Zachy Transcripts

Zachy Transcripts Analysis 

In this transcript, often, Zachy's speech does seem less fluent. A contextual reason for this could be that his mother is asking him questions about the robot he is building. This could have an impact on his speech because she is putting him on the spot, meaning he has to think of a response quickly. At times, it is evident that Zachy seems more fluent in his speech. For example, 'Yeah I need one more bit of tape' after his mother says 'is that what you're saying?' Vygotsky's theory is relevant here as Zachy's mother is providing the 'scaffolding' support for him to become more fluent in his speech and speak with more sophisticated grammar.

In the first conversation, Zachy's mother is setting the agenda by asking a lot of interrogatives in order to find out more about the robot. Zachy then responds with declaratives, mostly followed by his mother saying 'because...' to encourage him to expand on his speech. Latched talk is present here, Zachy and his mother are frequently uttering preferred responses, showing adjacency pairs in the transcript. In the second conversation of the transcript, it is evident that Zachy is setting the agenda of conversation. When his mother suggests they eat breakfast while waiting for the robot to 'heal', Zachy says 'it's gonna be a long time though (.) but we're not gonna have breakfast still.' Zachy is declaring what the agenda is, taking control of the situation.

By comparing the two transcripts which were set 13 months apart, we can see by analysing the speech that Zachy has developed in a number of ways. Zachy's language is a lot more sophisticated by the time he is aged 3 years and 5 months. His grammar structure is more mature, for example, he says 'it's gonna be a long time though (.) but we're not gonna have breakfast still.' He is beginning to grasp the concept of connectives and what words are suitable to go where. He has more of a pragmatic understanding of how sentences should be formed. In the first transcript Zachy says 'Look (.)/ blown way' when talking about his book. From this, and the whole transcript, we can tell that zachy does not form long, complex sentences. He is very restricted to his known simple sentence structure. This means he has not yet grasped the concept of connectives and more sophisticated language.  This supports Jerome Bruner's theory of constructionism because by comparing the two transcripts, he has reached the border of the Symbolic stage - information is being stored as language. By the age 2 years and 4 months, he has reached the Iconic and Enactive stages, but not yet the symbolic stage.

The vocabulary Zachy uses in the second transcript is a lot more advanced. When he was aged 2 years and 4 months, Zachy generalised lexis because he had not learnt a lot of terms, so could not use them. When he looked at his mother's bolognaise, he said 'what's this lasagne?' as an overextended term. He was familiar with what lasagne was, and knew that the bolognaise was not lasagne, but wanted to find out the correct term for the food. This implies that he has not yet got a full range of vocabulary. However, in the second transcript, he is using a wider range of lexis. 13 months is a long time for Zachy to learn and understand new terms, for example, 'sellotape', 'robot' and 'glue'. It could be argued he did not know these terms before, and has learnt them through experience. Vygotsky's theory can support the fact that Zachy overextended the term 'lasagne'. He was aware of the fact that the food was not lasagne, but used an interrogative to ask his mother what it actually was. He was using the 'scaffolding' of his mother to cross the 'Zone of Proximal Development' and learn new things.

Various examples of non-standard grammar are used throughout the transcripts by Zachy. For example 'look (.)/ blown away' is used in the first transcript by Zachy. Zachy is using a phrase which is non-standard English, but it still has the effect he desired for the listener. This phrase is an example of Halliday's Regulatory function. He is using the imperative 'look' to make his mother understand what he is talking about. So, even though he is not using standard grammar, he does not need to, because those 3 words were enough to gain a preferred response. Similarly, in transcript 2, Zachy does use a lot of non-standard grammar. For example, 'doo doo doo doo...' at the beginning. This does not make sense unless you understand the context of the speech. Even though Zachy has more of a sophisticated vocabulary, he still uses non-standard forms which could contradict theories such as Bruner and Piaget. This is because the transcripts were written 13 months apart, but in some ways are not that different.

Overall, the data provided is reliable because the transcripts can be supported by a variation of theorists. Their theories are backed up by evidence from the sources, showing that aspects of the transcripts are down to child's language development. A lot of the evidence in the transcripts show that 13 months can cause a lot of development and maturity when it comes to language, such as a more complex grammar structure, vocabulary and pragmatic understanding.