Hollingsworth 1

Jada Hollingsworth
Dr. Johnson-Coleman
ENG 410 01
November 28, 2015

Child Directed Speech

If the language used to speak to children in early stages of life is not changed, the English
language as a whole may lose its standard. Children are like parrots: they listen, absorb, and then
imitate. This means that a child is going to learn how to speak based on what they hear. Most
people speak to children in a goo goo gaga fashion not knowing that the child is going to pick
up that language. If the outside influences around the child do not speak in complete sentences or
do not speak Standard English, then neither will the child. Child appropriate language is not what
is contrary to popular belief. The assumption that it is cute when children cannot speak
properly or that you have to dumb down your vocabulary when speaking to children is a
misconception.
Child appropriate language is not what is contrary to popular belief. Baby talk is only baby
talk because it is made to be that way, often referred to as Caretaker Speech, baby talk is the
speech that the child absorbs from their caretaker and therefore uses as their own. (Wikipedia)
Child Directed Speech is the physically exaggerated and tonally high-pitched style of speech
that adults use when talking to babies and young children. The type of speech comes into
existence as a means of getting and keeping the attention of infants and small children, but when

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carried on too long in a child's life can delay the acquisition of more mature speech patterns.
(CDS) According to Vazquez, Language grammar is too complex to be learnt by children only
through experience. (Vazquez) According to All Woman Young children are very expressive,
and in a culture like ours, where broken English is spoken more than Standard English, it is often
left up to parents to ensure that their children can distinguish between both and use the proper
form on the appropriate occasion. (Wilson) A few steps on how to speak to children to ensure
they know how and when to speak properly are: Lead by example, teach your children the
differences between formal and informal languages, ensure proper use of language at home,
monitor the media, tell them the importance of English, and commend them when they speak
well. (Wilson) Baby Talk is not necessary for child language development. Yes, it is important
to talk to children and teach them how to put words together, but it is not essential that that be
through broken English.
Children pay attention to what adults say and how they speak to them. Bjorn Carey, a
Stanford psychologist, found evidence that talking to your children sharpens their language
processing skills and can predict future success. "What's most exciting is that by 24 months the
children of more engaged moms are developing bigger vocabularies and processing spoken
language more efficiently. Our goal is to help parents understand that by starting in infancy, they
can play a role in changing their children's life trajectories (Carey). Vazquez stated that
Linguistic input is necessary for language acquisition, unless children are exposed to language,
they will not acquire it. (Vazquez) According to Developmental Psychology, infants react more

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to speech that is specifically directed towards them rather than speech that is directed towards
adults. (Cooper) Children like the high pitches and the held out vowels because its pleasing to
their ears, but that doesnt mean it has to be broken English to get their attention. The vocal
register of the parents voice plays a large part in whether or not the child reacts to the language
the parent uses. (Fitzgerald) This was proven again in a study done by Amye Warren-Leubecker
who tested the pitch used by mothers vs fathers in regards to their children while teaching them
language. It showed that both mothers and fathers raised their pitch to speak to their children, but
kept their pitch neutral while speaking with older children or adults. Yumi Ikeda conducted a
similar study regarding pitch with single Japanese mothers and their children. The results were
the same as Amyes study. Gwen Dewar , who also covered the effects of pitch vs actually
changing the way you speak and stated that IDS, is recognizable for its higher pitch and more
melodic, emotionally-charged tone. These features capture a baby's attention, and make it easier
for her to grasp the emotional intentions of speech. In fact, fascinating experiments show that
adults listening to a foreign language are better able to pick up on a speaker's emotion
(Dewar).These studies proved that it does not necessarily matter what you say, but more so how
you say it. This means that the child directed speech could be standard English and if the register
is inviting, the child will respond. Not only do infants who hear lots of words understand
language better than those who hear fewer words, they are also more likely to start vocalizing
and speaking words earlier. When children talk more, adults talk back to them more often. So,
the early advantage in language ability gets bigger over time. (Markman) The more you talk to
your child and the more words you teach them, the better off they will be. Herrera did research

