of its grammatical and semantic structure. Simultaneously, verbal
interaction is a social process within which utterances are chosen in conjunction with socially
known norms and expectations. In addition, linguistic phenomena can be analyzed both within
the context of language itself and within the broader context of social behavior. In the formal
analysis of language, the object of focus is a particular group of linguistic data abstracted from
the settings in which it happens and studied primarily from referential function point of view.
However, in analyzing linguistic phenomena from the view point of socially defined universe,
the aim is to study language usage as it sheds light on more general behavior norms. This
universe is the speech community, i.e., any human aggregate characterized by regular and
frequent interaction through a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by
significant differences in language usage.
Speech communities offer linguistic peculiarities that need special study. The verbal
behavior of such speech communities always makes a system which must be built on finite sets
of grammatical rules underlying the production of well-formed sentences, or else messages will
not be intelligible. The description of such rules is a necessity for studying all of linguistic
phenomena. However, it is only the starting point in the sociolinguistic analysis of language
behavior.
Speakers use linguistic characteristics in order to achieve group identity with, and group
differentiation from, other speakers, however, they use social, cultural, political and ethnic,
characteristics as well. These referring to what Giles, Scherer, and Taylor they call speech
markers (1979, p. 351):
Through speech markers functionally important social categorizations are discriminated,
and . . . these have important implications for social organization. For humans, speech markers
have clear parallels . . . it is evident that social categories of age, sex, ethnicity, social class, and
situation can be clearly marked on the basis of speech, and that such categorization is
fundamental to social organization even though many of the categories are also easily
discriminated on other bases.
Speakers may switch into styles mainly due to their audience to reach intelligibility and
communicative efficiency; in an attempt to express or achieve solidarity, they regulate their
speech towards their listeners. This social psychological approach to stylistic variation is
originally known as speech accommodation theory (Giles, 1973). It discusses speakers’
intention to show their positive identity towards others. They tend to regulate their own
vocabulary, accent and cadence as of other listeners. For example, people adopt their friends’
slang to fit in. People talk differently using different words and gestures accordingly to the
different group of people like old people, children, women, men, teens, rich, poor, powerful,
weak, etc.
Grammatical rules determine linguistically acceptable the bounds. For example, they equip
us with means to identify proper American English sentences such as How do you do?'' ``How
are you?'' and ``Hi'' as and to reject others like “How do you?'' and ``How you are?'' Yet speech
is not constrained by grammatical rules alone. An individual's choice from among permissible
alternates in a particular speech event may indicate his family background and his social intent,
may identify him as a Southerner, a Northerner, an urbanite, a rustic, a member of the educated
or uneducated classes, and may even reveal whether or not he wishes to appear friendly or not,
familiar or deferential, superior or inferior.
Like intelligibility which presupposes underlying grammatical rules, communicating social
information presupposes the existence of regular relationships between language usage and
social structure. Hence, one can judge a speaker's social purpose, one must know something
about the defining norms of the appropriateness of linguistically acceptable choices for particular
types of speakers; these norms depends on subgroups and social settings. The formulation of the
relationships between language alternatives and social appropriateness rules allow us to put
relevant linguistic forms into distinct dialects, styles, and occupational or other special parlances.
The study of speech communities from sociolinguistic point of view is concerned with the
linguistic similarities and differences among these speech varieties.
In linguistically homogeneous societies the verbal markers of social distinctions tend to
depend on structurally marginal features of phonology, syntax, and lexicon. In many multilingual
societies the alternatives of one language over another is as much significant as the choice
among lexical alternates in linguistically homogeneous societies. In such cases, to cover the
entire scope of linguistically acceptable expressions that serves to convey social meaning, two or
more grammars may be required.
In Sociolinguists terms speech accommodation began as “a socio- psychological model of
speech-style modifications”. It then developed into communication accommodation theory in
order to acknowledge that not only speech but other “communicative behavior” (Giles et al.,
2007, p.134). This affects interpersonal or intergroup interaction, i.e. an individual’s speaker
identity is constructed from interaction with varying social groups. Each group has a unique
culture and social category. An individual’s membership of a social group will typically decide
upon the individual’s linguistic choice. To minimize the social distance between that individual
and the group one wishes to be part of, one is then required to reduce the linguistic intergroup
differences.
Our speech act shapes our understanding of the social world, our relationship to one
another, and social identities. Excluding the linguistic differences among them, the
speech varieties made used within a speech community constitute a system
because they are related to a shared set of social norms. Therefore, they can
be grouped according to their usage, their origins, and the relationship
between speech and social action that they reflect. They are considered as
social patterns of interaction in the speech community. In addition, social variation
often considers a variety of dimensions, including age, social class and network, race and
ethnicity, and gender.
Considering both speaker and interlocutor’s attitudes towards varieties of language some
patterns of language attitudes might be gender differentiated. Taking cross-cultural perspective,
women in most societies tend to choose prestige variants more frequently when discrete
linguistic items are analyzed, their speech act and discursive features departs from the prestige
forms of their societies.
As the primarily generational slang repertoire, social variation involves age groups as a
developmental or social stage features. Thus, speakers grow older start to adopt new patterns of
another age group and abandon the early features. The study of age differences is important for
the study of language variation; “change in apparent time” (Baily as cited in Rickford, 1996).
Social class variation is a subcategory of variation according to users; the differences
between groups of speakers in various dimensions as distinct from variation according to use in
different styles or registers (Halliday as cited in Rickford, 1996).
In summary, individuals belong to various speech communities at the same time, but only
one of them will be identified on any particular occasion, the particular identification depends on
what is especially important or contrastive in the circumstances. The concept ‘reflects what
people do and know when they interact with one another in any specific speech community.
When gathered through discursive practices, people behave as though they operate within a
shared set of norms, local knowledge, beliefs, and values. That is to say that, they are aware of
these things and capable of knowing when they are being adhered to and when the values of the
community are being ignored . . . it is fundamental in understanding identity and representation
of ideology’ (Morgan, 2001, p. 31).
In addition, Labov ‘s study of the variable [-ing] shows social classes separation with
respect to this variable; with the lower working class using /in/; alveolar, most often and the
upper middle class using it least often. Labov asserts that variables are simultaneously adaptable
to group membership and style regarded as markers, while indicators are correlated with
geographic region or social group membership only.
Hence, in each group/speech community, (adolescents; women; linguists; air traffic
controllers; priests) with the existence of more than one code, as the speakers switch from one
group to another, the linguistic situation becomes more intricate. Such a phenomenon is a
complex speech behavior occurring as an outcome of language contact. The concept of “speech
community” in cases such as these is important because it specifies each different norm
governing each speech community.
 To wrap it all up, language variation goes hand in hand with the speaker’s identity, attitude
and ideology. The linguistic variation of any speech community marks speakers’ identity and
social status.
3. A language like English makes use of ‘natural gender’; German and French employ
‘grammatical gender’; and Chinese does without either. What do such facts tell us
about the "world-views" of those who speak English, German, French, and
Chinese? Discuss.

