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First Language Acquisition: Revisiting the Social Interactionist Paradigm
Mansoor Fahim and Mohammad Amerian, Iran
Mansoor Fahim is an associate professor of TEFL at Allameh Tabataba’i university, Iran. He has
run Research Methods, Psycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition,
and seminar classes at M.A. level and also, First Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, and
discourse Analysis at Ph.D. level. Fahim has published several articles and books mostly in the
field of TEFL and has translated some books into Persian. E-mail: [email protected]
Mohammad Amerian is a Ph.D. candidate in TEFL at Allameh Tabataba’i university, Iran. He
has taught English in various levels and currently is a lecturer in university. Amerian’s research
interests include Psycholinguistics, Language and Socio-Cultural Studies, Dynamic Curriculum
Development and Content-Based Instruction, Pragmatics, Teacher Education and Critical
Pedagogy. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abastract
Introduction
Background
Behavioristic accounts
Nativist and cognitive statements
Socio-constructivist explanations
Social interactionist paradigm
Vygotskyan ZPD and scaffolding
Bruner’s contributions
Narrative construction of reality
Early language and child talk
Conclusion
References
Abstract
One of the main concerns of language practitioners and developmental psychologists has been
the nature and quality of children’s mother language acquisition (or first language acquisition;
FLA). Furthermore, the developmental stages which children undergo to acquire and absorb their
L1 together with the categorizations included (acquisition of speech sounds, words, syntax and
semantics) have been among the seriously focused-on trends by the scholars in the field.
Skinnerian Behaviorist claims, Chomskyan Nativist propositions and Vygotskyan Social
Constructivist explanations are among the major corresponding assertions. In this paper, the
Social Interactionist paradigm of first language acquisition mainly associated with the
Vygotskyan tradition is the concentration which emphasizes the undisputable role of interaction
with the surrounding environment in children’s linguistic development and progress. The role of
feedback and outside reinforcement in an interpersonal give and take, seeking advantage of
modeling the adult speakers, and assistance and guidance given from the adults are
correspondingly discussed.
Introduction
As one of the main concerns for the language practitioners and interested developmental
psychologists, explaining the what-and-how of children’s language (L1) progression towards a
native version (their mother language) has been vastly debated and variously looked upon. The
problem has its many sides with focusing on the essence, rate and successfulness of acquiring
different linguistic segments such as minute speech sounds, morphemes, word and syntax. Apart
from that, just to mention some of the other sides, semantic and pragmatic explanations for the
act were of serious debate in the discussions and propositions. Moreover, in explaining the
influential elements on children’s first language advancement, some scholars took the
“sociocultural” side saying that interaction plays a key role in developing skills and strategies in
a meditative process (Vygotsky, 1978) and that human competence is both biological and
cultural (Bruner, 1983). These viewpoints are included in the broad “Social Interactionist”
paradigm about language acquisition. The Social Interactionist theory supposes that Children are
social beings who acquire language in service of their needs to communicate. It assumes that
language is acquired from an interaction of a human’s innate biological capabilities to acquire
language with exposure to language in the environment in which the child is developing, with
more emphasis on the latter; the outside experience.
Background
Behavioristic accounts
Naturally grown out of the parallel psychological descriptions, the early depictions of the image
took the Skinnerian Behaviorist shape. For the behaviorists, language is learned via a form of
operant conditioning (i.e. OC: a type of learning in which an individual’s behavior is modified
by its antecedents and consequences). In his Verbal Behavior (1957), B. F. Skinner suggested
that given a certain stimulus, the successful use of a sign such as a word or lexical unit reinforces
its momentary or contextual probability. Since operant conditioning is contingent on
reinforcement by rewards, a child would learn that a specific combination of sounds stands for a
specific thing through repeated successful associations made between the two. A “successful”
use of a sign would be one in which the child is understood (for example, a child saying “up”
when he or she wants to be picked up) and rewarded with the desired response from another
person, thereby reinforcing the child’s understanding of the meaning of that word and making it
more likely that he or she will use that word in a similar situation in future (Skinner, 1957).
Nativist and cognitive statements
Skinner’s behaviouristic ideas were severely attacked by Noam Chomsky in his review article (A
Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, 1959) calling it “largely mythology” and a “serious
delusion”. As a pioneering nativist, Chomsky believed that Skinner failed to account for the
central role of syntactic knowledge in language competence. He also rejected the term “learning”
which Skinner used to claim that children “learn” language through operant conditioning.
Instead, Chomsky argued for a mathematical approach to language acquisition, based on a study
of syntax (Chomsky, 1959).
Nativists such as Noam Chomsky have focused on the hugely complex nature of human
grammars, the finiteness and complexity of the input that children receive, and the relatively
limited cognitive abilities of an infant. From these characteristics, they concluded that the
process of language acquisition in infants must be tightly constrained and guided by the
biologically given characteristics of the human brain. For them, certain aspects of language
acquisition must result from the specific ways in which the human brain is “wired” into the brain
(the “nature” component as opposed to interactionist socio-constructivist paradigms emphasizing
“nurture”).
