P Ramya¹, K Maruthi Krishna Goud¹*, Suraj Singh² and G. Ramanjulu³

¹Assistant Professor in Speech Pathology at Composite Regional Centre for Skill Development, Rehabilitation and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, India
²Assistant Professor in Special Education at CRC, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, India
³Lecturer in Physiotherapy at CRC, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, India

*Corresponding Author: K Maruthi Krishna Goud, Assistant Professor in Speech Pathology at Composite Regional Centre for Skill Development, Rehabilitation and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Received: March 28, 2022; Published: July 25, 2022

Abstract

Purpose: Lots of efforts have been put to assess language abilities in children especially in the area of pragmatics but limited light has been thrown in clinical contexts to help in identifying, diagnosing and planning intervention strategies. Several studies have been conducted in Indian language based on tests in English language. Telugu is a Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.

In India, there are very few studies which deal with the language abilities of children with different socio-economic status, especially in relation to Telugu language. The results of this study would provide future directions to the assessment and management of children with SES. Hence, there is a need for the current study.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the pragmatics abilities of typically developing children in different socioeconomic status.

Method: All the 90 subjects were administered Pragmatic assessment tool REELS, SES pragmatic assessment tool. This was followed by tasks of rhyme. The examiner conversed naturally on topics like storytelling, family members, friends, daily activities, schools and classroom description, festival and birthday celebrations, play items and activities at school as well as at home, for 30 minutes duration. This whole conversation was video recorded using canon power shot A3000IS 10.0megapixels camera.

Each child conversed for 30 minutes with the examiner which was video-recorded while recording the environment was monitored to maintain less distraction. The intentions of recording were to observe and judge communicative interaction of all the subjects from different socioeconomic status in three groups. As pragmatics consist of the verbal, paralinguistic and non-verbal aspects, it was necessary to observe both verbal and nonverbal behaviour.

Results: The results of this study states that HSES perform better on pragmatic skills compared to MSES and LSES, and the socioeconomic status/ethnicity may show impact on the pragmatic skills of the children. These factors often expose children to different discourse styles and vocabulary in LSES than MSES and HSES (Ogbu, 1981).

Conclusion:

• There exists a significant difference in the verbal aspects of pragmatic skills of HSES compared to MSES and LSES and a slight difference between MSES and LSES, where, HSES performed good followed by MSES and finally LSES.
• Verbal aspects which includes speech acts, turn taking, lexical selection, and stylistic variation lies under many influential factors, which includes environment, exposure to the language, socio economic status, quality of the environment, child’s interaction in the society, and responses from the listener. The current study shows that SES is one of the important factors in developing verbal aspect of pragmatics.
• In paralinguistic aspects, there is a significant difference seem among all the three groups of SES, MSES performed better than the other two groups i.e. HSES and LSES.
• In nonverbal aspects there is a significant difference noticed among the three groups of SES in the age range six-seven years i.e., HSES performed better than MSES and LSES in nonverbal aspects.

