Lecture 9

Modern Schools and Movements

Historicism
Structuralism
 Modern Schools and Movements
• Some of the 20th century schools and movements in linguistics, which have
shaped current attitudes and assumptions, are:
1. Historicism
2. Structuralism
3. Functionalism
4. Generativism
 Historicism

• The first movement is historicism.

• It is usually thought of as being characteristic of an earlier period of linguistic thought.
• It’s importance lies in the fact that it prepared the way to Structuralism.
• Hermann Paul (1880) indicated that linguistics is necessarily historical in character.
More particularly, historicist takes the view that the only kind of explanation valid in
linguistics is the kind of explanation which a historian might give: languages are as
they are because, in the course of time, they have been subject to a variety of internal
and external causal forces.
 Historicism
• It is the idea of attributing meaningful significance to space of time, such
as historical periods, geographical place and local culture.
• Historicism does not necessarily imply evolutionism: the view that there is
directionality in the historical development of languages. Although
evolutionism was quiet influential in linguistics in the late 19th century, it
was rejected by most linguists in the 20th century.
• Historicism is one of the movements against which structuralism reacted.
 Structuralism
• It is an identifiable movement in linguistics from the
publication of De Saussure’s Cours de linguistique
Générale (Course of General Linguistics) in 1916.
• Ferdinand de Saussure is the Founder of
Structuralism.
• He approaches language as a system (i.e, structure)
 Structuralism

• Structuralism is built on a set of concepts:

1. Synchronic and diachronic descriptions

2. Langue and parole
3. Syntagmatic and substitutional (or paradigmatic) relations
4. The sign
1- Synchronic and Diachronic descriptions

• Saussure differentiated between diachronic and synchronic point of view in the

study of language.
• Based on the neogrammarian view, linguistics as far as it is scientific and
explanatory must necessarily be historical. Against this view, Saussure
argued that the synchronic description of particular languages could be
equally scientific and explanatory.
 1- Synchronic and Diachronic modes

• Synchronic explanation differs from diachronic, or historical, explanation in being

structural, rather than casual. Structural description of a language tells us how all
the components fit together.
• Thus, instead of tracing the historical development of particular forms or
meanings, it demonstrates how all the forms and meaning are interrelated at a
particular point in time in a particular language-system.
• However, it is important to realize that Saussure was not denying diachronic mode of
explanation. What he was saying was that synchronic and diachronic modes of explanation
were complementary; and that the latter was logically dependent upon the former.
 Langue and Parole
• Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speech") are
linguistic terms used by Saussure.
• Langue is referring to the “abstract system or structure” of language such
as Syntax, Phonology.
• Parole individual’s speech utterances such as how the person/individual
speaks.
 Langue and Parole
• Langue (language) is a form which is independent of the physical
substance or medium in which it is realized.
• According to Saussure, a language-system is a structure that can be
abstracted from historical, social and psychological forces.
 Syntagmatic vs. Paradigmatic relations
A language is a two-level system:
• 1-Syntagmatic relation: is one where signs occur in sequence or parallel and operate
together to create meaning. It is a relation to combine elements on an horizontal
dimension, in a sentence. It shows internal relations within a language-system.
• 2- Paradigmatic relation (substitutional) is one where an individual’s sign may be
replaced by another. It is a relation on a vertical level and look at all the possible
elements that could come at the place of a certain element. It is a substitutional
relation.
Syntagmatic vs. Paradigmatic relations
 Sign
• According to Saussure, language-systems are semiotic systems (a system
of signs) in which the signifier (sound-image-word) and the signified
(concept or meaning) are arbitrarily associated with each other.
• Meanings cannot exist independently of the forms with which they are
associated and vice versa.
• The meaning of a word is the product of the semantic relations which hold
between that word and others in the same language-system.
Sign
 Conventional Language
• The correlation between form and meaning is conventional. This is due to
the arbitrary relationship between a word and its meaning; different words
in different languages refer to the same thing.
 Conventional Language
• Thus, every language has its own system which is independent of the
other languages.
• Saussure view of the uniqueness of language-system leads to the
movement of relativism that contrasted universalism in which there are
no universal properties of human languages.