Lesson 1
Introduction
Why Study Language?
• Language can be used as a way of finding out more
about:
• how our brains work, investigating how children learn
language, or how damage to our brains results in certain
kind of language disorders (psycholinguistics)
• how to learn and to teach different languages (applied
linguistics)
• the relationship between meaning, language and perception
(philosophy)
Why Study Language?
●the role of language in different cultures (anthropology)
●the styles of language used in literature (stylistics)
●the different varieties of language people use, and why there are
linguistic differences between different groups
(sociolinguistics)
●how to make computers more sophisticated (artificial
intelligence)
Language: A System
• One of the obvious ways of thinking about language is as a
systematic way of combining smaller units into larger units for the
purpose of communication.
• Firstly, there would only be one signal (group of letters or
sounds) for every meaning.
• Secondly, there would be a limited number of meanings and signals
available.
Language: The Potential to Create New
Meanings
• One of the reasons why language is actually a far more complicated
entity than traffic lights is that we can use it to create new meanings. Here are
some expressions which illustrate language being used creatively to
express new meanings:
• unleaving
• McDonaldisation
• being perved at
• uptitling
Language: Multiple Functions
• The referential function is the one associated with what objects and
ideas are called and how events are described (i.e. how we
represent the world around us and the effects of those representations
on the way we think.
• The affective function of language is concerned with who is ‘allowed’ to
say what to whom, which is deeply tied up with power and social
status.
Language: Multiple Functions
• Aesthetic– focuses on the message as well as the way the message is
communicated. The message might be embellished with rhetorical figures of
speech or flower language.
• Phatic – used to establish a social connection without really communicating
any meaningful information.
Language Diversity
• the aspect of who speaks what language
• what variety of that language they speak
Language and Power
• Power is a complex and abstract concept, and an infinitely important influence on our lives.
• It is ‘the ability of its holders to exact compliance or obedience of other
individuals to their will’. (The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought,1999)
• The Dictionary then quotes the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau: ‘The strongest man is never strong enough always to be master
unless he transforms his power into right and obedience into duty’.
• Language has a key role in transforming power into right and obedience into duty.