The Power of Words Essay -- Psychology Essays

The Power of Words conference and language are not always synonymous. Gesticulations and facial expression displace convey certain messages that often make verbal expression unnecessary. Although I appreciate the endless possibilities that are associated with speaking, our primary means of communication, I soak up discovered that the human being susceptibility for speech might not be as extremely innate as the linguist Noam Chomsky claimed. A a couple of(prenominal) years ago, I had the privilege of encountering a thirty-five year-old woman named Joann at a summer plurality for adults with multiple disabilities. Being extremely autistic, Joann was uneffective to close her mouth, let alone form distinguish commensurate words. Instead of talking, her capitulum method of communication was to make clicks and guttural noises when she was upset or valued aroundthing. Un standardized the case of Genie, who was reared in a small room without human contact, Joann and many other auti stic people are not brocaded in silence and should have theoretically learned to talk (as per Chomskys theory). The camp counselors encouraged Joanns attempts at speech and tried to build her verbal skills, hardly they were never able to progress beyond monosyllabic words. Why wasnt she able to speak and why did they fail?To a certain extent, language is innate, exclusively Daniel Dennett trivialized the depth and complexity of linguistics. He wrote, ...its so effortless...for even slow children to learn to speak. They arent in truth learning at all, any more than birds learn their feathers. Language, and feathers, just create in species... (Dennett 388). This generalization is horribly arrogant and unfair to people like Joann, for whom any form of verbal communication is hardly effortless. I forecast that some form of learn... ...heoretically could be speaking or trying to lot some message when she makes those utterances, as if she had completely bypassed the evolution of cl icks into words. It has been suggested by psychologists that in that respect is a critical period for language acquisition which theorizes that children lose the capacity to readily absorb new languages by the end of their toddler years. The occurrence that children are able to learn new languages so quickly shows that to some extent, language is innate, simply speech is not acquired so easily. Joann will plausibly never be able to speak like other people, but there exists the possibility of her understanding much more than Dennett would give her source for. Works CitedDennett, Daniel C. Darwins Dangerous Idea. Simon and Schuster New York, 1995.Pennisi, Elizabeth. The First Language? Science 27 Feb. 2004 1319-1320.