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The Descriptivists

The descriptivist approach to linguistic science is most closely associated with the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield (1887 - 1949). Descriptivism originated in America at the beginning of this century and was a major paradigm for research right up until the 1960s. The inspiration for descriptivism was the urgent need to produce a lasting record of the native languages of North America, since many of them were under immediate threat of extinction. To this end, the American anthropologist Franz Boas spearheaded an early survey and published the results in the classic Handbook of American Indian Languages, in 1911. Nowadays, it is no surprise to learn that linguists study all manner of strange and exotic languages from around the world. Yet it was only with the pioneering work of Boas that such languages were accorded equal status with more familiar objects of study like Latin, Greek and German. In this respect, descriptivism represented a sharp break with the traditions of European linguistics.

The initial surprise, which never ceased to impress descriptivists, was the enormous range of linguistic diversity they unearthed. Seemingly, each new language they came across possessed quite unique structures and categories. For example, it was discovered that in Kwakiutl, a language indigenous to British Columbia, verbs are not inflected to indicate the time of action, as in most European languages, but to indicate whether or not the speaker actually witnessed an event in person, or only learned of it from another person, from the available evidence, or even from a dream. Remarkably, these differences of perspective are encoded in the syntax of the language. In English we would require long, possibly unwieldy phrases to convey what, in Kwakiutl, would be encoded in the grammar via verb inflections.

In order to cope with the barrage of alien concepts and constructions in their analyses, descriptivists made strenuous efforts to set aside their preconceptions about language. Methods of analysis appropriate for Latin and Greek could easily give a distorted picture when applied to a native American language. A fundamental aim was to devise an objective approach, a set of ‘discovery procedures’, which could be applied to any language, in order to interpret it correctly and produce an accurate description. This technique failed in its assumption that any set of procedures or techniques of analysis are entirely independent of the object studied. In fact, it will always be the case in any science that the methods of investigation employed will reflect to some extent the expectations and prejudices of the scientist.

In contrast with current preoccupations in linguistics (see universal grammar), a notable feature of descriptivism is its disdain for the idea that certain universal linguistic concepts and categories are inherent in all human languages. Bloomfield asserted the opposing ‘infinite diversity’ view with the observation that the very next language one came across might well contradict any universal tendencies hitherto observed, and that it was therefore futile to study languages with a view to discovering underlying universal characteristics. MS

Further reading R.A. Hall, Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on His Life and Work; , D. Hymes and , J. Fought, American Structuralism.

Pragmatics

A branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in social contexts and the ways in which people produce and comprehend meanings through language.

• "What does pragmatics have to offer that cannot be found in good old-fashioned linguistics? What do pragmatic methods give us in the way of greater understanding of how the human mind works, how humans communicate, how they manipulate one another, and in general, how they use language?
  
  "The general answer is: pragmatics is needed if we want a fuller, deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior.
  
  "A more practical answer would be: outside of pragmatics, no understanding; sometimes, a pragmatic account is the only one that makes sense, as in the following example, borrowed from David Lodge's Paradise News:

  'I just met the old Irishman and his son, coming out of the toilet.'
  'I wouldn't have thought there was room for the two of them.'
  'No silly, I mean I was coming out of the toilet. They were waiting.'

Social Language Use (Pragmatics)

You have invited your friend over for dinner. Your child sees your friend reach for some cookies and says, "Better not take those, or you'll get even bigger." You're embarrassed that your child could speak so rudely. However, you should consider that your child may may not know how to use language appropriately in social situations and did not mean harm by the comment.

An individual may say words clearly and use long, complex sentences with correct grammar, but still have a communication problem - if he or she has not mastered the rules for social language known as pragmatics . Adults may also have difficulty with pragmatics, for example, as a result of a brain injury or stroke.

Pragmatics involve three major communication skills:

• Using language for different purposes, such as
  • greeting (e.g., hello, goodbye)
  • informing (e.g., I'm going to get a cookie)
  • demanding (e.g., Give me a cookie)
  • promising (e.g., I'm going to get you a cookie)
  • requesting (e.g., I would like a cookie, please)
• Changing language according to the needs of a listener or situation, such as
  • talking differently to a baby than to an adult
  • giving background information to an unfamiliar listener
  • speaking differently in a classroom than on a playground
• Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such as
  • taking turns in conversation
  • introducing topics of conversation
  • staying on topic
  • rephrasing when misunderstood
  • how to use verbal and nonverbal signals
  • how close to stand to someone when speaking
  • how to use facial expressions and eye contact

These rules may vary across cultures and within cultures. It is important to understand the rules of your communication partner.

