Sue, Franki & Josh Transcript Essay Opening

Sue, Josh and Franki Essay [Texts A, B & C]

In this transcript we have the childminder, named Sue, who has just picked up Josh and Franki, the children she looks after, from their nursery school and has taken them to her home. Josh is 4 years and 2 months whereas Franki is 3 years and 4 months, so we can expect to see differences in their language due to them being in different stages of development. We can also establish that the likelihood of these two children being siblings is very low because their ages are too close together, therefore how they communicate with each other will be able to tell us what sort of a relationship they have with each other by looking at the three texts as well as see what relationship they have with their caregiver Sue. Good, you have used the information from the question rather than simply repeating it.

Beginning with lexis and semantics in text A, we can see that Franki has understood politeness when she says “please” as an extension to asking Sue for a drink. Franki has clearly learnt this from her parents through the pragmatic understanding that politeness will likely result in receiving what you desire. This is a clear example of Vygotsky’s theory of socialisation being a significant factor in the language development of children. Sue then responds to Franki’s politeness with “that’s a good girl well done” and this is positive reinforcement for Franki being polite. This is a demonstration of what Skinner said in his theory. Skinner said that positive and negative reinforcement were important factors in the development of children’s language. Another example of Sue providing positive reinforcement can be seen in text C, where she is focusing on Josh’s lunch first because he’ll need to be going to nursery shortly after. Franki responds to the situation with “okay” and Sue says “good girl” back to her in order to positively reinforce her for being understanding. In fact, we see that Sue is always kind to the children and never scolds them; perhaps this is because she is only the childminder and not related to the children so she is always nice to them in order to build a rapport with them. In text A, Josh doesn't use his manners when he speaks to Sue regarding his drink and simply responds with “mm” and “yeah” before Sue corrects him to saying “yes thank you”. Sue doesn't tell Josh off for not using his manners, instead she provides him with what he should say in an attempt to positively reinforce Josh to influence him to try and be polite in future because he appears to have not yet grasped the pragmatic understanding of basic manners. Alternatively, he may have just forgotten to utilise the manners he has learned because he has just come home from nursery school and is tired. Well done. A data-led response to which AO2 is tied and then perceptive AO3 comments. It is a minor point, but the topic sentence for this paragraph would probably be better suited to pragmatics, rather than lexis/semantics.