SAGE Journal Articles
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Article 1: Liszkowski, U., Schaefer M., Carpenter, M., & Tomasella, M. (2009). Prelinguistic infants, but not chimpanzees, communicate about absent entities. Psychological Science, 20, 654-660. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02346.x
- An empirical article reporting that both human children and apes can use pointing gestures to indicate something present in the environment, but only children use points that reveal displacement – referring to an entity that is absent from the immediate environment.
Discussion Questions
- Define displacement. Describe the two conditions that were compared in the experiment, and explain how one of them would reveal displacement and the other would not.
- What were the main results of the experiment? Consulting Figure 2, how was the infants’ and chimpanzees’ communication the same, and how was it different?
- Children were able to use referential points for displaced objects, and they could do this before they were speaking well. What do you think the relationship is between the idea of displacement and language? Does one come before the other, or do they develop together? Explain your reasoning.
Article 2: Ohama, M. L. F., Gotay, C. C., Pagano, I. S., Boles, L., & Craven, D. D. (2000). Evaluations of Hawaii Creole English and Standard English. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 19(3), 357-377. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X00019003005
- An empirical article comparing listeners’ ratings of Hawaii Creole English with those of Standard English for various traits and qualities of the speech.
Discussion Questions
- For which qualities was the Standard English dialect rated higher, and for which was Hawaii Creole English higher? In what ways does one’s own language dialect(s) and ethnicity interact with or contribute to those ratings?
- Think of an example when your language dialect or register could have contributed to you being discriminated against, or seen in a lesser light. Reflect on and evaluate how or why you might speak differently in a future similar situation, or why you might choose to not change your language at all.
- Do you think these results would be the same if the participants had been more mature adults from the same area (ages 40-50)? What if the participants were college students in Ohio?