Keywords: Children; Pragmatics; REELS

References

1. Adrian Akamajian., et al. “Morphology; The Study of the structure of words .Linguistics an introduction to language and communication”. 5^th MIT press, Cambridge, M.A, U.S.A. (2001): 11-13.
2. Alves T E., et al. “Analysis of the pragmatic abilities profile in normal preschool children”. Revista de Atualização Científica,São Paulo 6 (2004): 253-258.
3. Aukrust VG. “Talk about with young children: pragmatic socialization in two Communities in Norway and the US”. Journal of Child Language, New York 31.1 (2004): 177-201.
4. Barbarin OA., et al. “Ethnic and poverty-status differences in parental practices”.
5. Becker JA. “Pragmatic socialization: Parental input to preschoolers”. Discourse Processes1 (1994): 131-148.
6. Bruner JS. “The social context of language acquisition”. Language and Communication2 (1981): 155-178.
7. Brinton B and Fujiki M. “Language, social skills, and socioemotinal behavior”. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 24 (1993): 194-198.
8. Bates E., et al. “The acquisition of per formatives prior to speech”. In: Bates, E.. Language and context. Nova Iorque: Academic Press (1976): 111-128.
9. Bates E. “Acquisition of pragmatic competence”. Journal of Child Language 1 (1974): 277-281.
10. Bates E. “Language and Context: The Acquisition of Pragmatics”. New York: Academic Press (1976).
11. Bates E. “Language in context”. In T.M. Gallagher, (Ed.), Pragmatic language Clinical practice. San Diego: singular publishing group (1976).
12. Bates E. “Language and context: Studies in the acquisition of pragmatics”. New York: Academic press (1976).
13. Bates E. “Acquisition of pragmatic competence”. Journal of Child Language 1 (1974): 277-281.
14. Bates E. “Commentary: Language and comprehension in ape and Child”. Monographs of Society for Research in Child Development 158 (1993): 222-42.
15. Bloom L and Lahey M. “Language development and language disorders”. NY john Wiley and sons (1978).
16. Craig HK., et al. “Average C-unit lengths in the discourse of African American children from low-income, urban homes”. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41 (1998): 433- 444.
17. Dore J. “A pragmatic description of early language development”. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 3 (1974): 343-350.
18. Fagundes DD., et al. “Task variability effects on the language and test performance of Southern lower socioeconomic class African American and Caucasian five-year-olds”. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 29 (1998): 148-157.
19. Harry B. “Cultural diversity, families, and the special education system”. New York: Teacher’s College Press (1992).
20. Halliday MK.“Learning how to mean”. Londres: Eward Arnold (1975).
21. Hage SRV., et al. “Analysis of pragmatic abilities profile in normal preschool children”. (SP) 14.3 (2002): 409-414.
22. Hage SRV., et al. “Specific language impairment: linguistic and neurobiological aspects”. Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria São Paulo 64.2A (2006): 173-180.
23. Klecan-Aker JS., et al. “The use of a pragmatic protocol with normal preschool children”. Journal of Communication Disorder New York, 21.1 (1988): 85-102.
24. Kloth S., et al. “Communicative styles of mothers interacting with their preschool-age children: A factor analytic study”. Journal of Child Language 25 (1998): 149-168.
25. Ochs E. “Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village”. New York: Cambridge University Press (1988).
26. Ochs E and Schieffelin B. “Language socialization across cultures”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1986).
27. Pellegrini AD., et al. “Children’s conversational Competence with their parents”. Discourse Processes 1 (1987): 93-106.
28. Prutting CA. “Pragmatics as social competence”. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders Rockville 47.2 (1982): 123-134.
29. Roberts JE., et al. “Assessing the communication of African American one year olds using the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scale”. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 6 (1997): 59-65.
30. Roth F and Clark D. “Symbolic play and social participation abilities of 123 language-impaired and normally-developing children”. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 52 (1987): 17-29.
31. Gallagher TM and Prutting CA. “Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention Issues in Language”. San Diego: College-Hill Press.
32. Scheiffelin BB and Ochs E. “Language socialization across cultures”. New York: Cambridge University Press (1986).
33. Shilpashri HN and Shyamala K Chengappa. “Pragmatic skills in typically developing infants with Kannada as their mother tongue”. Journal of all India Institute of Speech and Hearing 27 (2008): 75-84.
34. Snow CE., et al. “Developmental perspectives on politeness: Sources of children’s knowledge”. Journal of Pragmatics 2 (1990): 289-305.
35. Terrell SL and Terrell F. “The importance of psychological and sociocultural factors in providing clinical services to African American children. In A. G. Kamhi, K. E. Pollock, & J. L. Harris (Eds.). Communication development and disorders in African American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes (1996): 55-72.
36. Villiers P. “Assessing pragmatic skills in elicited production”. Seminars in Speech and Language New York 25.1 (2004): 57-71.
37. Washington JA and Craig HK. “Performances of low-income, African American preschoolers on the Peabody Picture vocabulary Test”. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 23 (1992): 329-333.
38. Wallace IF., et al. “Interactions of African American infants and their mothers: Relations with development at 1 year of age”. Journal of Speech, language, and Hearing Research 4 (1998): 900-912.
39. Wetherby AM and Roriguez G P. “Measurement of communicative intentions in normally developing children during structured and unstructured contexts”. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research Rockville 35 (19982): 130-138.
40. Zegiob LB and Forehand R. “Maternal interactive behavior as a function of race, socioeconomic status, and sex of the child”. Child Development2 (1975): 564-568.

Citation

Citation: K Maruthi Krishna Goud.,et al. “Pragmatic Abilities in Children with Different Socioeconomical Status". Acta Scientific Otolaryngology 6.8 (2022): 33-46.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 K Maruthi Krishna Goud.,et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.