Reported by: Susanna Rose A.

Labastilla
MA Speech Communication

NATURE OF LANGUAGE
What is Language?

 Language is a speech. Speech is language.

The written record but a secondary
representation of the language. – Charles
Fries
 Language is a system of signals conforming
to the rules which constitutes its grammar. It
is a set of culturally transmitted behavior
patterns shared by a group of individuals. –
Joseph Greenberg
What is Language?

 Language is a code: a set of elements forms

composed of sounds, letters, their
combinations…into words, sentences,
etc…used for communication between
individuals who share the same rules. – Roger
Bell
 Language is a system which relates meaning
to substance. It is a mental phenomenon that
is innate. All children in the world over
acquire a mother language. – Noam Chomsky
What is Language?

 When we use language we are not just saying

something. We are doing something as well,
like promising, asking information, etc. –
Searle and Austin
 Language has two elements. One is cognitive,
active which comprises the linguistic features
of the language. The other is emotive or
effective. - Oller
What is Language?

 Meaning does not reside in the words per se

but in the context of the situation. –
Malinowski
 For communication to take place, the sender
and receiver of the message should have
shared presuppositions. - Widdowson
Function of Language

 Do you recall what Searle and Austin said

about the nature of language?
 They said----when we say something we are
also doing something as we say it.
What They Say What They are Doing
A. You did this. Accusing
B. Of course not! Denying
A. Who did it then? Asking information
B. Why don’t you try asking Making suggestion
Ben?
A. I’ll do that. Accepting suggestion
B. I’m sorry I was quick to Apologizing
blame you.
 Shifting Theories of
Language
Theory A Theory B
First a bright person comes up with an idea
and expound on it. This is his thesis. Others see
the wisdom of his assertion or thesis and so
they follow him and a school of thought is
born.
But then another brilliant person reacts to
what the first person said and a takes the
opposite stand . That becomes the antithesis.
He too, will have followers of his own.
A third one comes and sees the wisdom of
both school of thought. She tries to put the
two together and so comes up with the
synthesis.
But the swing to the other end continues,
followed by another reaction, resulting to a
continuous swinging from one end to the
other. But with its swing and counter
movement, something new is added.
First, some perceptive mind observes what
happens and comes up with an idea or
paradigm. That results in the emergence of
paradigm.
Other agree with the idea and even try to
refine it. So then paradigm enter the mature
science period and many schools subscribing
to that paradigm develop.
Then someone find a follow or anomaly in the
paradigm at first , there are attempts to
reconcile the anomaly. But soon nothing can
be done to correct and so a new paradigm is
born.
The new paradigm goes through the same
process of maturing until an anomaly is again
discovered and the cycle continues. But with
each cycle and new paradigm, something is
added.
Shifting Theories of
Language
Theory A
Thesis
Antithesis

synthesis
Shifting Theories of
Language
 Theory B
Refinement Discovery of
Emergency of
and Maturity Anomaly in the
Paradigm
of Paradigm Paradigm

Shift to the Attempts to

new reconcile the
paradigm anomaly
 In the beginning….
 Latin based grammar
 Latin was classical language
 Aged of Classical Humanism
 1900s language were studied independently as a
system
 Sounds as the smallest unit
 Sounds – words – utterance – sentences –
paragraph or discourse
 Language is a structure, a system, where the lower
units combined to form the next higher units.
 The structural approach of language prevailed up to
1960s
In the beginning….

Discourse
Paradigm

Grammar of
Sentences

Meaningful Units-Words and

Affixes
Significant Sounds
1960s Anomaly….

 In the 1960s, an anomaly was found in the

theory of language.
 The anomaly was that, sometimes you use
the same form but come up with different
meanings.
 The function of utterance counts; this is its
illocutionary force.
 The expected response is the perlocutionary
force
Three Forces

 In such an instance were all three forces –

lucotionary, illocutinary, and perlocutionary –
are considered, language is viewed not just as
a system made up of forms but as a means of
communication.
 Communicative Competence

Communicative
Competence

Linguistic Sociolinguistics Discoursal Strategic

Competence Competence Competence Competence
 What really is language?
 Language sets human being apart from other animals.
 Getting to speak a language is innate among human beings.
 This means that every person is programmed to acquire hi/her
native language provided he/she is exposed to it.
 The ability to speak language is specific to our species
 Even without formal training, a child by the time he/she
reaches five years old, has internalized the grammar of his/her
native tongue.
 Every native speaker therefore, becomes competence in
his/her own language.
 Those who become competent in two languages are said to be
bilingual while those who attain competence in more than two
languages are called polyglots.
Linguistic

 Linguistics is defined by William G. Moulton

as “ the branch of learning which studies the
language of any and all human societies: how
such a language is constructed; how it varies
through space and changes through time;
how it is related to other languages; how it is
used by its speakers.”
Moulton points out that
fundamental to all branches of
linguistics are some basic
questions namely:
 What is language?
 How does it work?
 What happens when a speaker says something
and a hearer understands him/her?
Two Main Branches of
Linguistics
 Theoretical linguistics is concerned with the nature
of language and its components.
 Grammarians study the significant units of a
language and their patterns of arrangement. They
try to arrive at the rules of correct usage of the
language they are investigating and they put down
their findings into writing.
 Applied linguistics has to do with language use,
how it is learned and acquired, and how it may be
taught.
 Those concerned with what enables one to acquire a
language and with methods of teaching a language
are applied linguists.
 Linguistics

Theoretical
Linguistics

Synchronic Diachronic
Studies Studies

Descriptive Comparative Historical

linguistics linguistics linguistics

Phonology Morphology Syntax Discourse

Articulator Free Structural Text

y Phonetics Morphemes Grammar Analysis

Acoustic Bound Semantic Genre

Phonetics Morphemes Grammar Analysis
Pedagogica
l Grammar
What is Applied Linguistics?