In addition, cognitively-oriented scholars dealt with the central role of “mind” in children’s
cognitive development. Chiefly, the theory of children’s cognitive development by Piaget and his
constructivist notion of “psychomotor intelligence” (1973) was proposed to take account of each
aspect of cognitive development in children (including their linguistic development). In his
theory (Piaget, 1973; Piaget et al., 1977), Piaget mainly argued that learning is the function of the
environment and that we use our muscles to learn about the world through action-based (sensorimotor) perceptions in a four-stage procedure (a. sensori-motor, b. pre-operational, c. concrete
operational and d. formal operational steps). Actually, it can be said that these claims considering
a part for the environment set the needed framework for more serious inclusions of the “outside”
experience in children’s cognitive development.
Socio-constructivist explanations
Social constructivist views of first language acquisition explain language development with
strong emphases on the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically
knowledgeable adults. The main approach is largely based on the socio-cultural theories of the
Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), though the Psychologist Jerome Bruner (1983) also
made it prominent in the Western world. Below, the main tenets of the socio-constructivist
approach towards human L1 acquisition will be elaborated in more details
Social interactionist paradigm
As mentioned, the early roots of what is named as “Social Constructivist” approach to language
acquisition can be traced in the cognitive approaches to language development like the
developmental cognitive theory of Jean Piaget (1973) and some other information processing or
emergentist trends (such as Brian McWhinney’s competition model, 1989). But the main body of
the paradigm is what constitutes the social interactionist approach or social interaction model of
Lev Vygotsky (socio-cultural theory; SCT).
Unlike other approaches, the socio-constructivist view of human language development
emphasizes the role of feedback and reinforcement in language acquisition. Specifically, it
asserts that much of the child’s linguistic growth stems from modeling of and interaction with
parents and other adults, who very frequently provide instructive correction. Thus, it is somewhat
similar to behaviorist accounts of language, though it differs substantially in that it posits the
existence of a “social-cognitive” model and other mental structures within children (a sharp
contrast to the “black box” approach of the classical behaviorism).
Vygotskyan ZPD and scaffolding
A key idea within the theory of social interactionism is the notion of “zone of proximal
development” (ZPD; Vygotsky, 1978). It is a theoretical construct denoting the set of tasks a
child is capable of performing with guidance, but not alone. As applied to language, it describes
the linguistic tasks (proper syntax, suitable vocabulary usage, etc.) a child cannot carry out on his
own at a given time, but can learn to carry out if assisted by an able adult. In brief, the zone of
proximal development (ZPD) is where learners construct the new language through socially
mediated interaction via the process of “scaffolding” (Vygotsky, 1978).
As a psychologist and social constructivist, Vygotsky laid the foundations for the interactionist
view of language acquisition. According to him, social interaction plays a vital role in the
learning process. He believed that all cultural development in children is visible in two stages.
First, the child observes the interaction between other people and then the behavior develops
inside the child. This means that the child first observes the adults around him communicating
amongst themselves and then later develops the ability himself to communicate (Vygotsky,
1978).
Bruner’s contributions
Gerome Bruner, the former professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, is
considered the other major contributor to the Social Interactionist theory of first language
acquisition. He is famous for his belief in the importance of parental input and scaffolding to
create shared meaning. In fact, like Vygotsky, Bruner emphasized the social nature of learning,
citing that other people should help a child develop skills through the process of scaffolding
(Bruner, 1983).
Bruner argued that a huge amount of the activity of the child is extraordinarily social and
communicative (1983, p. 27) and that the interaction between an adult and an infant, such as
games and non-verbal communication, builds the structure of language long before the child is
able to communicate verbally. Accordingly, he developed a social interactionist theory of
language development. Bruner worked on his Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)
where he postulated that language is acquired through conversation and its various codes (in
antithesis to Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that allows us to learn the rules of
grammar when we are exposed to human speech). LASS was seen as framing our interaction in
mastering the uses of language (p. 120). For Bruner, “it is the interaction between LAD and
LASS that makes it possible for the infant to enter the linguistic community –and, at the same
time, the culture to which the language gives access” (p. 19).
Narrative construction of reality
Btuner’s next relevant phase of career was his developing a “narrative construction of reality”. In
it, he used recent research in anthropology, psychology, philosophy of language, literary theory
and linguistics to formulate the kinds of mental processes involved in our creation of worldversions. In his opinion, there are two distinct “modes” of cognitive functioning (thought): the
“paradigmatic mode” which uses causal explanation and has its most sophisticated realisation in
the sciences, and the “narrative mode” which proceeds by way of storytelling and encompasses
how to endow experience with meaning (Bruner, 1991). In Bruner’s view, narrative construction
of reality has important roles in our linguistic development.
In contrast to the theoretical positions of behaviourism, the social interactionist approaches rest
on the premises of social-cognitive model, emphasizing the child’s construction of a social world
which then serves as the context of language development. Vygotsky (1978) also theorized that a
child learns best when interacting with those around him to solve a problem. At first, the adult
interacting with the child is responsible for leading the child, and eventually, the child becomes
more capable of problem solving on his own. This is true with language, as the adult first talks at
the child and eventually the child learns to respond in turn. The child moves from gurgling,
to baby-talk, to more complete and correct sentences.