An individual with pragmatic problems may:

• say inappropriate or unrelated things during conversations
• tell stories in a disorganized way
• have little variety in language use

It is not unusual for children to have pragmatic problems in only a few situations. However, if problems in social language use occur often and seem inappropriate considering the child's age, a pragmatic disorder may exist. Pragmatic disorders often coexist with other language problems such as vocabulary development or grammar. Pragmatic problems can lower social acceptance. Peers may avoid having conversations with an individual with a pragmatic disorder.

“A rich and adaptable instrument”

M.A.K. Halliday

“A rich and adaptable instrument”

In an educational context the problem for linguistics is to elaborate some account of language that is relevant to the work of the English teacher.

It is not necessary, to sacrifice a generation of children, or event one class roomful, in order to demonstrate that particular preconceptions of language are inadequate or irrelevant. In place of a negative and somewhat hit and miss approach, a more fruitful procedure is to seek to establish certain general positive criteria of relevance. These will relate, ultimately, to the demand that we make of language in the course of our lives.

We tend to underestimate both the total extend and the functional diversity of the part played by language in the life of the child.

Perhaps the simplest of the child´s models of language, and one of the first to be evolved, is what we may call the instrumental model. The child becomes aware that language is used as a mean s of getting things done.

Language as an instrument of control has another side to it, since the child is well aware that language is also a means whereby others exercise control over him. Closely related to the instrumental model, therefore is the regulatory model of language. This refers to the use of language to regulatory behavior of others.

A single incident has little significance; but such general types or regulatory behavior; through repetition and reinforcement determine the child´s specific awareness of language as a means of behavioral control.

Closely related to the regulatory function of language it its function in social interaction , and the third of the models that we may postulate as forming part of the child´s image of language is the interactional model.

Language is used to define and consolidate the group , to include and to exclude, showing who is the one of us and who is nor, no impose status, and to contest status that is imposed and humor, ridicule, deception, persuasion, all the forensic and theatrical  arts of language are bought into play .

Again there is a natural link here with another use of language, from which the child derives what we may call the personal model. This refers to his awareness of language as a form of his own individuality, in the process whereby the child becomes aware of himself, and in particular in the higher stages of the process, the development of his personality language playas an essential role. We are not talking here merely of expressive language, language used for the direct expression of feelings and attitudes, but also of the personal element in the interactional function of language since the shaping of the self trough interaction with others is very much a language-mediated process.

The child was heuristic model of language derived from his knowledge of how language has enable him to explore his environment.

The heuristic refers to language as a means of investigating reality a way of learning about things. This scarcely needs comment since every child makes quite obvious that is what language is for by his habit of constantly asking questions.

Imaginative models of language; and this provides some further elements of the metalanguage with words like story make up and pretend.

Language in its imaginative functions is not necessarily about anything at all; the child´s linguistically created environment does not have to be a make believe copy of the world of experience, occupied by people, things and events.

The dominant model it is very easily for the adult, when he attempts to formulate his ideas about the nature of language, to be simple unaware of most of what language means to the child; this is not because he no longer uses language in the same variety of different functions, but because only one of these functions in general, is the subject of conscious attentions, so that the corresponding models is the only to be externalized.

Pragmatics

For Charles Morris that pragmatics is the science of the relation of signs to their interpreters. Pragmatics is concerned not with language as system or product per se, but rather with the interrelationships between language form, messages and languages users.

In the code-model, communication is seen as an encoding-decoding process, when a code is system that enables the automatic pairing of messages (meanings, internal to senders and receivers), and signals (what physically transmitted, (sound, smoke visual, writing) between the sender and the receiver.

The code mode has the merit of describing one way in which communication can be achieved.

Pragmatic perspectivse on language use.

Pragmatic meaning

One task of pragmatics is to explain how participants in a dialogue such as the one above move from the decontextualized meanings of the words and phrases to a grasp of their meaning in context

Assigning reference in context

The process of Assigning reference also involves the interpretations of “deictic expression”. These are linguistic items that point to contextually salient referents without naming them explicitly.

Assigning sense in context

These observations show that contextual meaning (reference and sense) is not fully determined by the words are used: there is a gap between the meaning of the words used by the speaker and the thought that the speaker intends to express by using those words on a particular occasion.

Inferring illocutionary force

This theory which was generated by the philosopher John Austin (1975) and developed Josh Searle views language as a form of action, that when we speak, we do things like make requests, make statements, offer apologies and so on.

Working out implicated meaning.

