Speech Development

For this project, I observed a day care class near my home in Denville NJ. For the safety and protection of the children I was asked to not take any pictures of use a recording device I brought with me, but was allowed to spend about an hour observing the children interacting with each other. Their age range was from about a year and 1/2 to three years old. While I was there observing there was no formal structure to the classroom, rather the children were allowed to move about the classroom as they please playing with one another. The room had all the essentials of a daycare room: bright colored drawings hanging from the walls, a multitude of toys from the children (both "boy" and "girl" toys such as a kitchen set and cars) and tables for the children to sit at during the time which they were receiving instructions from the teacher or having snack.
One of the first things that I took note of while the children were playing is that they were all familiar with each others names. I had assumed that at this point, as adults do when they can not remember someone's name they would just start speaking to their friends and wait to get their attention. This was not the case though and the majority of the kids called their friends by their first names. Also, the children were asked to refer to me as "Miss Amber" as they did with their teachers, "Miss Kate" and "Miss Kathy". The children were also very familiar with their surroundings and could point out and identity most of the objects in the room. Some of the new additions to the room such a holiday decorations were less familiar and most of the children were puzzled when asked to identify a menorah, however this could have less to do with language and more to do with their religious (or non) upbringing. One of the largest problems that these children seemed to encounter with their speech is in the use of pronouns. They were able to use "I" and "me" correctly but when using other personal pronouns such as "she" and "he" and even more so "they" "theirs" and "its" they become extremely confused and interchange them often. Another problem that the children encountered was using the use of plurals and past tense of verbs. "I go for a walk with my mom" is what one of the children said and when asked how many pets they own one child said "I have three cat". The lack of the pluralization and inability to form past tense of verbs (even more an irregular verb as seen here-go should have become went instead of go-ed as may have been expected, but NO tense change was attempted). The one area that the children seemed to have the most word relation with is in relation to themselves. They could point out parts of the body and tell you a lot about themselves such as where they live, what color hair they have, if they have brothers or sisters and so on.
It seems that the children observer ed have a very good beginning for their lanauge. There was one child who was extremely quite and hardly spoke with anyone else during my visit. Maybe he was just shy, but at this stage one also starts to wonder if there is a speech problem. However, the children seemed to be following expected speech mistakes and patterns from their age group.

Mt23 ft20
mi7 fi3
mq2 fq5
mc7 fc5
mcm3 fcm5
mhm0 fhm0
mom0 fom2
mt39 ft32

The above listed data sent from my cell phone is based on observations made during a conversation of five men and three woman at a restaurant in New York City. The group was out on a casual evening, and they had all been friends since they went to college a few years earlier together. As the data shows, the men were more dominating in the conversation than the women were. The men took a total of twenty three turns speaking, while the women only took twenty (for a total of 43). However, the women did as more questions then the men did. It's interesting to take into consideration that the questions were being asked of the men were for suggestions on to what kind of food or drink to order, even though no one in the group had been to the restaurant previously. The men only asked two questions during the exchange while the women asked five. Both groups made almost an equal amounts of comments regarding the atmopshere of the place and the quality of the dinner they had; men made seven comments while the women made five. There were no hostile moves made by either party during the discussion, and the only real movement made was by one of the women who used her hands to articulate a certain point on two separate occasions. None of them men did this at all.

Although the women took less turns speaking and making comments than the men did, when they did speak they were often more long winded than the males. At one point, one of the females went through an entire story about the group when they went to school together that last early five minutes. No one interrupted during the story however, so either they had no recollection of the event or were lost in reminiscing.

The topics of the conversations started out about how long it's been since the group had gotten together, and quickly turned to the beautiful and unique restaurant they were in. They also talked about the time that they spent in college together, and one of the males who had recently been married and one of the females had not been at the wedding spoke at length about life after marriage. At one point, the conversation turned to the price of gas and how new steps need to be taken to produce energy. At this time, the women were almost silent and the men completely dominated the conversation.


Part 2: In the classroom

I observed my Sociology class called "Moral Problems" last Thursday to see if men or women dominated the conversation there. The number of men and women in the class is about equal with 14 men and 17 women. It seems here, that the majority of the time men were speaking. They asked the most questions about an upcoming exam and made the most comments about articles that were read for class. Also, there was one male in particular who had a tendency to interrupt, especially when females were speaking and interrupted a total of six times during the class. When questions were posed to the class by the professor, it was the men who were called on far more than the women (the men answered six questions and the females only two), but is that because the professor called on men more, or simply because more men were willing to answer the questions?

In both of these observations, it seems that men more so than women have a tendency to dominate conversations. They are more out going and more likely to interrupt than a female is. When conversation turns to a political nature, women have little to say. Why is that? Is it because they feel they are not as intelligent as the men they are discussing the topic with? Or because they are afraid of coming off as 'too smart' and intimidating the men they were with. In the classroom setting the same thing can be said, men simply talk more than women. It's interesting to consider though because while on campus just as casual observations, it seems that women are speaking more freely than men, yet once placed in a classroom setting this changes.

Test Test

Semiotics: Trojan "Evolve" Ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6krr40mdHM

Let me begin by saying that I was a little unsure of doing my assignment on this ad because of the subject matter, but I've seen the ad quite a few times in the past few days and I could not pass up the opportunity to discuss this ad. This assignment presented the perfect opportunity to do so, so I hope I don't offend anyone.

With that said....

This ad uses everything: visuals, symbols and music to get its message across. The most obvious sign used is the pig, which in this ad is used to represent men. Even being a female, I do not understand how Trojan could think that representing the male species by a pig could help their sales! It iss an interesting concept, but is this really how we want our society to be viewed? The idea of evolution coming about on the heels of a condom company is also an thought provoking idea. It seems as though this ad is using their product as a symbol of prosperity, yet this ad supports old stereotypes of men being pigs.
Women are also shown in a very interesting manner in this ad. Though neither characters have speaking roles, it becomes understood that the song used is representing the male's mind set. The woman however, have no say in the entire commercial. Language is taken away from them in this ad, thus giving them literally and figuratively no voice.
While the ending message of this ad "use a condom every time" is extremely important, I think Trojan chose ridiculous signs and symbols to represent what was a well meant idea.