It is evident that the “Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis”, well-known as the Sapir-Whorf

Hypothesis, has been controversial since its first formulation. Its originator, the American
anthologist and linguist E. Sapir clearly expresses the principle of this hypothesis in his essay
“The Status of Linguistics as a science “(Sapir, selected Essays, 1961). In his 1940 published
essay “Science and Linguistics” (Whorf, Selected Writings, 1956), B.L. Whorf reformulated the
hypothesis.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presupposes the language effect on thought and perception
which in turn, implies that the different language speakers think and perceive reality in different
ways and that world view is language specific. The issues of this hypothesis pertain to the field
of linguistics, Psychology, Ethnology, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, as well as on the
natural sciences. For, if the language we speak perceived and structured reality, the existence of
an objective world becomes questionable, and the scientific knowledge we may obtain is bound
to be subjective. Then, such a relativity principle becomes a principle of determinism. In other
words, it is the language we speak that totally determines our attitude towards reality or we are
merely influenced by its inherent world view.
Sapir believes that language rather than reflecting reality, language actually shapes it to a
large extent. Thus, he recognizes the objective nature of reality; however, the perception of
reality is influenced by our linguistic habits, therefore, it follows that language plays an active
role in the process of cognition. Sapir’s linguistic relativity hypothesis can be stated as follows:
a) The language we speak and think in shapes the way we perceive the world.
b) The existence of the various language systems implies that the people who think in these
different languages must perceive the world differently.
 Whorf extended Sapir’s ideas, and put a step forward saying that there was a
“predisposition “in Whorf’s view, the deterministic relationship between language and culture.
The strongest Whorf statement concerning his ideas is the following:

“The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) each language poses a
reproducing instrument for voicing ideas as well as the shaper of ideas, the program and guide
for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his
mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is dependent process, strictly rational in the old sense,
but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different
grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. Our minds present
the world in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions and this is largely justified by the linguistic
systems in our minds. Therefore, different speakers view the world differently. For instance,
speakers of one language have certain words to describe things and speakers of another language
lack similar words, then speakers of the first language will find it easier to talk about those
things.
Your language controls your world- view. Speakers of different languages will, therefore,
have different world-views. Whorf concluded that "the cue to a certain line of behavior is often
given by the analogies of the linguistic formula in which the situation is spoken of, and by which
to some degree it is analyzed, classified, and allotted its place in that world which is to a large
extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group" (Carroll, 1956, p. 137).
In this view, then, language provides a screen or filter to reality; it determines how
speakers perceive and organize the natural world and the social world the world around them.
Consequently, the language you speak helps to form your world-view. It defines your experience
for you; you do not use it simply to report that experience. It is neutral but gets in the way,
imposing habits of both looking and thinking.
The grammar of every language is made up of a set of meanings characteristic of that
language. The tern grammaticalized meanings is obligatory and largely automatic. Individual
languages includes specific grammatical categories which differ from one another with regard to
the number of those categories and their type, the internal structure of the shared categories
(different number of subcategories in each language), and their nature (relating to modeling or
selection).
 Grammatical gender is a particular aspect of language that may affect perceptions of
reality. In every culture, grammatical gender is attributed to words on the basis of various
criteria, which often cannot seemingly be explained with logic. Does the grammatical gender or
class ascribed to a given noun influence the way we perceive it? Is there a supra-language
conceptual gender categorization of objects that is culturally universal, and not as arbitrary as
grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined as a system where nouns are classified into classes
depending on associated linguistic elements behavior such as articles and determiners
(Corbett, 2006). Some languages like French and German possess a grammatical gender system
that is based on natural gender (i.e., masculine and feminine). However, assigning grammatical
gender to objects is said to be semantically arbitrary, i.e. Nothing is masculine or feminine in
nature, and objects often possess opposite genders across languages (e.g., “key” is masculine in
German)
Grammatical gender is semantically arbitrary, however, it has been shown to influence the
way people think about objects (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2003; Kurinski & Sera, 2011;
Phillips & Boroditsky, 2003; Sera, Berge, & Pintado, 1994). For Phillips and Boroditsky (2003)
found that when people shared grammatical gender, they rated objects and people as more
similar. Besides similarity, the grammatical gender of a noun can also influence the semantic
associations with its referent. Boroditsky et al. (2003) asked German and Spanish speakers to list
relevant adjectives for objects that had an opposite grammatical gender in each of the languages.
They found that grammatical gender affected the types of adjectives that were provided: objects
were described using more masculine adjectives when the word had masculine grammatical
gender, but more feminine adjectives when the word had feminine grammatical gender. For
example, the object key was described with adjectives such as “hard, heavy, jagged, metal,
serrated, and useful” by German speakers, but as “golden intricate, little, lovely, shiny, and tiny”
by Spanish speakers (Mickan, Schiefse, & Stefanowitsch, 2014).
Ervin (1962) was the first researcher to address these questions. She asked Italian-speaking
subjects to assess artificial words that had suffixes typical of either the masculine or feminine
grammatical gender in Italian, on sales of properties that were stereotypically masculine or
feminine. It was shown that they linked the artificial words to masculine and feminine suffixes
with more masculine and more feminine characteristics, respectively.
 Grammatical gender is an interesting area in linguistics which is concerned with studying
the effect of language on odor perception because its effects are seemingly automatic and
implicit. For example, effects of grammatical gender on speakers of a gendered language
completing a task in English (a language with no grammatical gender system), in case of a non-
linguistic task, and when engaged in verbal interference (Phillips & Boroditsky, 2003).
Automatic and pre-attentive effects of grammatical gender have also been shown using event-
related potentials (Boutonnet, Athanasopoulos, & Thierry, 2012). Grammatical gender is found
to affect a morphosyntactic marker (LAN amplitude) in Spanish-English bilinguals, but not
monolingual English speakers, in a semantic categorization task of pictures. Intriguingly, the
effects were bound to event-related potentials, and not observed in behavioral measures.
In another study, Mullen (1990) found that English-speaking children are more likely to
attribute feminine grammatical gender to natural objects and masculine gender to artifacts. It was
presupposed that such a categorization of objects results from the categorization of the roles that
men and women have in society: women are seen as mothers, who give life and nourish, and so
anything natural (fruit, vegetables, plants, animals) is related with the feminine gender; men
create and use tools, therefore, the association of masculine features with artifacts.
In a comparative study of German and Spanish speakers, Konishi (1993) revealed that both
groups believed that in comparison to feminine nouns, masculine nouns present in their language
belong to higher potency, a trait stereotypically considered masculine (Bem, 1993). These results
suggest that grammatical gender may not be an entirely arbitrary category.
Language differences do not reside in what can or cannot be expressed but in what has to
or does not have to be expressed. This is the reason, for which research into linguistic worldview
must focus, to a greater extent, on grammaticalized concepts and categories, which attract the
attention of speakers to certain aspects of reality and, being obligatory, exert influence on
people’s beliefs and form of artistic expression.
 4. Post-creolization is claimed to be a good place to study features of Universal
Grammar. How? Discuss.

