Discourse, Communication, and Concepts

From the article "On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research," I found the Chomskyan paradigm most interesting.  It has roots in Plato and Descartes's rationalistic theories of the mind.  This "was to manifest and subsequently establish itself within SLA as a central concern with language as an aspect of individual cognition (759)."  Chomsky said that "linguistics is simply the sub-field of psychology that deals with these aspects of the mind."  This approach is less focused on the problem of what language is for as its used as communication and involves/concerns more than the individual. 

I really like this approach because of the psychology aspect.  For my final project, I am focusing on individual learner differences (in English language learners).  Cognition, motivation, age, etc. are all part of these differences, which is where psychology comes into play.  Language as an aspect of individual cognition seems to click with my thoughts of it as communication.  There is so much to the mind that is unknown.  We learn a lot about language acquisition but I don't believe it is the most central to cognition; that it influences how we think.  I think that the psychology of the learner is the umbrella as to how a person would learn a second language, and that goes for other concepts as well.  I don't believe that someone who has less knowledge of a language or language itself is unable to think in similar ways as another who has a higher knowledge of language.  When reading this article, I thought of the movie we watched in class; The Wild Child.  This boy showed his intelligence in learning certain behaviors, the number system, alphabet, etc.  I think it was so difficult for him because he had never been introduced to these concepts before.  Not having spoken yet was even more difficult for communication with him and by him.  However, it did not show that he was unable to learn.  Also, when his caretaker found things he was interested in (the psychology of the learner; motivation, etc.), such as going for walks, the wild child was more interested/willing to learn.  There are many other things to consider in this approach, but I think it's very important to incorporate psychology and language learning together.