The video representation is by Janna Oetting, who centers on language deficiencies in kids who communicate in non-mainstream English languages. In her presentation, she first focuses on Harry Seymour’s article, which describes language impairment and whether a child has a dialect difference or a disorder. In the second part of the video, she focuses on solutions to the diagnostic problem, expounding that dialects have two structures: the contrastive and the non-contrastive. The contrastive structure features differ across dialects, while the non-contrastive have similar characteristics. Structure features may include articles, conjunctions, localities, and demonstratives. The solution to the issue was to work with patterns occurring in all dialects, for if a child has language impairment, it will be identical in various perspectives.
As for the identification of language impairment in children, the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV) test method was developed. The test methodology comprises two parts. Where the first part deals with identifying children with non-mainstream dialect, and the second part analyzes if a child is at risk of contracting language impairment. Oetting dismisses Seymour’s approach to solving the problem as she states that studying contrastive structure is also influential in determining if a child has language impairment. She interrelates that both groups are non-mainstream dialects, and the attention should be focused on figuring out who has language defects. On typical dialect variation, one needs to appreciate that dialects share numerous mainstream structures and non-mainstream. However, the dialects differ in function to use, context and rate.
From the analysis of the article, the conclusion is that grammar deficiency is a constituent of linguistic deficiency in teenagers who express themselves in non-mainstream languages of English. Moreover, the DELV is not the appropriate test method as it focuses on impairment rather than the proper vocabulary. I believe that the video may be beneficial in terms of encouraging clinicians to be cautious during evaluations of the language skills of non-mainstream children. It is on to the aspect of overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis in language impairment. The errors of overdiagnosis involve the classification of children with impairments when they present a slight dialect difference. On the contrary, the mistake of being underdiagnosed may occur in misclassifying a child as having a non-language impairment. Thus clinicians should sample every aspect of the child before clarifying if they have language impairment or not.