The Power of Words Essay -- Psychology Essays

The Power of WordsCommunication and actors line ar not always synonymous. Gesticulations and facial expression can play certain messages that often make verbal expression unnecessary. Although I respect the endless possibilities that are associated with spilling, our primary means of communication, I have spy that the human capacity for speech might not be as extremely innate as the linguist Noam Chomsky claimed. A few age ago, I had the privilege of encountering a thirty-five year-old woman named Joann at a summer camp for adults with multiple disabilities. Being extremely autistic, Joann was unable to tight-fitting her mouth, let alone form distinguishable words. Instead of talking, her principal method of communication was to make clicks and guttural noises when she was upset or wanted or sothing. remote the case of Genie, who was reared in a small room without human contact, Joann and round(prenominal) other autistic people are not raised in silence and should have t heoretically learned to talk (as per Chomskys theory). The camp counselors promote Joanns attempts at speech and tried to build her verbal skills, but they were never able to progress beyond monosyllabic words. Why wasnt she able to speak and why did they fail?To a certain extent, run-in is innate, but Daniel Dennett trivialized the enlightenment and complexity of linguistics. He wrote, ...its so effortless...for even slow children to learn to speak. They arent really larn at all, any(prenominal) more than birds learn their feathers. Language, and feathers, just develop 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 think that some form of learn... ...heoretically could be speaking or trying to covey some message when she makes those utterances, as if she had completely bypassed the evolution of clicks into words. It has been suggested by psychologists that on that point is a critical period for language acquisition which theorizes that children lose the capacity to promptly absorb new languages by the end of their toddler years. The fact that children are able to learn new languages so quickly shows that to some extent, language is innate, but speech is not acquired so easily. Joann will probably never be able to speak like other people, but there exists the possibility of her understanding much more than Dennett would give her credit for. plant life CitedDennett, Daniel C. Darwins Dangerous Idea. Simon and Schuster New York, 1995.Pennisi, Elizabeth. The First Language? Science 27 Feb. 2004 1319-1320.