The philosophical discussion over innate ideas and their impact on knowledge acquisition has
a venerable history. Thus, surprisingly not much attention was paid until early last century to
the questions of linguistic knowledge acquisition and the role, if any, innate ideas might play
in that process.
To ascertain, many theorists have recognized the important role of language in our lives,
and have speculated about the (syntactic and/or semantic) properties of language that allow it to
play that role. However, little had much to say about the properties of us in virtue of which we
can learn and use a natural language. To the extent that philosophers before the 20th century
dealt with language acquisition at all, they tended to see it as a product of our general ability to
reason — an ability that distinguishes us, and that separates us from other animals, but that is not
particularly tailored for language learning.
It has been argued (by, e.g., Bickerton, 1981; Pinker, 1994, pp.32-9) that the process by
which a pidgin turns into a creole provides direct evidence of the operation of an innate language
faculty. Pidgins are rudimentary communication systems that are developed when people
speaking different languages come together (often in a commercial setting or when one people
has conquered and is exploiting another) and need to communicate about practical matters.
Creoles arise when pidgins are elaborated both syntactically and semantically, and take on the
characteristics of bona fide natural languages.
Bickerton and, following him, Pinker, argue that creolization occurs when children take a
pidgin as the input to their first language learning, and urge that the added complexity of the
creole reflects the operation of the child's inborn language faculty. Moreover, they argue, since
creole languages all tend to be elaborated in the same ways, and since they all respect the
constraints of UG, the phenomenon of creolization also supports the idea that the inborn
contribution to language acquisition is not just some general drive for an effective system of
communication, but rather knowledge of linguistic universals.
 Bickerton and Pinker, argue that creolization refers to cases where children take a pidgin as
the first language learning input, and urge that the additional complexity of the creole represents
the operation of the child's inborn language faculty. In addition, they argue, since all creole
languages tend to be elaborated in the same ways, and since they all respect the constraints of
UG, the phenomenon of creolization is claimed to be a good place to study the inborn
contribution to language acquisition as some general drive for an effective system of
communication, and knowledge of linguistic universals.
In this sense, The Bioprogram is introduced to refer to the innate faculty which ascertains
that, given linguistic input, humans will develop a specific grammar in the same way they develop
a particular skeletal structure. A creole language is known as the realization of the ‘default’
instructions of the Bioprogram having minimal language- specific idiosyncrasies. Bickerton
(1981) asserts that the semantic distinctions of neural infrastructure created during the
development of our species will be the first to become lexicalized in the course of language
development. Thus, if a creole-like language is the final product of a long evolution, then the
capacity to produce such a language must be part of the genetic of every human being. Therefore,
this ‘default’ language is assumed to be part of the normal development of each child, however,
in most cases the ‘default’ settings are overrun by the idiosyncrasies of the language used in the
country where each child is born. According to Bickerton (1981), there is a similarity between
incorrect hypotheses and structures found in creole grammar. Thus, the absence of sufficient
input from the speech of adults (when these adults speak a rudimentary pidgin; for example),
make children automatically use the default grammatical features of their innate Bioprogram.
The bio program hypothesis claims that innate knowledge of grammar to produce a fully-
fledged natural language (the creole) as output compelled children who learn language from
degraded (e.g., pidgin) inputs. Pinker cites the case of Simon, a deaf child studied by Newport
and her colleagues, who learned American Sign Language (ASL) from parents who themselves
were not exposed to ASL until their late teens as an example of how children add UG-
constrained structure to languages learned from degraded inputs. Despite ASL use as their
primary language, Simon's parents were “in many ways…like pidgin speakers,” says Pinker
(1994, p. 38). For instance, their use of inflectional markers is inconsistent and often failed to
respect the structure-dependence of the rules governing topicalization in that language. But
“astoundingly,” says Pinker, “though Simon saw no ASL but his parents' defective version, his
own signing was far better ASL then theirs…Simon must somehow have shut out his parents'
ungrammatical ‘noise.’ He must have latched on to the inflections that his parents used
inconsistently, and interpreted them as mandatory.” (1994, p.39) Pinker views this as a case of
“creolization by a single living child” (1994, p.39) and explains Simon's conformity to ASL
grammar with reference to the operation of his innate language faculty during the acquisition
period.
The LBH claims, further, that such inventions show a degree of similarity, across wide
variations in linguistic background. Finally, the LBH claims that this similarity is derived from
the structure of a species-specific program for language, genetically coded and expressed, in
ways still largely mysterious, in the structures and modes of operation of the human brain.
In conclusion, Bickerton’s (1990) arguments that creoles and child language can give us
insights about how language evolved in mankind are partly based on the assumption that
ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. They are also based on his hypothesis that creoles were made
by children from erstwhile pidgins. Looking at the question of whether Creoles are special
evidence for universal grammar. Jenkins, Lightfoot, Marshall, and Muysken all accepted it in
some fashion, and Hornstein took it under advisement that the Creole case was not, in principle,
different from that of the normal child. What makes Creoles special is not a difference in kind
from the "normal" child's situation, but rather a difference in degree. Creoles must represent (at
least) the set of the unmarked settings of all parameters, as did Muysken and Jenkins. However,
neither they nor anyone else would accept that a single core grammar could constitute the totality
of our innate linguistic equipment.
‘Language bioprogram hypothesis’ has two problems, as it is known in the creolization
literature. The first concerns the claim (e.g., Bickerton 198, pp. 43-70) that “even creoles that
developed in quite different areas of the world, and in complete isolation from one another, bear
“uncanny resemblances” (Pinker, 1994, p.25) to each other, in respecting the constraints of UG,
as well as— more surprisingly — in using fundamentally the same means to elaborate their root
pidgins (e.g., in using the same syntactic devices to mark tense, aspect and modality). Bickerton
made the stronger claim — that Creoles use the same devices for the same grammatical purposes
— is simply not true. For instance, as Myhill (1991) argues, Jamaican Creole, Louisiana Creole,
Mauritian Creole and Guyanese Creole mark tense, aspect and modality in quite different ways
from those that Bickerton (1981) proposed as universal (Mufwene, 1999.) The weaker claim —
that creoles value the constraints imposed by UG has notbeen contested.
In addition, the argument from creolization suffers a number of additional flaws. First, the
Bickerton-Pinker view, which assigns a dominant role to child language learners in the
production of creoles, is but one of three currently competing hypotheses being explored in the
creolization literature. According to the ‘superstratist’ hypothesis, creolization occurs when
successive waves of adult speakers try to learn the language of the dominant culture as a second
language not when children acquire language from pidgins. (Chaudenson, 1992, for instance,
defends this view about the origins of French creoles.) The additional devices on this view are
corruptions of devices seen in the dominant language. According to the ‘substratist’ hypothesis,
creoles are again made by second language learners, rather than children, only the source of
added structure is the first language of the learner. (Lumsden, 1999 argues that numerous traces
of a variety of African languages in Haitian creole support this hypothesis.) One need not take a
stand on which of these views is correct to see that these competing explanations of creolization
undermine Bickerton and Pinker's ‘bioprogram’ hypothesis. If creoles stem out of the attempts of
adult learners to learn (and subsequently pass on to their children) then, another, non-native
language, i.e. contamination of the stimulus, rather than the effect of an inborn UG in the learner,
is what accounts for the UG-respecting ways in which creoles are elaborated.
However, this is a case of creolization in which these other hypotheses apparently fail to
gain purchase (Pinker, 1994, p.37ff.). This case is true about the development of Idioma de
Signos Nicaragüense (ISN, Nicaraguan Sign Language), a brand-new natural sign language
which first emerged around 30 years ago in schools around Managua for the deaf in. These
schools were first set up in the 1970s, and ISN evolved from the hodge-podge of home sign
systems used by students who entered the schools at that time. For two reasons, ISN is an
interesting test case of the bioprogram hypothesis. First, home sign systems are idiosyncratic and
possess little syntactic structure: therefore, the natural-language like syntax of ISN could not
derive from substrate influence. And auditory modality makes Spanish, the only potential
candidate for super-strate influence allegedly inaccessible to signers. Pinker claims that ISN
provides another example of creolization and the workings of the innate language faculty: it is
“created…in one leap when the younger children were exposed to the pidgin singing of the older
children.” (1994, pp.36-7)
 5. To what extent might the relationship between formal and informal Farsi (written
and spoken) be characterized as a Diglossic one?

