Expressive acts produce and use language through speaking/signing or writing. Infants coo and babble as a way to use vocal gestures. Crib Talk is an example of expressive language in infants. They are rehearsing and begin to play with language. This time can be considered self-soothing sleepy time talk. As the child grows they speak in sentences and write to express their thoughts and share stories.
Teacher: "Does someone what to share about what they did this weekend?"
Child: "I will. This weekend, my family went to the pool and I went down the big slide. It was fast, and I went down again and again."
In the example above the child needed to formulate in his mind what had happened in the past and share it with the class. Sharing and telling the events that happened is his expressive act.
Special Cases of Expressive Acts
2. Receptive ActsIn the example above the child needed to formulate in his mind what had happened in the past and share it with the class. Sharing and telling the events that happened is his expressive act.
Special Cases of Expressive Acts
- Presentation Genre- this would be when a child recites a poem or song
- Repeating the exact expressive act of another for a specific function (ex. trying to remember)
- Echolalia is repetition of what another has said as if they were echoing that person.
Receptive acts receive someone's language as language, though not the same as comprehending or understanding language. Sometimes a receptive act is not exact or correct as it is intended by the speaker. Receptive acts indicate the understanding of language. Evidence that a child has performed a receptive act can be seen through answering questions or showing emotion such as laughing. Receptive acts typically develop much earlier than expressive acts in language.
Example of an Receptive act:
Parent: "What would you like to eat for dinner?"
Child: "Macaroni and Cheese, please!"
In this example, the child was able to respond to the parent's question because he/she understood the parent's expressive language (Their question) in order to respond appropriately.
Diagram that shows the relationship between expressive and receptive acts.
3. Meta-linguistic Acts
Meta-linguistic acts focus on the meaning of language. Children demonstrate how they understand the form of language through either an expressive or receptive act. Older children recognize and correct their errors such as their grammar use in a sentence. They understand how to use language to tell riddles, jokes, or even puns.
- Epilinguistic is the internal organization of language that begins at the the beginning of language development. This is almost automatic for the child.
- Truly Meta-linguistic is thinking about language and one might comment or correct language structure, function, or vocabulary.
Child: "Why do dragons sleep during the day?"
Child: "Because they like to hunt Knights."
This is a joke where the child needs to understand that "Knights" and "Nights" though spelt differently sound the same and have two different meanings.
Phonemic Awareness is also apart of Meta-linguistic language, where the child focuses on the small units of language. For example in the word "Cat", a child with phonemic awareness would understand if you take away the /c/ in "cat" and replace it with a /b/ then you get a new word "bat".