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on the emotional state of the parent and how it affected the child based on their Touch behavior
and content of child-directed speech. They were analyzed: 72 mothers and their infants during
pleasurable play. (Herrera) Nadine Wilson states that some parents insist that their children
speak only Standard English at home and leave patois for the playground; others are comfortable
either way. Most parents, though, would hope that after formal education, their children would be
able to separate the two, and be able to converse with anyone in any situation without problems.
But how do you ensure that your child can distinguish between the two language modes? Speech
pathologist Dr Tracey Rattray-Neil said some children adapt to broken language because the
parents themselves do not practice good speaking skills.
If the outside influences around the child do not speak in complete sentences or do not
speak Standard English, then neither will the child. Monkey see, monkey do; or in this case,
Monkey hear, monkey repeat. Children repeat anything that they hear. This means that if
someone says a bad word and a child hears it, the child is most likely going to repeat it, often
times the same way the person they heard, said it. Every normal child acquires a natural
language. A child hears sentences of the target language and uses this raw material to generate a
system which enables the child to produce sentences of his/her own. A child might be exposed to
a range of different human language involving a large amount of variations in phonology, lexis
and grammar. (Vazquez) By the time kids start school, there are already differences among
them in their language abilities. These early differences can have an enormous impact on their
performance in school, because teachers do most of their instruction by talking to kids.

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(Markman) Studies show that children ages 6 months- 24 months hear a range of 2,000 to 15,000
words a day. Obviously, the children hearing the most words went on to do the best in school and
had a higher level of comprehension. Do not think that a child cannot handle your speech. They
learn through listening, and if you hinder your speech, youre hindering your childs ability to
learn.
The assumption that it is cute when children cannot speak properly or that you have to
dumb down your vocabulary when speaking to children is a misconception. Children are a lot
smarter than led on to believe. If a child is taught to speak correctly, then they will. Parents tend
to speak to their children like they cannot understand and choose to cut words or phrases short to
make it easier for the child to speak them. They find it amusing and adorable to listen to their
children mispronounce things without realizing that this is coddling them to hardly learn to say
things the correct way. A few words that tend to be dumbed down for children are: horsey
(from horse), kitty (from cat or kitten), potty (originally from pot now equivalent to modern
toilet or a chamber pot for a young child), doggy (from dog), and ducky (from duck).
(Wikipedia) Gordon Wells did a longtime experiment on children from 1 years old until they
were 10, while testing how they were spoken to as babies and how it affects their academic
performance. Jeannie Fleming-Gifford states that if you use so much baby talk just because
your child responds to it, you will be disappointed in the long run because when they are older, it
will take so much longer to drop those word alternatives for the real thing. We are long past the
days of "milky," "choo-choo," and "night-night." We are to the phase of milk, trains and

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nighttime and those are the words that I would like to hear come out of her mouth. Where DID
she get those baby talk words? Gulp. Its all me and my motherese, otherwise known as
parentese or child-directed speech. Its all about how I talk to this little one, my tone of voice,
speech patterns, and vocabulary. My little one may be growing, but sometimes I find it too easy
(and more fun) to resort to the days of talking to her like she is still cradled in my arms.
(Fleming-Gifford) It is notable that Some experts found that children reproduced the correct
irregular past tense forms more often and with fewer mistakes following negative feedback as
opposed to positive input (Vazquez). Although baby talk may be the fun way to teach your
child to speak, it is not necessarily the most effective. Judith Whitmarsh states in her research
study that Fifty mothers completed questionnaires and 20 mothers were interviewed. The
findings show that: mothers were unsure of the value of child-directed speech; few mothers
offered a rationale for book-sharing; the interviewed teen mothers were not sharing books with
their babies and although most mothers agreed that repeating sounds supported language
development, mothers were less sure about whether babies could copy speech sounds at 2
months. Although this is a small-scale study, it offers some useful pointers for supporting
mothers in child communication and some new areas for further research (Whitmarsh).
Practicing a more standard form of Child Directed Speech is important because throughout
history, language is passed on to the youth through speech. Graham Williamson states that
studies have argued that child-directed speech makes language acquisition easier. It has been
suggested that we have underestimated how much language learning occurs through children