Ferguson refers to diglossia as a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the
primary dialects of the language, there is a very divergent, highly codified superposed variety
(often the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or
in another speech community), which is learned largely as a result of formal education and is
used for most written and formal spoken purposes however any sector of the community don’t
use it in ordinary conversation.
Jeremiás remarked that Ferguson makes a distinction between diglossia and another
widespread language situation, in which the standard language is opposed to local (geographical)
dialects (‘standard-with-dialects’). In such language situations one of the local dialects appears
for geographical, political etc. reasons, becomes standardized above the other regional dialects,
while everybody uses their own local dialect in every-day speech (in informal situations).
According to Ferguson the main difference between the diglossia situation and the standard with-
dialects in the circumstance is that the standard which is often similar to the variety of a certain
region or social group is used in ordinary conversation by members of the group more or less
naturally and as a superposed variety by others; Tehran Persian and Calcutta Bengali are typical
examples of the standard-with-dialects situation.
Jeremiás remarked that the circumstance that the subject of Ferguson’s early investigations
(on which he based his classification of Persian as a case of standard-with-dialects) was formal
Persian had distorted the Fergusonian understanding of the typological position of New Persian.
He refers to the informal varieties of Persian; however, he clearly thinks that the differences
between the formal and informal styles only deal with pronunciation and to a lesser degree the
morphology of verbs (e.g. contracted forms of certain common verbs). Jeremiás rightly remarks
that from Ferguson’s examples and from his conclusions it seems that Ferguson’s informants
(native speakers of Tehran Persian) have misled him. A great deal of the examples analyzed in
his specific article on Persian does not show the formal or informal varieties of Persian at all, but
its “archaic stylistic variants” (in Jeremiás’ terms, “classical” in Ferguson’s terminology).
Ferguson’s examples include non-synchronous elements that are no longer used in formal written
Persian, while simultaneously the author rejects morphological features in common use. In other
words, his informants, whose L1 was Persian, answered the foreign interviewer in a literary style
imitating the classical language, which had and still prestigious among Persian speakers.
Jeremiás’ concludes that, if one accepts Ferguson’s original definition, the Persian
language situation is to be regarded as a striking example of diglossia. The Persian history
provided data indicating that the existence of this situation dates back to the earliest historical
times. What makes Persian unique is that the classical language itself, or the classical language
as a norm, has remained ‘living’ and has not become a crystallized form of language reserved to
the elites. What make Persian specific is that the spoken language cannot be regarded as a
version of the formal style transferred into speech. The grammatical differences between the two
varieties tend to be as marked as those between two independent languages.
Evidently, Ferguson oversimplified the actual situation. A real knowledge of the language
indicates that throughout the history of Persian the relationship between the spoken and literary
forms has been in constant flux, and that this grammarian has generally noted it only after a
certain delay, all this stemming from a continuously changing self-consciousness of both spoken
and literary form norms at any given time.
According to Jeremiás, another important conclusion with respect to the Persian example is
that the differences between formal and informal varieties warn us that a mechanical comparison
of the historical records at our disposal may lead to false results, because it does not take account
of the variety or layer of the contemporary language these records belonged to.
Ferguson (1957) clearly thinks that the informal varieties of Persian, the formal and
informal styles only deal with pronunciation and to a lesser degree the morphology of verbs (e.g.
contracted forms of certain common verbs). A great deal of the examples analyzed in Ferguson
(1957) does not represent at all the formal or informal varieties of Persian, but its “archaic
stylistic variants” (in Jeremias’ terms, “classical” in Ferguson’s terminology). His non-
synchronous elements examples indicate that they are no longer in use in formal written Persian,
while at the same time he ignores morphological features in common use. In other words,
imitating the classical language, his informants, whose mother tongue was Persian, answered the
foreign interviewer in a literary style, which had and still maintains the greatest prestige among
Persian speakers.
 Unlike Jeremiás’, in the comparative study of the degree of ‘broad diglossia’ at work in
Arabic and Persian, and to determine whether one or both are ‘narrowly diglottic’, Perry suggests
a series of measurable (i.e. quantitative) criteria– one for modem Persian of Iran (Formal
Standard and Informal Standard) and one for Arabic (Modern Standard [MSA] and Egyptian
Colloquial).
The features selected are those identified as diagnostic for diglossia. They are categorized
under four sections:
Phonology/Morphophonology; Morphology; Syntax and Semantics; Lexis. The system of
scoring works as follows:
One point is awarded to phonological features distinguishing H and L, and one to cognate
lexical units (with considerable difference of articulation between H and L, yet transparently
cognate).
Two points are awarded for (a) morpho-phonological alternations characterizing H and L;
(b) Non-cognate lexical units exclusively distributed between H and L that are
etymologically different (e.g. Persian sar – kalle ‘head’).
Three points are awarded for (a) morphological differences (grammatical features of H
missing in L); (b) lexical items that are grammatical function-words or parts of a series
(numerals, interrogative particles, etc.) or anyhow more frequent in everyday conversation (such
as basic verbs and adverbs).
Four points are awarded to syntactic structures differing in kind as between H and L, or
absent in one register (such as the addition of the progressive construction with dâštan to Persian
L), and to distinctive semantic features.
On the basis of this quantification, Arabic would appear to be about three and a half times
as diglottic as Persian. According to Perry at the end of his experiment the real question to be
answered is not “How diglossic is Persian?” but “How did Persian avoid diglossia?”
Here are a few examples as a learner of Persian:
 Verb inflections like -i, -id, -and in e.g. ‫( دیدی‬didi - you saw), ‫( نوشتید‬nevashtid -
you pl. wrote), ‫( خریدند‬khareedand - they bought) change a little bit in spoken
language. -id becomes -in, -and becomes -an.
  Sounds of plural markers like ‘ha, an*’ become ‘aa, un’ in colloquial version. This
change of ‘a’ to ‘u’ happens before nasal sound even in words like (**tamaam - all
becomes informally as ‘tamun’);
 The famous ‘agar, digar’ becoming ‘age, dege’,
 Pronunciation different from how it is written in words like ‫( خواهر‬khvahar-
sister) ‫( خواندن‬khvandan -read).
Diglossia in Persian has certain basic rules. Some of these rules are observed by almost all
speakers, while others are used in different levels, depending on who the speaker is. First,
consider:

