Article useful for my investigation and my CLA

http://www.webmd.com/balance/express-yourself-13/talking-around-the-kids

The link above leads to a website giving tips on how adults should behave around their children and what not to do around them. This is important in my investigation because these notes will be used as a template on how well the adults follow these tips without even knowing them. This will be a test on their common sense, and my data will also reflect how the children react to the adults behaviour through their language. My hypothesis is that if the adults generally follow these tips, the child language will be a lot friendlier and the children will appear happier in conversation with lots more to say. If my adults use taboo language or have arguments (for example) the children will be a lot less open in conversation and will appear even more timid than usual, and this will also emphasise the adults power.

My English Language Investigation

My investigation identifies the difference between the way adults speak to children as opposed to how they speak to each other. This investigation comes under the title of 'power', because it identifies how adults use language to gain power or respect from other adults and how they have power over children by encouraging them to answer questions and learn new things. My investigation focuses on the linguistics of speech and how they differ depending on relationships between people and who holds more power or intelligence. My specific investigation will be based on my mother and my cousin as the adults, and my twin two-year old cousins along with my 4 year old cousin as the children.

Power theorists I will investigate include;

- Erving Goffman
- David Fairclough

My Hypothesis:
I predict that at the end of my investigation i will have found that adults use more colloquial language toward each other, and talk slower towards children with more broken up words and lots of interrogatives, rather than imperatives which they might use more with other adults. I would expect a more complex lexis with other adults, with longer sentences. The adult to child conversations should consist of a lot of simple sentences.