The essential component of the Social Interactionist theory is that language acquisition can easily
be realized by emphasizing the role of the environment in child language. Social-interactionists
claim that interaction with the adults plays an important role in children’s language acquisition.
In addition, they criticize the claim made by Noam Chomsky according to which the linguistic
input children are presented with by adults addressing them is full of errors and discontinuities.
Another argument of the nativists on which interactionists provide contrary empirical evidence is
the availability of negative feedback on, and corrections of, children’s errors.
Early language and child talk
From the birth, children are surrounded by others who talk to them or with them. For the Social
Interactionists, this communication plays an important role in how the baby learns to speak his or
her native language. Some scholars argue that “nature” is entirely responsible for how a baby
learns a language, while some others argue that “nurture” is responsible for how a baby picks up
his or her mother tongue. Social interactionists argue that the way a baby learns a language is
both biological and social (i.e. nature AND nurture).
Everyone loves to coo at babies, and this “baby talk” is exposing the child to language, whether
we realize it or not. Interactionists believe that children are born with brains that predispose them
to the ability to pick up languages as well as with a desire to communicate. Some Interactionists
even argue that babies and children cue their parents and other adults into giving them the
linguistic exposure they need to learn a language. The Social Interactionist theory posits that
children can only learn language from someone who wants to communicate with them. They
believe that language is a byproduct of children’s social interactions with the important people in
their lives. As one of the scholars in the realm, Michael Halliday also pointed to the issue in his
1975 paper entitled Learning How to Mean putting it in another way. His account of language
development in children is “social” and “meaning-based”. For him, children construct a system
of meanings to show their own model of social reality; a cognitive process taking place in social
interaction (Cattell, 2007).
According to social interactionists, child talk or baby talk may influence language learning,
perhaps even enables it. Several studies support the claim (Ferguson, 1977; Snow, 1972 or
Fernald, 1993) Infants would rather listen to child-directed speech (CDS) than to adult-directed
speech (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987). Parents make efforts to tailor articulation to young children to
maximize phonemic contrasts and respond to children’s immature pronunciation by repeating
them in the correct form (Bernstein Ratner, 1992). Young children’s vocabulary acquisition
seems inherently tied to external experience Joint attention focus (the time that a mother spends
talking about topics that the child is already focused on) highly correlates with early vocabulary
size. Baby talk may possibly allow children to “bootstrap” their progress in language acquisition
(i.e. starting of the self-sustained process of language development without an external input,
Cattell, 2007).
Conclusion
Social Interactionist theory of human language development argues that the development is both
biological and social, and that language learning is influenced by the desire of children to
communicate with others. The theory adds that children are born with a powerful brain that
matures slowly and predisposes them to acquire new understandings that they are motivated to
share with others.
The main theory associated with Interactionist theory is Lev Vygotsky’s model of collaborative
learning (1978); the idea that conversations with older people can help children both cognitively
and linguistically. The interaction theory of language development is a compromise between the
nativist theory and the behaviorist theory of language development. It recognizes that both
environmental and biological factors are important in language development.
The basic appeal of the Social Interactionist approach is the importance it places on the home
and the cultural environment in early-childhood language acquisition. According to this theory,
language develops in negotiating the environment. Hence, vocabulary is bound by context-or,
alternatively, by the culture within which speech is necessary and understandable. Within this
theory of compromise are theorists who are closer to one end of the extreme than the other.
However, all interactionists believe that language acquisition occurs as a result of the natural
interaction between children and their environment, more specifically, their parents or
caregivers.
In sum, the Interactionist approach to linguistic development suggests that language is acquired
from an interaction of a human’s innate biological capabilities to acquire language with exposure
to language in the environment in which the child is developing. It is a compromise between the
nativist theory and the behaviorist theory of language development (Goldstein & Naglieri, 2011,
pp. 830-831).
References
Bernstein Ratner, N. (1992). Measurable outcomes of instructions to change maternal speech
style to children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 14-20.
Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s Talk: Learning to Use Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bruner, J. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 18, 1, 1-21.
Cattell, R. (2007). Children’s Language: Consensus and Controversy. London: Continuum.
Chomsky, N. A. (1959). A Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language, 35, 1, 26-58.
Fernald, A. & Kuhl, P. (1987). Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech.
Infant Behavior and Development, 10, 279–293.
Goldstein, S. & Naglieri, J. A. (Eds.). (2011). Encyclopedia of Child Behavior and Development.
New York: Springer-Verlag.
Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1973). Memory and intelligence. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Piaget, J., Gruber, H. E. & Voneche, J. J., (Eds.). (1977). The essential Piaget. New York: Basic
Books.
Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal Behavior. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press.
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retrieved from: https://sites.google.com/a/students.colgate.edu/language-acquisitiondevelopment/home/social-interactionist-theory on 2014, 7, 7
retrieved from: http://languagedevelopment.tripod.com/id15.html on 2014, 7, 7
retrieved from: http://www.teachingtimes.com/kb/75/jerome-bruner.htm on 2014, 7, 7
Please check the Methodology & Language for Kindergarten Teachers course at Pilgrims
website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims
website.