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.
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