2S-FIL02
 Masistemang balangkas
Introduksyon
Malaki ang ginampanan ng wika sa pagbuo ng mga sinaunang
sibilisasyon at hanggang ngayon kasama pa rin natin ito sa
ating pag-unlad. Ang wika ay lubos nating nagagamit sa ating
pang-araw-araw na pamumuhay. Nagagamit natin ito sa mga
larangan ng edukasyon, agham, teknolohiya, komersyo at
kalakalan, politika, at marami pang iba.
Sa paglipas ng panahon, nagkaroon ng iba't ibang
kahulugan ang wika. Ayon kay Haring Psammatichos ng
Ehipto, ang wika ay sadyang natutunan. Ayon kay Plato, isang
Griyegong iskolar, ang wika ay nagmula sa batas ng
pangangailangan ng tao. Ayon sa pag-aaral ni Charles Darwin,
ang pakikipagsapalaran ng mga tao upang mabuhay ang
siyang nagturo ssa kanila upang lumikha ng wika. Sa pananaw
naman ni Rene Descartes, isang pilosopong Pranses, ang wika
ay nagpapatunay ng pagkakaiba-iba ng mga tao.Batay sa
prinsipyo ni Ferdinand de Saussure, isang functionalist, mas
kailangan daw pagtuunan ng pansin ang anyo at paraan ng
wikang ginagamit ng isang nagsasalita sa halip na pagtuunan
ng kahulugan nito. Ayon kay Emile Durkheim, ang tinaguriang
"Ama ng Makabagong Sosyolohiya",ang tao raw ay
nabubuhay,nakikipagtalastasan at nakikisama sa lipunang
kinabibilangan niya.
Ayon kay Roman Jakobson, isang Ruso-Amerikanong
dalubwika,may anim (6) na paraan ng paggamit ng wika:
Pagpaphayag ng damdamin (Emotive)
Panghihikayat (Connative)
Pagsisimula ng pakikipag-ugnayan (Phatic)
Paggamit bilang sanggunian (Referential)
Pagbibgay ng kuru-kuro (Metalingual)
Patalinghaga (Poetic)
Ayon kay Michael Halliday, isang British na dalubwika
na ipinaganak sa Australya, may pitong (7) tungkulin ang
wika:
 Pang-instrumental
 Panregulatori
 Pang-interaksyon
 Pampersonal
 Pang-imahinasyon
 Pangheuristiko
 Pang-impormatibo
Ayon kay Henry Allan Gleason, isang dalubwika at
propesor sa Pamantasan ng Toronto sa Estados Unidos, ang
wika ay masistemang balangkas.Lahat ng wika ay nakabatay
ng mga Ponema o mga tunog.Kapag ang mga ponema ay
pinagsama-sama ito ay nakakabuo ng isang maliit na yunit na
salita na tinatawag ng Morpema.At ang mga pinagsama-
samang morpema ay nakakabuo ng isang Pangngusap.
Habang ang mga pinagsama-samang mga pangungusap ay
nakabuo ng isang Talata na bumubuo sa mga lathain. At ayon
rin kay Gleason, may pitong (7) katangian ang wika:
 Sinasalitang tunog
 Pinili at isinaayos sa paraang arbitraryo
 Kabuhol ng kultura
 Ginagamit sa komunikasyon
 Nagbabago
 Natatangi
 Ayon kay Leonard Bloomfield (1935), "Ang
bilinggwalismo ay ang pagkakaroon ng magkasintunog na
gamit at kontrol ng dalawang magkaibang wika na
ginagamit ng isang indibidwal."
Structural linguistics was developed by Ferdinand de Saussure
between 1913 and 1915, although his work wasn’t translated
into English and popularized until the late 1950s. Before
Saussure, language was studied in terms of the history of
changes in individual words over time, or diachronically, and
it was assumed that words somehow imitated the objects for
which they stood. Saussure realized that we need to
understand language, not as a collection of individual words
with individual histories but as a structural system of
relationships among words as they are used at a given point
in time, or synchronically. This is the structuralist focus.
Structuralism doesn’t look for the causes or origins of
language (or of any other phenomenon). It looks for the rules
that underlie language and govern how it functions: it looks
for the structure.
In order to differentiate between the structure that governs
language and the millions of individual utterances that are its
surface phenomena, Saussure called the structure of
language langue (the French word for language), and he
called the individual utterances that occur when we speak
parole (the French word for speech). For the structuralist, of
course, langue is the proper object of study; parole is of
interest only in that it reveals langue. And these terms are
used, as well, by structuralists who study literature: as we’ll
see later, structuralist critics look for the langue that
structures individual literary works and that structures the
system of literature as a whole.
The components of a structure are not merely a collection of
independent items: they form a working unit because they
exist in relation to one another. They interact. And we are
able to perceive those components, as Saussure noted in
terms of the structure of language, only because we perceive
their difference from one another. Difference simply means
that our ability to identify an entity (such as an object, a
concept, or a sound) is based on the difference we perceive
between it and all other entities. For example, if we believed
that all objects were the same color, we wouldn’t need the
word red (or blue or green) at all. Red is red only because we
perceive it to be different from blue and green. According to
structuralism, the human mind perceives difference most
readily in terms of opposites, which structuralists call binary
oppositions: two ideas, directly opposed, each of which we
understand by means of its opposition to the other. For
example, we understand up as the opposite of down, female
as the opposite of male, good as the opposite of evil, black as
the opposite of white, and so on.
Furthermore, unlike his predecessors, Saussure argued that
words do not simply refer to objects in the world for which
they stand. Instead, a word is a linguistic sign consisting, like
the two sides of a coin, of two inseparable parts: signifier +
signified. A signifier is a “sound-image” (a mental imprint of a
linguistic sound); the signified is the concept to which the
signifier refers. Thus, a word is not merely a sound-image
(signifier), nor is it merely a concept (signified). A sound
image becomes a word only when it is linked with a concept.
Furthermore, the relationship between signifier and signified,
