Of what is use language?

Project

Group:

English Philology I

Academic year: 2012/2013

1. Introduction

Language is extremely important. Firstly, thanks to language, we can communicate with each other to form social bonds. Each word or phrase has a meaning, and the whole complex creates unique of significance. Other person can infers understanding. Moreover, we can express our emotions and opinions. This is important in the expression of self-identity and independence from the other.

Our group created draft about "What is use of language" based on our own experiences, knowledge, and wise linguistic books.

2. What is the language?

• Definition:

A human system of communication that uses arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. The study of language is called linguistics.

• "A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates."(B. Bloch and G. Trager, Outline of Linguistic Analysis. Waverly Press, 1942).

• "From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.„ (Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, 1957).

Picture by Dave Gray

All in all, language performs an important social function in that is allows people to express their identities, to show their solidarity with others and, of course, on occasion, to achieve some distancing too. No other species has anything like language that members of that species can use to do these kinds of things.

3. Language as action

1. What do we mean by action?

“We do things with words”(Austin, 1962).

This means people talk to each other to construct and order the affairs of their ordinary social activities, to act in social identities and roles, to form and maintain social relationships and group memberships, or formal and recognizable organizations and institutions, or to collaborate for work. We might ask, answer a question, agree, dissagree, greet, joke, tell, explain, etc.

When people communicate with each other, they are aware of their utterances. For this reason, we design and coordinate what they say. We do this in order to adapt to a particular situation or moment in which we are. Language in interaction is not just transmitter, but is used to implement a social action.

2. What is important in communication?

Communication is the exchange of information between the participants. We can communicate through words, gestures, texts, images or sounds. So, what is important in communication? The answer is simple. Here are some examples:

• Voice quality

• Posture

• Distance

• Glancing

• Looking

• Eye contact

• Loudness

• Speech rhythms

• Habits of pausing

• Gestures

• Accents

By following these examples, when we see the conversation between people we can quickly and easily perceive what the atmosphere is between them.

Communication allows for memory. Language allows people to build communities, not bounded by either the recent past but on the basis of abstractions and speculations about past, present and future, and of ideas and ideals that all members of the community share. It gives people new powers of adapting to the environment to them for good or ill. Animal 'culture 'cannot be changed in the same way.

4. Language in action (by John Perry and Ken Taylor)

1. John Perry and Ken Taylor

Scientists John Perry and Ken Taylor illustrated how language in action can be. Initially they claimed that language in action can be proceeding through vagueness's arising from everyday language use. Comprehension of language was thought to originate in words however most of language seems based on intention. Thanks to implicatute of language they showed that people understand each other so well with a few words. People use the implicit meaning of words in communication. Through many analysis they claimed that we can communicate with and without words. We have not to use words to communication.

2. Language uses

Language is use to :

• comunication

• presenting facts and opinion

• presenting beliefs

• giving statements

• demonstrating expertises

• arguing experiences

5. Functions of language

Any of the kinds of things can be done in, or through the use of, language. Thus an utterance may give information, show that the speaker is angry, is trying to get someone to do something, and so on.

Two influential typologies are those of Bühler in the 1930s and Jakobson in 1960. Bühler's distinguishes the Darstellung 'representation' function (that of representing states of the world) from the Ausdruck 'expression' function (in reflecting states of mind of the speaker) and the Appell (literally, 'appeal') function, in being directed towards a hearer. In Jakobson's scheme, these are mirrored in large part by the referential, emotive, and conative functions, to which are added three others: the phatic function (of simply maintaining contact between people), the metalingual or metalinguistic (of elucidating the language itself that is being used), and the poetic, defined by attention to the form, as such, of what is said. Among later schemes, that of Lyons in the 1970s distinguishes the descriptive function (corresponding to Bühler's representational or Jakobson's referential) from the social and expressive functions, together classed as interpersonal.

Referential function - the function of language involving reference to entities, events, states of affairs, etc.

Emotive function -- the function of language having to do with the feelings of the speaker.

Conative function - the function of language in trying to get an addressee to do, think, etc. what the speaker wishes. From the Latin word for 'to try' (infinitive conari); defined by Jakobson in 1960 in terms of orientation towards an addressee, as opposed to orientation towards the world (the referential function) or orientation towards the speaker (the emotive function).

Phatic function - the function of language in maintaining or developing relations between speakers. Phatic communion was defined by the anthropologist B. Malinowski in the 1920s as 'a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words'. The phatic function was defined by Jakobson in 1960 in terms of orientation towards the physical and psychological contact between speaker and addressee, as opposed to orientation towards either individually, or towards the state of the world, etc.

Metalinguistic function - the function of language in referring to itself; cf. metalanguage. Called by Jakobson the 'metalingual' function.

Poetic function - the function of language defined by Jakobson in terms of orientation towards, or focus on, 'the message for its own sake'. Thus, in ordinary speech, it is by virtue of the poetic function that, e.g. in coordination, one will tend to put shorter phrases first: `I remember especially the wine and the view from the terrace,' rather than, although in terms of other functions they are equivalent, `the view from the terrace and the wine.'

Interpersonal function - the function of language in developing and maintaining social relations between people. Alternatively, that is said to be the social function: the interpersonal then includes both that and the expressive (affective, emotive) function.

The Referential Function- This is the most obvious function of language, when you use words to indicate things or facts.

Expressive Function - One of the functions of a linguistic sign, consisting in the ability to express the speaker's emotional state and his subjective attitude toward designated objects and phenomena of reality.

6. References

1. Ashley, Leonard R.N. 2009. Language in action. Xlibris Corp

2. Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Linguistics and Poetics. Cambridge: MIT Press

3. Lyons, John. 1981. Language and linguistics. Cambridge: University Press

4. Middleton, Richard. 1990/2002. Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press

5. Nevile, Maurice & Rendle-Short, Johanna. 2007. Language as action: Australian studies in conversation analysis. Melbourne: Monash University ePress, and Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (eds.)

6. Wardhaug Ronald.1993. Investigating Language. Oxford: Blackwell Publisher

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