Linguistics: Methodological Aspects and Components of Language, Sbobinature di Lingua Inglese

Scarica Linguistics: Methodological Aspects and Components of Language e più Sbobinature in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS What is language made of? Language is composed of structure and use: two sides of the same coin. We can’t analyze the structure of language without also providing an overview on its usage. David Crystal in one of his major books “The Encyclopedia of the English language” he discusses structure and use and he presents them by adopting a metaphor: “The Metaphor of Janus”. Janus is a mythological figure comprised of two heads. These two elements, that are fundamental components of language, are “two sides of the same coin”. What is language? Language is a system of communication, it is a way through which we communicate. Language is always purposeful: we want to achieve something when we create a specific sentence (whether it is to describe the world, whether it is to give an order, whether it is to express the way you feel about something). Language use When we analyze language use we need to take into consideration different elements: - Temporal variation: How language changes over time. EXAMPLE: Think of the way the English language has evolved from the early 60s of the past century to the present. If you think of elements such as the -ing form, in the 1960s it was marked as a mistake people using for instance sentences such as “I'm loving the way you have cut your hair”. The -ing form could not be used with verbs expressing feelings. The McDonald -ing form, called like this for the slogan created by this company “I'm loving it”, had an impact on the way language is used, allowing forms like “lm liking the way you're doing this”. We see that we can trace temporal variation in a very short time span. The same goes with elements such as “somebody”, “someone”, “anyone”, “anybody”. Actually “somebody” is more frequently used in spoken language, while “someone” is more frequently used in written registers. This differentiation started at the very beginning of the last century and has evolved throughout the century and nowadays native speakers of the English language are not aware of this, that they tend to use “somebody” for spoken communications and sometimes also for written communications, but “someone” is more frequently used in written registers. Native speakers tend to avoid using “someone” for spoken language. - Social variation: It shows how language changes in accordance to specific social factors. Think of, for instance, to factors linked to social classes: upper social classes who tend to use specific elements while avoiding others. Social variation not only refers to classes but also to elements related to the background of specific groups, communities. Language changes also from one community to another. There are some elements that are distinctive of specific communities and allow us to say that language is used by that group of people, while other groups of people will avoid using that type of language, avoid those language choices. - Personal variation: lt means that language changes from person to person. The way you use your language, the way you choose specific elements is yours. You might share those elements with other people but there are some choices that you alone make in the way you produce language. EXAMPLE: For instance, | know that when | speak in my second language so in English, | tend to always repeat “okay” because that's my personal way of checking whether the listener is actually there, is actually understanding what l’m saying. - Regional variation: It analyzes how language changes from one geographical place to another. Language structure Structure: the ability that we have to produce language. As for language structure, on the other hand, we have different elements that we take into consideration when analyzing language from this perspective. Remember that language use and language structure are always related, so we can analyze regional variations focusing on sign, graphology and phonology. We can investigate temporal variations by focusing on grammar and lexicon and we can investigate social variations by investigating text, that is to say how elements of grammar and lexicon are combined together to create larger stretches of discourse. LINGUISTICS AND THE COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE Definition of linguistics Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of language systems. Why. is it scientific? First of all, we must say that science is an activity: science is something that we do and since linguistics is the scientific study of language systems, linguistics is something that we do, is a process of enquiry. The pursuit of linguistics is knowledge. The aim of linguistics is not only to describe language but also to explain why it is as it is. This is to make you understand the fact that there are different ways of looking at language since linguistics is a process of enquiry, we study how language is used and different people might have different ways of pursuing this activity. There are some linguistics who are more interested on the competence side of language, other on the other hand are more interest in the performance side of language and these are already two major shifts perspectives in the way we analyze language: one is more interested in structure (the ability that we have to produce language), the other on how we actually use language (the results of those structure). Another important thing is that science uses a systematic approach. Linguistics is systematic in the types of methodology it uses, so in the way we examine the data, review the existing body of knowledge in order to form or test hypotheses and make predictions on the changes that might happen in the way we use language. Science may involve the study of structure and behavior and therefore, as we were previously saying, linguistics studies how elements are systematically structured together to communicate meanings and how these are received and interpreted, remember that language is our system of communication, even when we talk by ourselves, we have unimaginative reader that we are thinking of. The fact that language is composed by structure and behaviour brings us to an example that | want to provide. Science focuses on the physical and natural world so in the case of linguistics language must be regarded as a physical activity that involves actions by several parts of the body depending on the type of linguistic expression. EXAMPLE: Think, for instance, of sign language which relies heavily on the movement of the hands and arms or on movement of face muscles. Oral communication on the other hand involves different articulators (the breathing apparatus, the larynx, the mouth and so on) while the writing process involves the hands, fingers, arms and so on. In all these cases the activity of our bodies is generated and controlled by the head so language is a form of knowledge in the mind that constitutes part of the natural world and that is used for social purposes. - Language is a form of knowledge, there are other types of knowledge that are stored in our brain (think of the way we know that specific pictures mean specific things like stop sign that is saying something to us). Morphology Morphology is the study of the structure or form of words in a particular language, and of their classification. According to David Crystal we can distinguish between 2 different ways of studying the structure and form of the words: “The branch of grammar which studies the structure or forms of words, primarily through the use of the morpheme construct. It is traditionally distinguished from syntax, which deals with the rules governing the combination of words in sentences. It is generally divided