Lecture 1

The theory of Language

Linguistics is a set of fields involving the scientific study of language; a battleground for anthropologists, philosophers etc. all of whom seek to describe language & how it works from their own perspective.

3 approaches:

1. Highlights the relations between the language & thought. Language is “the constant activity of the mind aimed at turning sounds into means of expressing thoughts” & feelings. (O. Jespersen)

2. Communicative nature of language. Language is the most frequently used & most highly developed form of human communication we possess (D. Crystal)

3. “Languageis a system of inderdependent signs in which the value of each sign results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others.” (F. Saussure)

MIXED: “Language is a specifically human way of transmitting ideas, feelings & desires with the help of a system of arbitrary signs” (E. Sapir)

“language is inventory of human experience” (L. W. Lockhart)

Without experience of other people speaking we would never learn language.

Without experience of written texts & visual media we would never learn about the world beyond our immediate environment.

Language shapes cognition & is being shaped by it.

It can be seen as a structure & as a process of communication: as an instrument of gaining experience & as a reflection of this process.

Functions of language (R. Jacobson)

1. Addressee – regulative

2. Addresser – emotive

3. Context – communicative

4. Message – cognitive

5. Contact – phatic

6. Code – metalanguage – language works as a code (a set of words used for describing language). It indicates the ability of language to explain, name & criticize its own features.

Metafunctions of any semiotic system (G. Kress, T. van Leeuween):

1. Ideational – to represent aspect of the experiential world outside its particular system of signs.

2. Interperson – to project the relations between the producer of the sign & the receiver of that sign.

3. Textual – to form texts which cohere both internally & within the context in & for which they were produced.

Language is a system of signs & a structure

Dichotomies of Saussur:

1. Langue (the language system) & parole (the act of speaking). Langue is a storehouse, the sum of word-images stored in the minds of individuals. It’s a social phenomenon. Parole is the actual, concrete act of speaking on the part of an individual. It exists at a particular time & place & is opposed to langue, which exists apart from any particular manifestation of speech. It is langue as a vast network of structures & systems.

System is an ordered set of elements or a group of interrelated parts; it can be applied only to the state of language at a certain moment of its development.

2. Synchronic & diachronic approaches to language. They don’t exclude one another, because language is dynamic.

3. Syntagmatic (linear relations between the signs in the sentence) & paradigmatic relations between language units. Paradigmatic – Systemic relationships between linguistic units within the system of language.

Zvegintsev – the term “structure” is more adequate.

Benvennist – a structure is a certain arrangement of interconnected elements which can substitute for each other. Each element of the structure is defined by the whole, i.e. by all its connections with the other elements. Taken in isolation any element loses its essential characteristics. Change in any part of a structure triggers off a series of changes in other parts & changes the whole.

Stepanov – “system” is a whole that consists of elements & relations among these elements. The wholw determines each element.

Alefirenko – language is an aggregate of units that has a certain order. Units unlike elements are relatively independent & each of them displays the main features of the whole system. Structure is an aggregate of links & relations between language units.

Language is a strictly coherent system of systems (the system of pronouns, inflections, etc.)

SIGN

Aristotle – a means of manifesting the impressions a human being gets when perceiving objects of the outside world.

Potebnya – a sign substitutes for the corresponding images or concepts: it represents them in the flow of thoughts & can be called as a representation.

Pierce – “we think only in signs”. “nothing is a sign unless it’s interpreted as a sign.” They can take the forms of words, images, sounds etc.

The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure)

The relationship between the signifier & the signified – signification.

Signs only make sense as a part of a formal, generalized & abstract system.

Saussure’s conception of meaning was purely structural & relational rather than referentional: “within the language system everything depends on relations”.

The value of the sign is determined by the relationships between the sign & other signs within a system as a whole (Saussure).

Saussure’s conception of signs

Signs are arbitrary: there’s no necessary relationship between the signifier & the signified.

Signs are conventional.

Signs are intentional: they’re sent by a sender who wishes to communicate & understandable only by those who understands what is coded in the sign.