/ān/ > /un/

/ām/ > /um/

As a general feature in Persian, also shared by many other Iranian dialects, in most cases
an /ā/ followed by the alveolar nasal /n/ becomes a long /u/ ([ān] > [un]):

‫خانه‬ ‫خونه‬
house, home
xāne xune

‫تهران‬ ‫تهرون‬
Tehran
tehrān te:run

In a limited number of words /ā/ before the bilabial nasal /m/ also becomes /u/, such as:

‫حّمام‬ ‫حّموم‬
bath
hammām hamum

Real language knowledge shows a constant flux throughout the history of Persian between
the spoken and literary forms time. Many elements of Persian language usage fit the diglossia
pattern. “However, by simply dropping Persian into the diglossia basket we would distract
attention from a number of other significant elements that distinguish it from that pattern”.
In his provisional classification, Ferguson had included – as mentioned above – New
Persian, together with Italian and Bengali, among the standard-with-dialects, and in this
collocation Persian remained in the subsequent literature.
 Despite the differences between formal and informal Persian, a learner would not find
them to be completely different. These differences mainly include the choice of some colloquial
words, personal endings in verb conjugations, some vowel differences, contraction of some
stems, omission of prepositions with intransitive verbs in spoken form, verb need not always be
at the end of a sentence in spoken language etc. However, these differences are not too much and
typically a learner can manage these divergences without great difficulty.
 6. In sociolinguistics, social structure is claimed to influence or determine linguistic
Structure and/or behavior. In opposition to this view, it is also claimed that
linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social
structure (Whorf, Bernstein, etc.). Discuss the cons and pros of these two assertions.