into two fields: the study of inflections (inflectional morphology) and of word-formation (lexical or derivational morphology) - a distinction which is sometimes accorded theoretical status (split morphology).” The morpheme is the basic structure, the smallest unit in morphology. Morphology considers principles of word formation in a language: - How sounds combine into meaningful units such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots. EXAMPLE: “Reminder”, which is composed of a root (mind), to which we attach the element “er” to create “minder”, and then we create “reminder”. - Whichof these units are distinctive and which are predictable variants. EXAMPLE: Such as the different forms of the indefinite article, a and an. - What process of word formation a language characteristically uses. ESAMPLE 1: Such as compounding (as in road-way) or suffixing (as in pave-ment). Compounding means creating a word by combining together two elements (road+way). Suffixing is the process whereby we create words on the basis of other words. The word “pavement” comes from the verb “to pave”. In order to create the noun we add the element “ment”. EXAMPLE 2: “Unfriendliness”= un+friend+ly+ness. The root of the word is “friend”. From the root we create the adverb “friendly”. Then we add the prefix “un-”, which is typically used to create a negation on an adjective or an adverb. “Un” is usually used to revert a word (ex “tie” and “untie”). “Unfriendly” is then transformed into a noun, “unfriendliness”. A word indicating a personality trait of those people who are not welcoming, not open-hearted, people who are not interested in making friends. Syntax From greek “to put in order”. Syntax is the study of the order and arrangement of words into larger units, as well as the relationship holding between elements in these hierarchical units. Phrases combined together create clauses, and clauses are combined together to create sentences. Sentences can be linked together by using linkers. The study of this arrangement, of how we structure those elements is syntax. Syntax studies, analyses, investigates the structure and types of sentences (such as questions or commands), of clauses (such as relative or adverbial clauses), and of phrases (such as prepositional or verbal phrases) that are part of a language. According to David Crystal the syntax is: “A traditional term for the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language. [...] An alternative definition (avoiding the concept of “word”) is the study of the interrelationships between elements of sentence structure, and of the rules governing the arrangement of sentences in sequences.” Semantics From greek “to signify, show, signal”. Semantics is the study of how meaning is conveyed in words, phrases, or clauses, or sentences. The study of semantics focuses either on meanings related to the outside world (lexical meaning) or meanings related to the grammar of the sentence (grammatical meaning). In studying meaning, we consider both the meaning of individual words (lexical meanings) and the meaning which results from the interaction of elements in a sentence (sentence semantics). - Lexical semantics: often involves the study of relationships between words, such as the synonymity (“sameness of meaning”) of smart and intelligent, or the antonymity (“opposite of meaning”) of rough and smooth. - Sentence semantics (or grammatical semantics): involves the study of the relationship between syntax and semantics, how the organisation of elements in a sentence convey specific meanings. EXAMPLE: A sentence like “Jill closed the door” indicates something different from when we say “The door closed”. In the first sentence the agent is clearly expressed in the person of Jill, in the second sentence on the other hand, the entity undergoing the change is the focus of the sentence, so we are focusing on the door that has been closed. The way we have deleted and reorganised the elements in the sentence conveys different meanings. Remember that when we change the order of elements and delete meanings from sentences, sometimes we want to achieve specific purposes, so in deleting the agency on the first sentence we wanted to highlight something else. - Discourse semantics: a further area of study is the study of meaning relationships holding ‘among parts in an extended discourse. From a syntactic point of view it does organise elements correctly, but the meanings make no sense at all. First and foremost because ideas have no colours, are inanimate elements so they cannot sleep, and the activity of sleeping cannot be performed furiously. So in this case you see that semantics takes over, and we, as people that know how language works we can say that this sentence does not make any sense, because we automatically, effortlessly and immediately know when we hear this sentence that something is wrong. Pragmatics It is not part of the traditional subdivision but added in recent years. From greek “deed, affair” and from prassein “to do”). From A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics by Cruse: “[...] semantics is concerned with the stable meaning resources of language-as-a-system and pragmatics with the use of that system for communicating, on particular occasions and in particular contexts.” EXAMPLE: In the context of a driver and a passenger in a car stopped in a traffic light, the phrase “The light is green uttered by the passenger” is not simply a description but performs the pragmatic function of advising the driver to step on the gas pedal and move into the intersection. The sentence “The light is green” is not descriptive, it does something, it conveys further meanings that we can understand and interpret as people who know how to use language. Pragmatics is the study of the functions of language and its use in context. We can interpret the meanings, associate the unwritten meanings, given the contextual features of language in use. According to Spencer-Oatey and Zegarac, when we study pragmatics we must ask the following questions: - How do people communicate more than what the words or phrases of their utterances might mean by themselves, and how do people make these interpretations? - Why do people choose to say and/or interpret something in one way rather than another? - How do people's perceptions of contextual factors (such as, who the interlocutors are, what their relationship is, and what circumstances they are communicating in) influence the process of producing and interpreting language? These are all questions that we ask when we analyse language from a pragmatic perspective. EXAMPLE: Sometimes Alexa says “I didn't understand what you were saying”. That's because sometimes Alexa misses the pragmatic knowledge that it means to interpret your utterances, your sentences, because it can't interpret what you want to do, to request when you organise elements in a specific way. That's when we talk about the pragmatic failures. Pragmatic failures, and more importantly intercultural pragmatic failures, are errors that are the result of an interactant imposing the social rules of one culture on their communicative behaviour in a situation where the social rules of another culture would be more appropriate. In this case we are discussing culture, but think about the failures in understanding the meanings cross-culturally. EXAMPLE: Sometimes is typical of learners of English language that do not know, for instance, when a British person says “I hear what you say” what actually the English person means is that “I disagree and do not want to discuss it further”, but we learners, who do not have the pragmatic knowledge of the intentions behind these words, think wrongly that our speaker is accepting our point of view. These are intercultural errors that sometimes happen when we don't know the meanings behind given expressions.