Elisabeth Oseanita Pukan 12/339427/PSA/7294

American Studies Theory of Literature

SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND EDUCATION

SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION

The development of languages The most remarkable of human language is: The range of purposes it serves The variety of different things that people make language do for them.

Functions: casual interaction, activities of production and distribution (e.g. building and marketing), functions such as those of religion, literature, law and government. Developed and Undeveloped language Developed language: is used freely in all the functions that language serves in society. It has a higher status in society. Undeveloped language: serves only some of these functions and is judged to have a lower standing in society, even by those who speak it as mother tongue. A Register A register is a set of meanings that is appropriate to a particular function of language, together with the words and structures which express these meanings. Developing of language is achieved by developing of new registers.

Every language embodies some mathematical meanings in its semantic structure ways of counting, measuring, classifying, and so on. They will serve as a point of departure for the initial learning of mathematical concepts, especially if the teaching is made relevant to the background of the learner. It is the meanings which constitutes a register rather than the words and structures. Development of a register of Mathematics i. ii. Reinterpreting existing words. (e.g. set, point, field, row, column, weight) Creating new words out of native word stock. (e.g. shortfall, feedback, output) iii. Borrowing words from another language.(e.g. degree, series, exceed, subtract, multiply, invert) iv. Calquing: creating new words in imitation of another language. Example: it is used in Old English to render Christian terms from Latin (almighty calgued on omnipotens (omni: all, potens: mighty almighty almighty) v. vi. Inventing totally new words. This hardly ever happened. E.g.: gas. Creating locutions (e.g.: square on the hypotenuse, lowest common multiple) vii. Creating new words out of non-native word stock. (e.g.: parabola, denominator, binominal, coefficient made up in English, not borrowed from Greek and Latin) Every language creates new things-names because societies are not static; they change in material and social conditions.

Differences and distances between languages Languages differ in the meanings they emphasize. All languages have the same potential for development as vehicles for mathematics, science and technology, and for anything else.

Examples of differences of meaning between languages: color and kinship. There are innumerable ways of splitting up the color spectrum. e.g.: blue covering the whole range of sky blue, peacock blue, mid-night blue, royal blue, indigo, etc. Speaker of other language might have different name for that blue, (they might judge peacock blue as green) but it does not mean that thy have different color vision. Language Distance Language distance (: the notion of how far apart any pair of languages is said to be) depends partly on linguistics consideration (language as system) and partly on sociolinguistic. Linguistically, the distance is harder to measure (intuitive although universally recognized). The general principle for this is that languages which belong to the same cultural region tend to be alike in the meaning. Uniqueness of Mother Tongue Mother tongue is very hard to be replaced by other language. The following are very important in educational context. Saying the same thing in different ways. Hesitating, and saying nothing very much. Predicting what the other person is going to say. Adding new verbal skills while talking and listening.

Relation between mathematics and natural language A child begins forming mathematical concepts very early in life. A child has a natural tendency to organize his environment in systematic ways (essentially mathematical operation) and to make use of language for doing so. Robert Morris (1975) said that the language of modern mathematics is borrowed to a very large extent from the commonplace language of ordinary folk. In English, modern mathematics sometimes redefined simple words rather than coining new words. E.g. the word set has a precise definition in mathematics. Language is natural human creation. Unlike mathematics, it is not clearcut or precise. It is natural human creation and is inherently messy. The consequence of

this a term for a mathematical concept may also exist as an element in natural language carrying the whole semantic load with it. Observing interpreting, experience is interpreted through the patterns of knowledge and the value of systems that are embodied in culture and in languages.

LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL MAN 1. Language development in young children The child of nine to eighteen months will have a range of vocal signals that are meaningful and understandable to the people around him. E.g. nananana means give me that! In other words, he will have a range of meanings, which define what he can do in the various spheres of action to which his vocal resources are applied. At a certain point, round about eighteen months old, he will abandon his laborious attempt to work through half of million years of human evolution creating his own language, and shortcircuit the process by going adult and taking over the language he hears around him. The impetus for this is still functional one. As his language is strengthened and increased rapidly as a resource of living and learning, he is equipped to go to school.

2. Language and socialization Every child is brought up in culture, and he has to learn the patterns of that culture in the process of becoming a member of it. The culture is made available to him through language. Language is not the only channel, but the most significant one. Even the most intimate personal relationship of a child with his mother from his early age is mediated through language. Language plays some part in practically all his social learning. In a classroom, language also play important role, since the school is a complex institution and language has many different parts to play in it. A study of the use of language in the classroom may reveal some of the assumption that are made by the teacher about the school as a

social institution assumptions about the nature of educational processes, about teacher-pupil relationship, about values accorded to objects, their scheme of classification, and the like.

3. Neighborhood language profile There is interest in the local varieties of English speech, and numerous accounts of the vocabulary and pronunciation of different dialects have appeared since Elizabethan period. Dialect studies are based on assumptions that there are homogeneous speech communities: the people of one locality all speak alike. The traditional concepts of dialectology do not hold good for large industrial cities. Inhabitants of large cities usually do not speak alike related to urbanizationsthere is geographical variation, but also social class variation. Neighborhood speech patterns in the city are always liable to b complicated by movements of populations, (e.g. arrival of large groups of immigrants). Neighborhood speech has a very powerful influence among children, in their own peer group; it is remarkable that children coming into a neighborhood from outside tend to grow up speaking the local language. The concept of neighborhood language the language of the childrens peer group, in the street, in the park, in the school playground, and it serves for the child as his badge of membership in the culture.

4. Language in the life of the individual It can be learned through language diaries or recording. The concept of field, tenor, and mode provide a valuable framework for giving information about language use. a. Field In differing contexts, we tend to select different words and different grammatical patterns simply because we are expressing different kinds of meanings. b. Tenor

The language we use varies according to the degree of formality, of technicality, and so on. who are the participants in the communication group? What relationship they stand to each other? c. Mode The language we use varies according to the channel or wavelength we have selected (sometimes, commercial, or imperative, sometimes we choose to behave as a teacher, poet, or advertiser) what function language is being made to serve in the context of situation.

Field, tenor, and mode of discourse are the backdrop, the features of the context of situation which determine the kind of language used.

5. Language and situation We use language in context of situation. A pupil in the course of his education is expected to become sensitive to use language in different situation types, and to be able to vary his own linguistic behavior in response to them.

6. Language and institution We can think of any social institution as a communication network. Communication takes part within it. There will be: sharing of experience, expression of social solidarity, decision making and planning, transmission of orders, etc. School, for example is a communication network. There re various forms of communication: command, interview, assembly, notice board, etc.

7. Language attitudes Stereotypes Hypothesis in The linguistics sciences and language teachings suggest that there is a fact that teachers often base their initial judgment of a child, and their expectations of his performance, very largely upon his accent. A speaker who is made ashamed of his own language habits suffers a basic injury as human being. Accent and dialect can be the subject of rational and tolerant

discussion, instead of being used as a means of typecasting human beings into readymade categories and labeling them with badges of inferiority and shame.