“Topic in Languages and Culture” by Steven Brown and Jodi Eisterhold delves how language is detrimental to effective communication. This article pinpoints that language is innate in all human beings regardless of language and dialect that is most prevalent in their geographical region. This also discusses on Chomsky’s Critical Period Hypothesis relating to the extent of language learning in children as well as after puberty period, also including of non-human subjects such as apes, dolphins, to name a few.
Culture had been focused as well which could affect the learning language rate regardless of age and physical location of the subjects. External factors such as cultural influences and the advent of mass media would influence how language of a person and/or a particular area. Both language and culture are inter-related and dependent with one and the other and the usage of language depends entirely on what culture the person has been exposed to. Critique All in all, this article did show some depth on the nature of language and culture and how it affects language development.
This article only focuses on Chomsky’s theory thus focusing on children and not on adult language development as well. There are other theories and disputes as well that should be accounted for and compared with the theory given in the article as a comparison. Child and adult language learning may differ in ways but do have some commonalities in them. There are instances and factors that may hinder language learning that was not pointed out such as psychological and congenital diseases, to name a few.
There are also instances that adult language learning may surpass child language learning as well as keeping in mind the educational system that the subject is in and prevailing social conditions. It gave very good examples of language development with children who were raised in a society, those who were raised in the wild, and even with animals that were taught to learn human language. Yet it does not give an account of failed attempts of teaching languages to subjects – what we’re looking for is a holistic approach an objective article that covers both the pros and cons and as well as methods and approaches used.