Deriving an interpretations that satisfies the Co-operative principles is effected through the maxims which the communicator is presumed to abide by:

Truthfulness: (communicators should do their best to make contributions which are true).

Informativeness:  (communicators should do their best to be adequately informative)

Relevance: (communicators should do their best to make contributions which are relevant)

Style: (communicators should do their best to make contributions which are appropriately short and clearly expressed)

Explaining the impact of social factors.

Leech proposes a set of “politeness maxims” such as the modesty maxim and the agreement maxim which operate in conjunction with the co operative maxims. They are worded as rules (for example minimize praise of self, maximize agreement between self and other), but in fact they aim to describe the interactional principles that underlie language use.

The pragmalinguistic perspective focuses on the linguistics strategies that are used to convey a given pragmatic meaning, whereas the sociopragmatic perspective focuses on the socially based assessments, beliefs and interactional principles that underlie peoples’ choice of strategies.

A sociopragmatic perspective focuses on the social judgment associated with such a scenario, for example what the relationship between the participants is and the social acceptability of reaching for food in such context.

Conversational patterns and structure.

An approach that starts from the commonsense observation that people take turns in conversation, and that relies on descriptions of naturally occurring data discover the rules involved in the patterning of conventional exchanges. The utterances in pair are ordered, in that the first member of a pair requires a second member.

The role of context

Context plays a major role in the communication process, and so important task for pragmatic theory is to elucidate this process, it is widely accepted that the following features of the situational context have a particularly crucial influence on people´s use of language:

The participants: their roles, the amounts of power differential between them, the degree of distance-closeness between them the number of people present.

The  message content: how costly or beneficial the message is to the hearer and/or speaker, how face threatening it is whether it exceeds or stays within the rights and obligations of the relationship.

The communicative activity: how the norms of the activity influence language behavior such as right to talk questions, discourse structure, and level of formality.

Unfortunately, context is sometimes taken to be concrete aspects of the environment in which an exchange takes place and that have bearing on the communication process.

One of the main problems of pragmatic is to explain the constant updating of contextual assumptions in the course of a communicative exchange.

Pragmatics research: Pragmatics and methods

There a re two broad approaches to pragmatics, a cognitive-psychological approach and a social-psychological approach.

Cognitive pramatics are primarily intereted in exploring the relation between the decontextualized, linguistic meaning of utterances, what speakers mean by their utterances on given occassions, and how listeners interpreter those utterances on those given occasions.

Functions of language

Functions of language

One of the main goals of language teachers is to provide students with the tools to be effective communicators in the TL. Often when students are assigned projects and assignments (like the weather report in Anna’s case study) their lack of practical tools to produce the actual language becomes evident. In these cases, students might very well have the necessary resources to accomplish the task, but teachers might need to consider a communicative approach to teaching the language, focusing on the functions of language, to properly equip students to complete assigned tasks. In this section we will explore functions of language and how they can be taught in the SL classroom.

A lot of what we say is for a specific purpose. Whether we are apologizing, expressing a wish or asking permission, we use language in order to fulfill that purpose. Each purpose can be known as a language function. Savignon describes a language function as “the use to which language is put, the purpose of an utterance rather than the particular grammatical form an utterance takes” (Savignon, 1983). By using this idea to structure teaching, the instructional focus becomes less about form and more about the meaning of an utterance. In this way, students use the language in order to fulfill a specific purpose, therefore making their speech more meaningful.

If we think about a function of language as one that serves a purpose we can see that much of what we see can be considered to be functional. Let's take the example of going to a dinner party. Arriving at the dinner party we may introduce ourselves, thank the host and ask where to put our coats. During the dinner we may congratulate someone on a recent accomplishment, ask advice, express affection and compliment the host on the meal. Each of these individual utterance are considered functions of language.

“Functional linguistic: the Prague School”

“Functional linguistic: the Prague School”

Saussure´s lectures on synchronic linguistics were given in 1911, and that year, also saw the publication of Boas’s Handbook; coincidentally, it was in 1911 too that Mathesius published his first call for a new, non-historical approach to language study (Mathesius 1911).

Around Mathesius there came into being a circle of like-minded linguistic scholars, who began to meet for regular discussion from 1926 onwards, and came to be recognized as “the prague  school”.

The Prague School practiced a special style od synchronic linguistic, and although most of the scholars whom one thinks of as members of the school worked in Prague or at  least Czechoslovakia, the term is used also to cover certain scholars elsewhere who consciously adhered to the Prague style.