 Field of study that identifies, investigates,

and offers solution to language related
problems.
 It can be applied to all aspects of language
use. It deals with mother, foreign, second
language acquisition.
 It describes the language, and teaches how it
is used.
What is Applied Linguistics?

Linguistics

Applied
Education
Linguistics
Applied Linguistics Application

 Clinical Linguistics – analysis and treatment

of language disorders
 Language Acquisition – language 1 and
language 2
 Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages –
developing foreign language teaching
methods
 Educational Linguistics – the use of the
mother tongue in school
Applied Linguistics Application

 Lexicography – theory and practice in

organizing dictionaries; methods and
techniques for creating dictionaries
 Computational Linguistics – the use of
computers in language analysis and use
 Machine Translation – computerized
translation
 ASR – Automatic Speech Recognition
Applied Linguistics Application

 Language Assessment – to measure students

learning of languages, to determine what a
student knows and/ or can do and how well
instruction is proceeding.
 Forensic Linguistics – the application of
linguistic knowledge, methods and insights
to the context of law, language, crime
investigation, trial, experts, court, evidence,
law, jurislinguistique.
Applied Linguistics
Application
 Data Mining – the process of processing large
volumes of data usually stored in a database and
searching for patterns and relationship within
that data. It is automatic extraction and
processing of data.
 Language pedagogy – theory of developing
teaching methods
 Psycholinguistics – the study of the
psychological factors that enable humans to
acquire, use, comprehend and produce speech,
relationship between language and human
behavior.
Applied Linguistics
Application
 Internet Linguistics – it studies new language
styles and forms that have arisen under the
influence of the Internet and Short Message
Service (SMS)
 Sociolinguistics – study of the link between
language and society
 Neurolinguistics – describes the aplication of
linguistic theories to the classification and
analysis of acquired disorders of language or
speech in patients with brain damage
Applied Linguistics
Application
 Language Interpretation – facilitating of oral
or sign language communication between
user of different languages
 Corpus linguistics – the study of language as
expressed in samples (corpora) or “real world”
text; it is approach to deriving a set of
abstract rules b y which a natural language is
governed or else relates to another language
Applied Linguistics
Application
 Text Analysis – written discourse
 Language Culture, and Pragmatics – cultural
aspects in language teaching in intercultural
communication
 Language Control/ Dialectology – study of
linguistic dialect, variations in language and is
based primarily on geographic distribution;
divergence of two local dialect from a
common ancestor and synchronic variation
 Education – Sociology – the
teaching, learning, scientific study of
APPLIED
acquisition, human social
LINGUISTICS
assessment behavior and study
Linguistics – The of the society
study of the nature,
structure, and Anthropology – the Psychology – the
variation of scientific study of science of mind and
language, including the origin and behavior, and the
phonetics, behavior of man, application of such
phonology, including the knowledge of various
morphology and the physical, social, and spheres of human
study of human cultural activity, such as
speech, language development of education, health,
form, language societies and occupational and
meaning and cultures employment services
language in context
Important Contribution of
Linguistics to the Classroom
Teacher
 I still believe that the most important contribution
that linguistics can make to the classroom teacher is
in reshaping his view of language and of language
learning. These are matters of attitude and concept
rather than one of grammatical analysis as
compared with another or of a series of judgments
about the acceptability of any number of specific
forms and expressions. Linguistically sound
materials can be expected to produce satisfactory
results only when they are used by linguistically
knowledgeable and sophisticated teachers. Such
sophistication rests upon an understanding of
certain principles.
 - Albert M. Marckwardt
Language Teachers should…

 Focus on change and development of :

* her views on language
* her ideas about language learning
* her attitudes
* her concepts
Remember….

 It might be pointed out that no matter how good

the findings of linguistics are, if they are not
picked up and put to use by the teacher, then
they are to no avail. They will, in effect, never
reach the students who are the end users.
 It might be pointed out that knowledge is in a
continuous state of flux. What might be true
today may be modified some years hence.
 As such, it is not so much the findings that count
but rather the openness of the teacher to new
developments and her willingness to give them a
try.
Remember….

 Any materials of linguistics will produce good

results if it is in the hand of knowledgeable
teacher.
 Aware of the principles underlying the
material, perceptive teacher will know what
to do with it and how it if need be so it may
be used to advantage.
Remember….

 The language teacher, therefore, are a very

important cog in the machine of language
teaching and language learning.
 In the words of a movie scriptwriter, the song
(in this case theoretical linguistics) is important,
but in the long run it is “ the singer and not the
song” ( here referring to the language teacher)
who puts life to it.
Thank you for listening. …….