Concepts and

Nature of
Language
 What is language?

Webster’s New World Dictionary provides some senses of the

word “language”, namely
1) (a) human speech;
(b) The ability to communicate by this means
(c) A system of vocal sounds and combinations of such
sounds to which meaning is attributed, used for the
expression or communication of thoughts and feelings
(d) The written representation of such a system’
2) (a) any means of expressing or communicating, as
gestures, signs, or animal sounds
(b) A special set of symbols, leters, numerals, rules etc.
used for the transmisson of information, as in a
computer; ...
 Language is a means of verbal communication.
 It is instrumental.
 It is social and conventional.
 Language learning and use are determined by the
intervention of biological, cognitive, psucho-social, and
environmental factors.
 Design features of language

1. Arbitrariness
2. Duality
3. Creativity
4. Displacement
 Arbitrariness
 The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning
(refer to Week 1 slides).

 Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.

Case: onomatopoeia.

 Arbitratiness at the syntactic level.

Case: (Systemic Functionalist and American Functnionalist)
(a) He came in and sat down.
(b) He sat down and came in.
(c) He sat down after he came in.

 Arbitrariness and convention.

 Duality
 By duality is meant the property of having two levels of
structures, such that units of the primary level are composed
of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels
has its own principales of organization (Lyons, 1981, p.20)

 It deals with language hierarchy; stratification.

 Creativity

 By creativity we mean language is resourceful because of

its duality and its recursiveness.

 It is also potential to create endless sentences.

For example: He bought a book which was written by a
teacher who taught in a school which was known for its
graduates who ...
 Displacement

 Displacement means that human langauges enable their

users to symbolize objects, events, and concepts which are
not present (in time and space) at the moment of
communication.

 Displacement benefits human beings by giving them the

power to handle generalizations and abstractions.
 Functions of Language
 Roman Jacobson in Linguistics and Poetics (1960) defined six
primary factors of any speech event, namely: speaker, addressee,
context, message, code, and contact.

 Based on the elements of communication, Jacobson established

a well-known framework of language functions, namely
1. Referential (to convey message and information)
2. Poetic (to indulge in language for its own sake)
3. Emotive (to express attitudes, feelings, and emotions)
4. Conative (to persuade and influence others through
commands and requests)
5. Phatic (to establish communion with others)
6. Metalingual (to clear up intentions and meanings)
 Michael A. K. Halliday (1994) proposes a theory of metafunctions of
language.
1. Ideational function constructs a model of experience as well as logical
relations,
2. Interpersonal function enacts social relationships,
3. Textual function creates relevance to context.

 In his earlier works, Halliday proposed 7 categories of language functions by

observing child language development.
1. Instrumental: used to achieve certain result,
2. Regulatory: controls the behaviours of others,
3. Representational: the use of language to refer to things, objects, people,
events,
4. Interactional: the communicative use of language in speech situation
5. Personal: to convey information about people and their relationship,
6. Heuristic: to comprehend thing and solve problems,
7. Imaginative: to create imaginary world to help us understand abstract
ideas.
The End