Taking advantage of newly available, large-scale, cross-linguistic data and new statistical
techniques, recent studies look at the relationship between language structure and social
structure. On one hand, approaching language as a social activity enables us to focus on
uncover the specific patterns or social of conversation and discourse. For example, one might
describe the opening and closing rules for a conversation, how to take conversational turns,
or how to tell a story or joke. To examine how people, manage their language in relation to
their cultural backgrounds and their goals of interaction is another area to study.
Sociolinguists might investigate questions such as the difference between mixed-gender
conversations and single-gender conversations, the manifestation of differential power
relations manifest in language forms, how caregivers let children know the ways in which
language should be used, or language change occurrence and spread in communities. To
answer the questions in relation to language as social activity, sociolinguists often make use
of ethnographic methods, i.e. they attempt to gain an understanding of the values and
viewpoints of a community so as to explain the behaviors and attitudes of its members.
On the other hand, taking the view that linguistic structure and/or behavior may either
influence or determine social structure, the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
discusses the decisive effect of language on thought. In other words, all languages determine all
the thoughts, and different people who speak different languages have their own different
thoughts or thinking patterns. As a matter of fact, in the light of Marxism, the decisive factor of
the social existence determines people’s consciousness. In the class society, the economic
position in the society classifies people, and then forms the different world view. People
speaking the same language may have different world views; however, they may have similar
political, religious and philosophical views. Therefore, we can’t truly say that language
determines our thought. In other words, the strong version of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or better
known as Linguistic determinism has long remained a highly debatable point.
 The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits language determines the way we
think, however, it cannot hold water, yet the weak version does have advantages. Language does
exert great influence on our thinking and culture. A language helps to reinforce certain ideas and
beliefs, making them salient and pushing them into the foreground of attention, and it facilitates
us to express our emotions. Cultural differences in the semantic associations evoked by
seemingly common concepts supported the weak version. The way a specific language encodes
experience semantically makes aspects of that experience not exclusively accessible, but just
more salient for the users of that language. In short, the theory of linguistic relativity does not
claim that linguistic structure constrains what people can think or perceive, only that it tends to
influence what they routinely do think, which makes us realize that language reflects cultural
preoccupations and that how important context is in complementing the meanings encoded in the
language．
Three main arguments against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have challenged the validity of
this hypothesis:
1. The grammatical structure, since the syntactic system of a language and the perceptual
system of the speakers of that language do not have the kind of interdependent
relationship that the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis claimed to have. Many grammatical
features of a language are purely superficial aspects of linguistic structure.
2. The second IS the translation, as there is no real translation and it is not possible to learn
the language of a different culture unless the learner abandons the interference L1and
acquires the target language according to the strong version of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
Actually, successful translation can be made between languages.
3. The last one goes to the process of second language acquisition. Accordingly, languages
have different conceptual systems; if so, then someone who speaks one language will be
unable to learn another language because of the lacks of right conceptual system.
However, since people can learn radically different languages, those languages couldn't
have different conceptual systems.
Thus, the above-mentioned three arguments against this hypothesis manifest that there are
many deficiencies or doubts under this hypothesis which need us to do further study and
verification. There is no unanimous conclusion about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. However, in
general, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has strong as well as weak points. It is quite plausible that
language affects the way of thinking and the culture, but the hypothesis exaggerates the decisive
role of language and ignores the social and culture language factors.
To sum up, despite its disadvantages, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does have great
significance. It has raised considerable discussion and experimentation on the relationship
between language and culture, and their pioneering work in these relatively uncharted areas of
linguistics has helped to shape the course of future research. In addition, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
pave the way for many researches to prove the close relationship between language and culture
and the way people perceive. It has also a great influence on foreign language teaching.
 7. Death and dying is still a heavily tabooed area in human life. Show that this is the
case by finding out what words are avoided? What euphemisms do you find? Good
sources of data are obituary notices and almost anything that comes from the
various people whose occupation is to arrange for the disposal of the dead.
Almost in all societies, human beings have always had difficulty dealing with death, and one of
the best ways of putting it aside is to avoid mentioning it, or to mention it by using indirect,
oblique terms known as euphemisms. Death euphemisms seem to be at the crossroads of
language and society. When describing the dead, the modern mind can abstract death, through
the use of metaphor and euphemism. In everyday conversations the deceased tendency towards
pass or fade away, embark on a desired trip to meet their eternal reward or loved ones ("Grandpa
is back with Grandma"), or merely fall asleep ("She earned her rest").
Humans are symbolic creatures, perceiving and experiencing their social worlds largely
through their symbols, many of which are figurative and metaphoric. Instead of understanding
metaphors as embellishments of facts, they are better conceived as ways in which these facts are
experienced, filtering and shaping apprehensions of social reality and understandings of things
about which they are unfamiliar—like death.
Various social institutions directly involved with death have offered distinctive metaphors
and euphemisms death denial. The more powerful the institution, the more likely its metaphors
are used in everyday parlance and produce common world-views. Over the twentieth century,
these have included the military, medical, and political orders— the social institutions primarily
responsible for death control. Having analyzed the lexical material, we can argue that
commonest English metaphors of death include the following:
DEATH AS A JOURNEY – death is understood in terms of a journey: a departure from
this world (the dying process as the act of leaving) and a spiritual destination (the encounter God
in Heaven, eternal stay in a better place). This metaphor is deeply rooted in ancient mythologies
and religions and can be exemplified by the verbs ‘depart’ (and its collocations: ‘depart this life’,
‘depart out of this world’), ‘pass’ (and phrasal verbs like ‘pass away/over/out/on’) ‘pass off the
earth’, ‘pass into the next world), ‘go’ used to describe the actual process of dying: ‘one is going’
and its effect ‘one is gone’, or with a prepositional phrase denoting destination: ‘go to Heaven,’
‘go to a better place’, ‘go to one’s rest’, ‘go to one’s reward’, ‘go West’ (in many mythologies
souls of the dead were supposed to go westwards), biblical ‘go the way of all flesh’, ‘go to the
happy hunting ground’ (supposedly borrowed from Native American mythology), ‘go up the
gate’ (i.e. the gate of a cemetery) and ‘go up the chimney’ (used in Nazi death camps); other
rarer verbs include ‘come’ (in expressions: ‘come to one’s resting place’ and ‘come to the end of
the road’), and ‘enter’ (in ‘enter the next world’). On their way there they may ‘cross over the
river Jordan/Styx’. Since the dead, euphemistically referred to as ‘deceased’ (from Latin
decedere ‘go away, depart’ – its participle decessus was used in Latin as a euphemism for mors)
or ‘departed’ (from Old French departir ‘divide’, ‘depart’), go away from this world,
Hence the euphemisms used in inscriptions to be found on tomb stones: ‘here sleeps…,’
‘here rests….,’ ‘… is asleep in Jesus,’ ‘rest in peace’ (and its Latin equivalent, requiescere in
pace, abbreviated to R.I.P.). The dead are ‘put/laid to rest’; they ‘sleep peacefully,’ or ‘repose in
God’ in a ‘resting place.’ That metaphor was commonly employed by Victorian obituarists: ‘rest
in Him’ (i.e. God), ‘eternal rest,’ ‘fall asleep in Christ,’ ‘rest from the labors of a well spent life’
and ‘rest on the merits of one’s Saviour’.
DEATH AS A REWARD/DEATH AS BEGINNING/DEATH AS NEW LIFE– this
metaphor is strictly connected with religious beliefs: death is perceived as a reward after having
led a life full of virtues. It may overlap with the metaphor of DEATH AS A REST and likewise
was popular with the Victorians, as Crespo Fernandez argues, citing such circumlocutions from
Victorian obituaries: ‘enjoyment of the fruits of a well spent life,’ ‘enjoyment of that peace and
bliss that await the virtuous and the good’ or ‘blissful reward in the world of unending glory’36.
The dead are ‘in Heaven,’ ‘with the Lord/God’ ‘in Abraham’s bosom’37, ‘in the arms of Jesus/
the Lord/one’s Maker’; similarly, they ‘meet the Maker/Prophet,’ or are ‘promoted to Glory’ (the
term used by the Salvation Army). Such metaphors are used especially by members of various
denominations: they have confidence that death is not the end, hence ‘afterlife’ or ‘eternal
life/glory’. According to a popular belief (and what children are often told), the dead are alive in
heaven with angels, their predecessors (‘gathered to one’s fathers’) or ‘join the immortals.’ Or,
as a Jewish mourning prayer says, ‘their names are inscribed in the Book of Life’.
DEATH AS THE END – death is viewed as the ultimate end of the process of life; thus
there are a number of expressions that include the word ‘last’: ‘last call,’ ‘last end,’ ‘last
voyage/journey,’ ‘last resting place,’ ‘last debt’ (and a related phrase; the dead ‘pay the debt of
nature’). In a similar manner, soldier’s death is referred to with the following expressions: ‘make
the ultimate sacrifice,’ ‘fire his last shot’ and ‘be
present at/answer the last roll call/muster’. Obituarists frequently refer to the favorite activities of
the dead, stating that it was the last time they did it, thus a cricketer “pulled up the stumps for the
last time”, and a gambler “finally cashed in his chips”.
Among those whose job it is to deal with the dead, death professionals as scholar Michael
Lesy calls them, metaphors arising from their humor produce the death desensitization required
for them to cope with society's "dirty work." Among themselves, funeral directors, for instance,
refer to embalming as "pickling" or "curing the ham," cremation as "shake and bake," and coffins
as "tin cans." When dealing with the public, the "patient" (not the corpse) is "interred" (not
buried) within a "casket" (not coffin) beneath a "monument" (not tombstone).
In case of the word undertake, it was replaced by the euphemism mortician, replaced by
another euphemism: funeral director. Interestingly, the word undertaker was originally a
euphemism, as mentioned by Allan & Burridge (22):
English undertaker once meant “odd-job man” (someone who undertakes to do things),
which was used as a euphemism for the person taking care of funerals; like most ambiguous
taboo terms, the meaning of undertaker narrowed to the taboo sense alone, and is now replaced
by the euphemism funeral director. What often happens with euphemisms like this is that they
start off with a modifying word, ‘funeral’ in funeral undertaker, then the modifier is dropped as
the phrase ceases to be euphemistic […]. It is conceivable that funeral director will one day be
clipped to mere director, which will then follow undertaker and become a taboo term.
So what do all of these colorful, humorous, consoling, deceptive, demeaning, and frightful
framings of death mean? Are they useful? The metaphors and euphemisms that people apply to
the dying and the dead shape the way the living now sees their connection with the dead. They
can sanitize the profound pollution posed by a decaying corpse and assuage the profound moral
guilt of collective murder during times of war. They can reaffirm the meaningfulness of the
deceased's life ("He lives with us all") or degrade their very existence ("The vermin were
whacked").
Perhaps another way to think about the matter is to ask how many words there are that
solely captures the single fact that this person or creature is no more. "He died" is the simplest
way English speakers can make the point. From there on, everything is an elaboration of a
phenomenon of which none of the living has any direct knowledge. The military borrows from
the medical when it conducts its surgical operations to remove "the cancer"; the medical from the
military in its "wars against enemy diseases." In sum, metaphors and euphemisms for death are
employed as both shields and weapons, to cover the unpleasant or distasteful aspects of
mortality, or to apply the power of death to reinforce the significance of certain events among the
living.
 8. Basil Bernstein has claimed that some children acquire only a rather limited
exposure to language as a result of their upbringing, and are consequently penalized
in school. What kind of evidence would you consider to be relevant to confirming
(or disconfirming) such a claim? Use the situation in Iran as an example.