As long as they were describing the strucrure of a language, the practice of the Pargue School was not very different from that of their contemporaries, they used the notions phoneme and morpheme for instance, but they tried to go beyond description to explanation, saying not just what languages were like but why they were the way they were.

American linguistic restricted themselves and still restrict themselves to description.

According to Mathesius, the need for continuity means that a sentence will commonly fall into two parts, the theme which refrers to something about which the immediately preceding sentences, and the rheme, so that the peg may be established in the hearer´s mind bedore anything new has to be hung on it.

It would be inaccurate to suggest that the notion of functional sentence perspective was wholly unknow in American linguistic, some of the descriptivists did use the terms topic and comment in much the same way as Mathesius theme and rheme.

Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) was one of the members of the Prague School not based I Czechislovakia. He belonged to a scholarly family of the Russian nobility: his father had been a professor of philosophy and rector of Moscow University.

Troubetzkoy was a member of an aristocratic family with a long and renowned intellectual tradition. His interest in ethnography and folklore was present since adolescence. At the age of fifteen, he published his first article in Ethnological Society in Moscow.Troubetzkoy was in its infancy essentially ethnological training, with special relevance of Russian folklore, Caucasian and Finno-Ugric. The influence of this discipline is observed in its interpretation of language as a product closely related to religion, folklore and culture in general.

In 1908 he was admitted to the philological-historical school of the University of Moscow. During this period, he trained in the study of Indo-European languages. Like other linguists of the time, made a stay in Germany during the years 1913-1914. In 1916, he taught Sanskrit at the University of Moscow, which temporarily abandoned in 1917 for health reasons. In the Caucasus surprised by the Bolshevik uprising.

At this time, he began a long exile to Trubetzkoy and a host of Russian aristocrats and intellectuals. After two years of incessant pilgrimage in Russia, he went to Constantinople (1920), where they remained for a limited period of time and left the city of Sofia, during the 1920 and 1922, Trubetzkoy taught at the University of this city. From 1922, until his death in 1938, he taught at the University of Vienna.

The most emblematic work of this author, Principles of Phonology (1939), published after his death and does, therefore, the latest revisions. Trubetzkoy projected increase bibliographical notes and putting a prologue with a dedication to Roman Jakobson, Russian colleague with whom she had a close academic relationship since 1920.

This book has had a significant impact on subsequent phonological studies. His conception of phonology was conceived within the linguistic structuralism and was very well received by the Prague Circle.Following Baudouin de Courtenay, Trubetzkoy defended the disciplinary autonomy of Phonetics and Phonology, because the first was concerned with the sounds of speech and the second sound of the language. The author understood also that phonology was to address not only the representative function of the sounds, but its expressive function (used to characterize the speaker) and its appellate function (used to trigger certain feelings in the listener).

The book consists of two essential parts. The first is devoted to the study of phonetic distinctive feature, which covers the fundamental concepts of phonology, such as defining minimum phoneme or phonological unit that has a distinctive value, for a change of this unit for another in the same phonetic context implies a change of meaning: eg / duck / y / cat /; phonetic variants, which have an optional value, since a change of a variant of another does not entail any change in the meaning of the word or sequence ; or archiphoneme, distinct sets of characteristics that are common to two phonemes in a position of neutralization.

The second part of the book is devoted to the study of phonics defined function or differentiation between complex phonic correspond to different units of meaning or phonic sememes by specific brands.

Saussure: language as social fact

Saussure: language as social fact

 

The study of 19th-century historical linguistics some existing concept of inappropriate language, Saussure recognized the need to clarify the essence of language is proposed language is a social fact that far-reaching, it fails to arouse sufficient attention to contemporary scholars, thesis. The activities of his speech as a starting point, the relatively abstract language and speech, and argues the language as a social fact of the similarities and differences with other social systems. Saussure's exposition will help limit the linguistic study of a real object, and recognize the nature of linguistic signs, which will lead a new linguistic

 Against some improper notions of language held in the historical linguistics in the nineteenth century, Saussure finds it necessary to identify the nature of language. Saussure asserts that language, precisely langue, is a social fact, a viewpoint far-reaching yet largely neglected by scholars at his time. An elaborate analysis of language leads Saussure to extract langue in contrast to parole and then to address the similarities and dissimilarities between langue and other institutions. Saussure's elaboration on language as a social fact helps to define the real object of linguistics and identify the nature of linguistic sign, thus orienting linguistics towards a new horizon. 

