SOCIAL INTERACTIONISM

What do social interactionists believe and what supports their

claims?
Proponents of the social interactionist approach to language learning
accept Chomsky’s concept of the LAD but insist that the LAD alone is
not enough for a child to develop language: Jerome Bruner suggests
that a child must also have a language acquisition support system
(LASS) in place to make the most of their innate ability to learn. The
LASS consists of an environment the child can interact with to acquire
language and this includes caregivers who scaffold a child’s
development. Caregivers often use child directed speech (CDS),
modifying their language to make it accessible to children and only
gradually using more ‘adult’ forms of language as the child gets more
skilled in communicating. Bruner builds on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky
who insists that child learn by doing: they rely on a more
knowledgeable other (MKO) who guides their learning through a zone
of proximal development (ZPD) – in terms of language, the MKO
recognises what linguistic tasks a child can perform without help and
what they can’t perform alone and provides help in the middle (the
ZPD). For example, a child may use concrete nouns like ‘toy’
accurately, but may struggle to use the plural –s suffix to utter the
plural noun ‘toys’. The MKO may model this in their interactions with
the child until the child understands the rule and begins to use it more
widely. Then the MKO will focus on a more complex linguistic task.
This is also supported by the positive impact that role play, make-
believe and games have on language development – and it
acknowledges the interactional nature of pragmatic development, such
as politeness.
How can their ideas be challenged?
However, social interactionism may be challenged by the fact that there
do exist cultures that don’t promote social interaction – and in those
cultures children are still able to become articulate and linguistically
fluent. Nevertheless, it appears that social interactionism appeals most
strongly to modern linguistics because it puts together some of the key
concepts in behaviourism and nativism without being too extreme in
either direction.