Saussure observed, is arbitrary: there is no necessary
connection between a given sound-image and the concept to
which it refers. There is no reason why the concept of a tree
should be rep‑ resented by the sound-image “tree” instead
of by the sound-image “arbre”; the concept of a book is just
as well represented by the sound-image “livre” as the sound-
image “book.” The relationship between signifier and
signified is merely a matter of social convention: it’s whatever
the community using it says it is.
The idea that signifiers, or linguistic sound-images, do not
refer to things in the world but to concepts in our mind is
crucial for structuralism. As we noted earlier, structuralists
believe that our perceptions of the world result from the
conceptual framework that is an innate feature of human
consciousness. We don’t discover the world; we “create” it
according to innate structures within the human mind. Given
that language is the most fundamental of these structures,
and the one through which our beliefs are passed on from
one generation to the next, it makes sense that it is through
language that we learn to conceive and perceive the world
the way we do. This is why learning a new language carries
with it the potential to learn to see the world in new ways.
If native speakers of English learn to speak an Eskimo
language, for example, they may learn to see snow quite
differently, for they will learn that there are many different
words for what English calls snow, depending on the size and
texture of the flake, the density of the snowfall, the angle at
which it falls, the direction from which the storm originates,
and so on. Similarly, if native speakers of English learn to
speak Spanish, they may learn a new way to view the idea of
human existence, for they will learn that Spanish has two
different verbs for the English verb to be: ser and estar. Ser
means “to be” in the sense of what one permanently
considers oneself. One uses ser to say “I am a human being,”
“I am a woman,” “I am Mexican,” and the like. One uses estar
to make statements about one’s changeable state of being,
such as “I am at the supermarket” or “I am a cab driver.” And
one uses neither ser nor estar to say “I am hungry” or “I am
sleepy,” for in Spanish these are not considered states of
being. In Spanish one has hunger or sleepiness—tengo
hambre or tengo sueño—but these are not states of being.
Thus, when speaking a particular language, our attention is
drawn to particular aspects of our experience, or more
precisely, particular experiences are generated by that
language. In other words, our language mediates our
experience of our world and ourselves: it determines what
we see when we look around us and when we look at
ourselves.
The belief in the primacy of language in structuring human
experience is of great interest to many students of human
culture. Before we examine structuralist approaches to
literature, let’s take a brief look at two related areas of
cultural study in which structuralist thought plays an
important role: structural anthropology, which is the
comparative study of human cultures, and semiotics, which is
the study of sign systems, especially as they apply to the
analysis of popular culture. Examples of structuralist activity
in both these areas can help us grasp the structuralist
enterprise as a whole and prepare us to better understand its
applications to literature.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
R. S. Badhesha Spring 2002
It is often thought that the reality expressed in spoken
word is the very same as the reality which is perceived in
thought. Perception and expression are frequently
understood to be synonymous and it is assumed that our
speech is based on our thoughts. This idea presumes that
what one says is dependant of how it is encoded and
decoded in the mind. However, there are many that believe
the opposite: what one perceives is dependent on the spoken
word. To the followers of this idea, thought is dependant on
language. Linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin
Lee Whorf are known for their part in the popularization of
this very principle. Their collective theory, know as the Sapir-
Whorf Hypothesis or more commonly the Theory of Linguistic
Relativity, holds great significance in the scope of all
communication theory. The theory also fulfills the criteria,
which essentially determine its workability.
The Theory of Linguistic Relativity holds that: one’s
language shapes one’s view of reality. It is a mould theory in
that it “represents language as a mould in terms of which
thought categories are cast” (Chandler, 2002, p.1). More
basically, it states that thought is cast from language-what
you see is based on what you say.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis can be divided into two basic
components: Linguistic Determinism and Linguistic Relativity.
The first part, linguistic determinism, refers to the concept
that what is said, has only some effect on how concepts are
recognized by the mind. This basic concept has been broken
down even further into “strong” and “weak” determinism
(The Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses, 2002, p.1). Strong
determinism refers to a strict view that what is said is directly
responsible for what is seen by the mind. In an experiment
done by two Australian scientists, Peterson and Siegal, this
view of determinism is shown to be supported. In the
experiment, deaf children view a doll, which is placed a
marble in a box. The children then see the marble removed
and placed in a basket after the doll is taken away. They are
later asked where they believe the doll will look for the
marble upon returning. Overwhelmingly, the deaf children
with deaf parents answer correctly (that the doll will look in
the box). The deaf children with non-deaf parents answer