Ferdinand de Saussure (Saussure) in the 'Course in General Linguistics' in the several references to the proposition that language is a social fact. Perhaps because of his exposition is more fragmented, the lack of systematic, this proposition has failed to arouse sufficient interest contemporary scholars. In fact, Saussure's linguistic theory of social facts are not simply a general discussion, but rather implies a profound ideological content of the proposition, derived from his view of language was a profound historical linguistics reflection by Whitney (Whitney ) the impact of linguistic thought and sociological method of great debate at the time of infection. 

 

APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND LINGUISTICS

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology, and sociology.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The tradition of applied linguistics established itself in part as a response to the narrowing of focus in linguistics with the advent in the late 1950s of generative linguistics, and has always maintained a socially accountable role, demonstrated by its central interest in language problems.

Although the field of applied linguistics started from Europe and the United States, the field rapidly flourished in the international context.

Applied linguistics first concerned itself with principles and practices on the basis of linguistics. In the early days, applied linguistics was thought as “linguistics-applied” at least from the outside of the field. In the 1960s, however, applied linguistics was expanded to include language assessment, language policy, and second language acquisition. As early as the 1970s, applied linguistics became a problem-driven field rather than theoretical linguistics. Applied linguistics also included solution of language-related problems in the real world. By the 1990s, applied linguistics has broadened including critical studies and multilingualism. Research of applied linguistics was shifted to "the theoretical and empirical investigation of real world problems in which language is a central issue.

GROWTH OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS

American linguistics has been historically central to the emergence of the discipline generally as synchronic descriptive research on many languages received its greatest academic support and research funding in the United States.

The growth of American linguistics began when European anthropological linguistics arrived in North American to study and record native-American languages bedore many of those languages disappeared.

GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS

Generative linguistics includes a set of explanatory theories developed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. It opposes the behaviourist theory and structuralism.

Generative theory is distinguished from other traditions by distinguishing competence and performance, which distinguishes in the act of speech its linguistic capacity. Thus, under this approach, each speaker has a linguistic organ specialized in the analysis and production of complex structures forming the speech. In other words, every language form an observable structure, result of an innate system (read "genetic"), and universally shared. It is therefore necessary, according to this school of thought, to understand the structure of this system and its behavior.

CURRENT GENERATIVE THEORY

In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences. In most approaches to generative grammar, the rules will also predict themorphology of a sentence.

Generative grammar originates in the work of Noam Chomsky, beginning in the late 1950s. Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called transformational grammar, and this term is still used as a collective term that includes his subsequent theories. There are a number of competing versions of generative grammar currently practiced within linguistics. Chomsky's current theory is known as the Minimalist program. Other prominent theories include or have included head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, categorial grammar, relational grammar, link grammar and tree-adjoining grammar.

Chomsky has argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from an "innate" universal grammar. Proponents of generative grammar have argued that most grammar is not the result of communicative function and is not simply learned from the environment (see poverty of the stimulus argument). In this respect, generative grammar takes a point of view different from cognitive grammar, functional and behaviorist theories.

Most versions of generative grammar characterize sentences as either grammatically correct (also known as well formed) or not. The rules of a generative grammar typically function as an algorithm to predict grammaticality as a discrete (yes-or-no) result. In this respect, it differs from stochastic grammar, which considers grammaticality as a probabilistic variable. However, some work in generative grammar (e.g. recent work by Joan Bresnan) uses stochastic versions of optimality theory

DESCRIPTIVE SYNTAX

 The descriptivist approach initiated by De Saussure and developed in the United States under Boas did not disappear with the rise of the behavioristically oriented American structural linguistics. In the United States, many anthropological linguistics continued descriptive research on native-American languages.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, these British grammarians/linguistics developed major corpuses of the English language which were used, in turn, as resources for an extremely influential modern descriptive grammar of English.

At the present time, this line of linguistic research is becoming more popular as the use of computers in analyzing the corpuses increases Sociolinguistic research  comparing oral and written varieties of language make extensive use of descriptive grammars.

FUNCTIONAL AND TYPOLOGICAL THEORIES

Functional linguists interested in the shapping influence of chafe, Hawkins, Kuno and Thompson.

A functional linguistic id concerned about discouse.

Holliday’s influence emphasis on discourse and communication, competence performance and language has been adadpted to the needs of humans.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTIC AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTIC:

Grouded in European structuralism and influence by Sapir’s.

It study discourse uses of language in various social context.

SOCIOLINGUISTIC:

It was recognize as a major alternative discipline to formal approaches to linguistic.

Phonetics: phonology; morphology; syntax; pragmatics and semantics.

It stuy of language variation and its relations to different social context.