I write too slowly :/ annoying - no conclusion on Q1 and little conclusion on Q4.
I spoke primarily about Ruby's acute Pragmatic awareness for the most part of my analysis which might serve to my detriment come grading time :/. I just need a low B in this exam to get an A overall so I'm hoping I've scraped through haha!
I said that the tag question in 'big girls use glass (.) don't they' could bear significance to Lackoff's (1975) theory that females use 'weak language'; I continued to suggest that Ruby was probably quite confident that 'big girls'
do use glasses, however, her use of the tag question may have been employed to mitigate her responsibility of the authenticity of the declarative in case she was wrong.
I then said that from an alternative perspective, she is forcing her Aunt to agree with her. The tag question can be seen to contradict the expectations made by Deborah Tannen in the Difference model and Ruby is consequently seen to be very aware of how to manipulate her conversational partner's response.
I also spoke about when she changed the topic of conversation. She nodded and laughed for a bit and then went on to change the conversation. This complement of paralinguistic and linguistic features probably suggest she is imitating adults, for whom this approach to topic change is subtle, non-face-threatening and permits the holding of the floor. I then went on to say this supported the Behaviourist theory of language acquisition.
Then went on to talk about her failure to correctly inflect 'glass'; she also resisted her Aunt's recasting support. This opposed the Behaviorist theory and I, at this stage, suggested that imitation was an essential part of pragmatic language development as observed previously, however, when it comes to the learning of other frameworks, this theory fails to justify itself.
I then made a short point on her saying Felma. Her Aunt said Thelma, but it didn't phase Ruby suggesting that Ruby must recognise that Thelma is the appropriate pronunciation but Felma is what she could produce. Linked in Fis phenomenon.
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Is that enough to get a decent grade? I need a B
. I can't write much under pressure and it's really stressful.