mostly incorrectly.
The experiment showed clearly the relationship between
deaf children whose parents have communicated with them
through complex sign language and their being able to get
the correct answer. The children, having grown up in an
environment with complex language (American Sign
Language) recognized that the doll would probably look to
where she had placed the marble. The other children, who
had not grown up in a stable linguistic environment (their
parents not being hearing impaired and thus not being fluent
in ASL) were not able to see the relationship. These results
lead the experimenter John R. Skoyles to believe that the
Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis was correct according to strong
determinism (Current Interpretation…, p.1-2).
The other view on determinism, weak determinism,
recognizes that there is indeed some affect on perception of
one’s language, but that this is not as clear as in strong
determinism. For instance, in weak determinism language
does not define one’s view of the world, whereas, in strong
determinism this view is defined strictly by language.
The second division of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is
linguistic relativism. This part of the hypothesis can be
defined: “distinctions encoded in one language are unique to
that language along,” and that “there is no limit to the
structural diversity of languages” (The Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis, p.1). As stated by Sapir himself:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor
alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood,
but are very much at the mercy of the particular language
which has become the medium of expression for their
society…The fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a
large extent unconsciously built on the language habits of the
group…We see and hear and otherwise experience very
largely as we do because the language habits of our
community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (as
cited in Litteljohn, 2002, p. 177).
This view of cognition can be more simply defined as
meaning: the language which one is brought up in (socially
exposed to and taught) is the language that that person will
think and perceive the world in.
Linguistic relativity opens the window to the realization
that all languages do not translate to each other. One such
example is of the Punjabi word “joot.” This word in its most
literal translation to English means the “unclean,” “not pure,”
or “with-germs” (as in half eaten food). No matter how many
definitions one tries to construct—“joot” cannot be
translated in its full meaning. This brings to mind that notion
that language is relative, thus the same word can have
different meanings for different people and these subjective
meanings let rise varying cognitions. Linguist Ferruccio Rossi
Landi paraphrases “that the formal relationships of language
exert an influence on the rest of social life and on the way of
thinking of the speaker of that language”(Language As Work
& Trade, 1983, p.114).
Indeed language does have an effect on thinking and
the Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis very pragmatically presents this.
The first concept provided within the theory, linguistic
determination, makes sense when applied to reality. In
actual thought one does indeed perceive concepts and
objects in accordance to the words used to describe them. In
a personal experiment I individually asked a group of my
peers what they saw (in their “minds-eye”) when I said the
word “table.” More than half of them saw a dining table, a
few saw a coffee table, and one saw a mathematical table.
This showed me that although all of the responses I received
had specific names (dining table, coffee table, etc.), their
naming was triggered by one broad word: table.
After determining that this portion did indeed make good
sense to me I continued my inquiry into the second portion of
the theory, linguistic relativity. I then went and asked an
elderly relative of mine from India if they were aware of a
word for coffee table in Punjabi (my ethnic language) and the
response was “no.” There is no word for coffee table…so if
they were asked to visualize a coffee table when they were
younger and still in their birth nation they would never have
cognitively recognized a coffee table (considering they were
monolingual). There is only one word for table, the word
“mech,” and it refers to a dining table.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis addresses the criteria that
are set forth for evaluation and meets them very well. The
first of these criteria is that of the theoretical scope. This
criterion refers to the comprehensiveness of a theory. When
looking at what is included in the possible factors of analysis
for this theory, one can see that there are many possibilities:
all of thought to be more accurate. Everything that is
encoded and decoded and the language used by society and
cultures used all are encompassed in this theory.
Appropriateness is also achieved by this theory. The
theory expects that the language by which one is surrounded
has an affect on how they decode and that encoding differs
from language-to-language and cannot always be translated.
In experimentation this has been tested and then shown. In
my experiment, mentions earlier, I anticipated that the word
“table” would bring to different minds--different images, all
because of the receiver’s different experiences with the
word. This was then proven when I actually asked the
question. This experiment also supports the heuristic value
of the theory. At the time of my experiment I had not even
thought of the heuristic value of the hypothesis. The theory
so interested me that I just did the experiment as a means of
personally verifying its validity.