It is well known that strong links between school and home are important to promote parental
engagement in their children’s learning, and Ofsted currently assess schools work with parents.
If school-home links are to be sustainable and supportive of children’s attainment, they will form
part of a whole school approach to parental engagement. Knowledge and understanding will be
part of a two way process: from school to home and from home to school. Schools will face
outwards to work with parents, and to collaborate with other schools and services. Outcomes and
interventions will be monitored and evaluated and there will be a clear, consistent focus on
raising children’s achievement.
Pupils’ achievement and adjustment are affected by many people, processes and
institutions. Parents, the broader family, peer groups, neighbourhood influences, schools and
other bodies (e.g. churches, clubs) are all implicated in children’s progress towards their self-
fulfillment and citizenship. The children themselves, of course, with their unique abilities,
temperaments and propensities play a central role in forming and reforming their behaviour,
aspirations and achievements.
In fact, academic achievement is considered crucial for students to transfer from one
studying level to another. To experience the real excitement of success, one must experience
bitterness of failure for once, and from our errors we can learn more than learning from our
success, and this does not mean that human deliberately fail to succeed, no one accepts that.
However, we should look at failure positively after going through them, to draw the required
experiences for success to invest failure to succeed and changing it from a painful memory to a
situation providing us with the benefits and experiences throughout our lives. Human beings are
willing to success and achievement in their scientific and practical lives at all levels, but ever-
lasting success cannot be achieved constantly because human rest on trying in their lives and the
consequences of this attempt is failing sometimes. Failure does not mean quitting as long as it
would not be the final goal in a person's life, but it becomes a motivation for success and a ladder
to climb and moving towards the best to achieve the goals and objectives. In fact, failure always
brings frustration and fear because of its relation to punishment from others taking a form of
disrespect, rebuke and either physical or moral like punishment, beatings and neglecting.
Though, the fear of failure, committing mistakes, permanent feeling of guilt and not trying to
succeed are the failure itself.
The problem of low academic achievement of students in academic settings is one of the
most challenging problems that students and teachers face. This problem has many educational,
social, cultural and psychological reasons. However, the students' low academic achievement on
the exam can be defined as: Low or weakness of the student's mark under the normal average in
a study subject level due to a variety of reasons, including student- related reasons, family-
related reasons, social and academic environment. Consequently, despite their abilities that
qualify them to get the best mark, this may lead to frequent repetition of failure.
Many attempts were made to address the problem of low academic achievement and some
factors have been identified in explaining academic achievement. Demographic status,
intelligence, behavioral characteristics and psychological factors, namely, attitudes, self-esteem,
self-efficacy and self-concept are among the numerous variables researched. Furthermore,
family-related reasons including limited exposure to language as a result of their upbringing may
influence their academic achievement which consequently results into getting penalized in
school.
Child’s characteristics, peer choices (abilities/temperament), peer groups; school heredity,
parental effects involvement (domestic), neighbourhood effects; school family and quality
parental characteristics; community choices; community characteristics and family support
services are some forces shaping educational outcomes (achievement and adjustment) (Adapted
from Nechyba et al, 1999)
No one born speaking, but we can learn speaking. A child of a one and a half has grasped
the essence of language, its symbolic function. He/ she can understand his/her caretakers as well
as his/her intentional, mental agents. Hence, no child has a clean slate of second language with.
It’s already been written on. By the time children come into classrooms, they have concepts and
words for whole arenas of experience: food, clothing, family and playmates, school and holidays,
plants and animals, television, hobbies and pastimes, and, last but not least, number as some part
of the common ground between pupils and teachers which teachers quite naturally use even in
the case of monolingual explanations.
 The role of the three closely relevant factors, namely input, interaction and output has not
to be ignored in second language (L2) learning. It is now well recognized that input is essential
for language acquisition. Besides input, interaction is to play a crucial role in the process of
learning L2. An exact automatic output is another pedagogical goal in learning L2. So, input,
interaction and output are three essential compositing elements in L2 acquisition. But for years
there have been controversies about their role.
A host of environmental (also called external) factors have been also significantly related
to young foreign language learners’ acquisition, especially in instructional settings (Muñoz
2014). These factors include quantity and quality of the input, amount of practice, level of
motivation, type of instruction, and social variables, such at home literacy environment, parental
education, and parental beliefs about English education (Dixon et al. 2012).
According to the structural hypothesis of language acquisition parent input that is slightly
more complex than the child’s language output in child language (Cross, 1977; Weistuch &
Brown, 1987; Yoder & Warren, 1993). The mean length of utterance (MLU), total number of
words (TNW), and total number of different words (TDW) are among the structural aspects of
parental input may. This model predicts significant positive correlations between ‘structural
measures’ of parental input (amount, rate of speech, syntactic complexity, and semantic
complexity) and child language learning.
Unsurprisingly, some children will experience great frustration when communicating with
teachers and students who are unfamiliar with their L1.
In an article found in Reading Today (Dec 2003/Jan2004), the IRA president Lesley
Morrow addressed family literacy. She stated that the success of the school literacy program
often depends on the home literacy environment. She emphasizes that it is crucial for schools and
teachers to involve parents in their children’s literacy within the school. She further stated that to
distribute information about how parents can help and how they can be involved is of
significance. This may partly mean translating information into other languages so that all
multilingual families can participate. Osterling, Violand-Sanchez, and von Vacano (1999)
pointed out that many immigrant families show willingness to participate and become active in
their child’s education, but many times their efforts are not acknowledged or recognized in an
English-only environment.
 Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Ortiz (1986) found that
the parents’ education and how often parents read themselves have important connections with
Hispanic students and African American children’s achievement. Hammer et al. (2003) also
emphasize the role of parents as children’s first teachers.
Simply ignoring the home language is one thing; it is another thing to outlaw it, all in the
best interests of the children, of course. Some schools elaborate signals and penalty systems to
ensure the students do not use their L1, practices which are justified with the claim that use of
the L1 will impede progress in the acquisition of English. An EFL teacher, quoted in Auerbach
(1993, p. 10), praises the virtues of fining students for using their L1. She humorously tells her
students, “This is an English-only classroom. If you speak Spanish or Cantonese or Mandarin or
Vietnamese or Russian or Farsi, you pay me 25 cents. I can be rich.” It is assumed to be self-
evident that English and English only should be used in the ESL classroom.
Overall, all children bring a range of home literacy experiences and English literacy
abilities to the classroom, regardless of ethnicity. Instead of judging the home literacy
experiences, Hammer et al. (2003) suggest that teachers need to enhance and build on their
students’ previous literacy experiences. They further encourage teachers to learn about students’
cultures and linguistic backgrounds, making their heritage an asset.
In another study, Hammer, et al. (2003) examined the relationship between bilingual
preschoolers’ early literacy outcomes and their home literacy experiences. The examined 43
Puerto Rican mother-child pairs who were all recruited from Head Start programs in
Pennsylvania. The pairs were divided into two groups: group One consisted of those children
who learned English and Spanish simultaneously from birth (28 of the 43) and group Two
consisted of those children who learned Spanish from birth and then English from Head Start (15
of the 43).
Taking all these into account, Basil Bernstein’s claim that the children who acquire only a
rather limited exposure to language as a result of their upbringing, are consequently penalized in
school can be confirmed.
 9. People seem to be reluctant to leave messages on answering machines. Can you
think of why this should be so? What kinds of instructions to potential answerers
seem to help?