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listening to other adults (Williamson). According to Vazquezs research, it is proven that CDS
is not used to teach language to young children, instead the general goal is to maintain a live
interactive communication with the child. (Vazquez) With a more standard version of CDS
children can learn how to speak while also engaging positively with the child. Language is
powerful and if the English language loses its integrity it could give rise to another language
taking the lingua franca position. Throughout the history of American English, it has been proven
that language equals power. If the youth, who are indeed the future, are not taught properly,
where will America go from there? Regarding syntax, CDS involves more commands, questions
and repetitions; the utterances tend to be shorter and grammatically simpler than in adult directed
speech, and also fewer broken sentences (OGrady). Toben H. Mintz did a study to prove that
children have the mental capacity to learn and comprehend grammar and sentence structure.
evidence of the success of frames in categorizing words, provides support for frames as a basis
for the acquisition of grammatical categories. (Mintz) Child language is important because just
like pidgins become creoles through children, English made its start through passing it down
generation to generation. Children are the future, so its important to make sure that they carry on
the language with dignity.
Children are a lot more impressionable and capable of being highly intelligent than it is led
on. Of course parents would want to speak lowlier to identify better with their children but all in
all, it is better to just speak to them at a more standard and mature level. Child directed speech is
not a bad thing, there are just better ways to reach your children. Studies have shown that

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children that have parents that spoke to them at a more mature level have been proven to have
better comprehension skills, a more extensive vocabulary, and better grades in school. That is
definitely something to think about the next time you want to coo at your child.
Works Cited
Carey, Bjorn. Stanford psychologist shows why talking to kids really matters 13 February
2014. < http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2014/pr-fernald-AAAS-children021414.html>
CDS. Child Directed Speech Definition <http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition .php?
term=Child-Directed%20Speech>
Cooper, R. P. and Aslin, R. N. (1990), Preference for Infant-directed Speech in the First Month
after Birth. Child Development, 61: 15841595. doi: 10.1111/j.14678624.1990.tb02885.x
Dominey, Peter F. and Dodane, Christelle. Indeterminacy in language acquisition: the role of
child directed speech and joint attention Journal of Neurolinguistics. Volume 17,
Issues 23, March 2004, Pages 121145. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/
science/article/pii/S0911604403000563> Web.
Fitzgerald, Colleen E.; Hadley, Pamela A.; Rispoli, Matthew. Are Some Parents' Interaction
Styles Associated with Richer Grammatical Input? American Journal of SpeechLanguage Pathology, v22 n3 p476-488 Aug 2013.
<http://ajslp.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1795759 > Web.

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Fleming-Gifford, Jeannie. Baby Talk, Or Not? Everyday Family. 18 September 2012
<http://www.everydayfamily.com/blog/baby-talk-or-not/> Web.
Herrera, Eisquel; Reissland, Nadja; Shepherd, John. Maternal touch and maternal child-directed
speech: effects of depressed mood in the postnatal period University of
Aberdeen. <http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(03)002003/abstract?cc=y> Web.
Ikeda, Yumi and Masataka, Nobuo. A variable that may affect individual differences in the
child-directed speech of Japanese women Japanese Psychological Research.
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5884.00120/abstract?
systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+have+be+unavailable+on+Saturda
y+5th+December+from+10%3A00-14%3A00+GMT+%2F+05%3A0009%3A00+EST+%2F+18%3A00-22%3A00+SGT+for+essential+maintenance.
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Markman PhD, Art. Infants Need to Hear Adults Talk: Infant directed speech plays a huge role
in language development Psychology Today. 10 December 2013.
<https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201312/infants-needhear-adults-talk> Web.
Mintz, Toben H. Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech
24 March 2003 <http://www.lscp.net/persons/anne/master/Mintz-2003Cognition.pdf>
OGrady, W., (2005). How Children Learn Language. United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press.

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Rowe, Meredith L. (2008). Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge
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<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1130007?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents> Web.
Wells, Gordon. The Meaning Makers: Children Learning Language and Using Language to
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Perceptions of Infant Communication. International Journal of Early Years
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Williamson, Graham. Child-Directed Speech Speech and Language Therapy.
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Wilson, Nadine. Learning English Vocabulary All Woman. 13 May 2013 <http://www.jamaica
observer.com /magazines/allwoman/Get-your-child-to-speakproperly_14232098> Web.