This validity, which was tested and found to be

supported, is the next of the criteria. From the experiment as
well as from earlier, more notable ones it can be noted that
this theory holds great value. It also accomplishes
correspondence validity because the theory is very
observable and has been observed numerous times.

Furthermore, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is very simple

and logically sound. It makes complete sense that one’s
atmosphere and culture will have an affect on their decoding.
Referring back to the elderly Punjabi, they did not grow up
with coffee tables; therefore, it did not come to mind.
Likewise, in research done by the authors of the theory, many
Indian tribes do not have word for certain objects because
they do not exist in their lives. The logical plainness of this
idea of relativism clearly provides parsimony.

Finally, the Theory of Linguistic Relativity also achieves

openness successfully. The theory is shown as a window
through which to view the cognitive process, not as an
absolute. It is set forth to be used in looking at a
phenomenon differently than one usually would.

Pragmatically the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis makes sense.

It has the potential to be used in describing a great many
misunderstandings in everyday life. When one says a
Pennsylvanian says “yuns” it doesn’t make any sense to a
Californian, but when examines it is just another word for
“you all.” The Linguistic Relativity Theory addresses this and
points out that it is all-relative. This notion of relativity,
passes beyond dialect boundaries, and delves into the world
of language--from county-to-country and consequently from
mind-to-mind. Is language reality truly a ward of thought or
is it thought which occurs because of language. The Sapir
Wharf Hypothesis very transparently presents a view of
reality being expressed in language and thus forming in
thought. The principles outlined in its present a very
pragmatic and even simple view of how one perceives, but
the question is still debatable: thought then language or
language then thought?