Face-to-face interactions, with direct verbal and nonverbal exchanges, are often what we
think of when we hear the concept of communication. However, communication can also be
“mediated” and accommodation tendencies are no less salient. This is illustrated by Bell’s (1984)
study of New Zealand broadcasters who read the news on a number of different stations. He
found that these newscasters read the same material but radically accommodated their
pronunciations to the assumed socioeconomic status of their listeners. These days, progress in
technology keeps on inventing new communication media (e.g., the Internet and
teleconferencing). Compared to face-to-face interactions, these media offer interesting features
for communication studies. They can be audio or visual, oral or written. Moreover and
particularly interesting for CAT, these media offer communicative situations where the addressee
is unknown (press, radio, television, and, more recently, Web sites and chat groups), situations
where context is reduced to its minimum, and situations where the exchange is non-simultaneous
or even absent (for accommodation in the mass media, see Bell, 1991).
For example, telephone-answering machines have become an everyday means of
communication for most of us. This useful device is also very interesting for communication
research. It allows us to record participants’ reactions to messages manipulated by the researcher,
and this in what is perceived by the participants as a natural setting. Messages left on
answerphones or telephone answering machines (TAMMs) are fascinating linguistic data
because they constitute a distinct form of discourse from any other type. Taking into account the
receivers' and the callers' messages, TAMMs can then be viewed as a kind of pseudo-dialogue.
The subject of answering the telephone, as telephone technology changes with the addition
of screening systems and answering devices make it interesting to see how calls are managed to
reflect these new ways of answering the telephone.
Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) offers a wide-ranging framework
directing towards predicting and explaining many of the adjustments individuals make to create,
maintain, or decrease social distance in interaction. It examines the different ways in which
individuals accommodate communication, our motivations for doing so, and the outcomes. CAT
addresses interpersonal communication issues, and also associates it with the larger context of
the intergroup stakes of an encounter, i.e., sometimes our communications are the result of our
personal identities (Janet or Richard)—and sometimes within the very same interaction—our
words, nonverbal, and demeanor are fueled, instead and almost entirely, by our social identities
as members of groups. CAT has been expanded into an “interdisciplinary model of relational and
identity processes in communicative interaction” (N. Coupland & Jaworski, 1997, pp. 241–242).
Language remains a central focus of the CAT; however, CAT concerns other communicative
symbols that people use to signal their identities (e.g., dress and hair styles, cosmetics, and eating
patterns). The extensive amount of CAT research and theorizing can be somewhat
overwhelming, therefore, predictive models have been developed in an attempt to better organize
and summarize thinking on these matters. Moreover, recent theoretically driven reviews of
research, a more textually flowing non-propositional fashion, have emerged. CAT has been
expanded into an “interdisciplinary model of relational and identity processes in communicative
interaction” (N. Coupland & Jaworski, 1997, pp. 241–242
Basic Principles of CAT are:
• Communication is not only affected by features of the immediate situation and
participants’ initial orientations to it, but also by the socio-historical context in which the
interaction is embedded.
• Communication is a matter of merely and only exchanging information about facts, ideas,
and emotions (often called referential communications), and salient social category memberships
are often negotiated during an interaction through the accommodation process.
• Interactants have expectations with regard to optimal levels of accommodation based on
stereotypes about out group members as well as on the prevailing social and situational norms.
Calibrating the amount of non-, under-, and over accommodating one receives can be an
important ingredient in continuing or withdrawing from an interaction;
• Interactants use specific communication strategies (particularly, convergence and
divergence) to signal their attitudes towards each other and their respective social groups. In this
way, social interaction is a subtle balance between social inclusiveness needs on the one hand,
and for differentiation on the other. This principle was the original cornerstone of CAT and
spawned many of the empirical studies flowing from it.
 CAT suggests that individuals use communication, partly, to indicate their attitudes toward
each other and, as such, is a barometer of the level of social distance between them. This
constant movement toward and away from others, by changing one’s communicative behavior, is
called accommodation.
For now, we’ll present the basic reasons of people’s unwillingness to leave messages on
answering machines. These include:
When calling someone, you are choosing the time and topic and are exercising some
degree of power. When you return someone’s call you are choosing the time if not the topic but
you are not unprepared. If you do not return the call you have exercised some power of your
own, little though that may be (Hopper, 1992).
The main difference between conventional telephone communication and answering
machine communication is the absence of one party to the telephone call—the answerer. The
latter case may cause to interrupt the machine-based communication at any point prior to its
termination.
Answering machine communication shows a form of communication in which available
channels are reduced to a minimum. Everyday telephone conversation is constrained by the
absence of visual clues available in face-to-face interaction. Answering machine talk has this
restriction, and is further restricted by the impossibility of verbal feedback during talk. This
restriction of the communicative channel creates reluctance for participants. In addition, face-to-
face communication has to resolve potential communicative difficulties resulting from the
absence of one of the participants.
The other reason is different distribution of contribution types between answering
machines and everyday telephone calls. In everyday telephone conversations in English, hello is
a more frequent answer move than self-identification, and self-identification is more typical of
institutional contexts than domestic contexts (Godard, 1977; Hopper & Doany, 1989; Schegloff,
1986). Greeting moves such as hello are more common as answers in the summons-answer
exchange of answering machine calls than in everyday telephone interactions and are found only
in conjunction with self-identifications. Answering machine calls commonly begin with a self-
identification whether the call is domestic (D) or institutional (I). The unequivocal statement of
identity needed early in a contribution where the caller is not able to check the machine identity
if he or she is uncertain makes him/her unwilling. It is noteworthy that identifications are
typically reciprocal in telephone openings (Schegloff, 1986), but that in answering machine
conversations the completion of these pairs depends on the completion of the entire machine
contribution.
Answering machines are used for communications when direct communication with the
answerer is not possible. In telephone interaction, the presence of the answerer is preferred and
absence dispreferred. It appears that an answering machine is not a direct substitute for real
interaction and that the use of an answering machine is accountable, especially in domestic
contexts. The turn system of answering machine calls does not allow the caller to speak until the
answerer has completed contribution, and the caller can hang up at any moment during this
contribution. Therefore, the caller is not obligated to leave a message. Moreover, the caller's
action is not called into account in answering machine communication where the caller has the
option of hanging up without identifying him/herself.
Many transition phases have no overt linguistic cues and may be completed simply by the
signaling noise produced by the answering machine itself. This sound signals unambiguously
that the machine contribution is completed. The difference in contributions left for the same
person on different answering machines is another reason. The caller's contribution is less highly
routinized than the machine contribution, and the content is much more variable than the
machine contribution. This increased diversity is to be expected in that callers' contributions are
person and message specific. They need only meet he communicative demands of one message
and a known relationship between participants. However, machine contributions must be
generalizable enough to meet potential communicative situations and be applicable to a variety
of relationships ranging from intimates to complete strangers. Nonetheless, callers' contributions
still have a readily identifiable structure which contains a limited number of moves that occur in
a predictable sequence. The obligatory moves of the archetype appear to be the identification and
a message.
Taking all these into account, people seem to be reluctant to leave messages on answering
machines