Lecture III.
18.10.2012
JOHN LANGSHAW AUSTIN → british philosopher, who invented the theory of speech act → a technical term to call any act we perform (for example: “You are stupid!”→ an act of offending)
AVRAM NOAM CHOMSKY → born in 1958, came up with an idea of Generative Grammar, he was philosopher of language:
→Generative Grammar → tries to give a set of rules, which will correctly predict which combination of words will form grammatical sentences
→we are born with a certain set of knowledge to predict and understand the language
→Universal Grammar → there are some principles of grammar shared by all languages, and we are born with this knowledge
MICHAEL ALEXANDER KIRKWOOD HALLIDAY (M.A.K. HALLIDAY) → he identifies 7 functions that languages has for children in their early years:
Instrumental: This is when the child uses language to express their needs (e.g.'Want juice')
Regulatory: This is where language is used to tell others what to do (e.g. 'Go away')
Interactional: Here language is used to make contact with others and form relationships (e.g. 'Love you, mummy')
Personal: This is the use of language to express feelings, opinions, and individual identity (e.g. 'Me good girl')
↑ The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and social needs.
Heuristic: This is when language is used to gain knowledge about the environment (e.g. 'What the tractor doing?')
Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories and jokes, and to create an imaginary environment.
Representational: The use of language to convey facts and information.
↑ The three last functions help the child to come to terms with his or her environment.
For Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them.
DELL HATHAWAY HYMES → sociolinguistic and anthropologist, he developed the “SPEAKING” model → he described the elements of context which have influenced our language:
S → SETTING → all the physical condition in which the language is used (time and place)
P → PARTICIPANTS → people involved in communication (speaker and audience)
E → END GOAL → what we want to achieve in communication, purposes and outcomes
A → ACT SEQUENCE → the order of events and the organization of the situation
K → KEY → clues which establish the tone, manner or spirit of the speech act
I → INSTRUMENTALITIES → forms and styles of the speech
N → NORMS → social rules governing the event and the participants' actions and reactions
G → GENRE → the kind of speech act or event
ROMAN OSIPOVICH JAKOBSON → is most remembered for Jakobson's Model of Communication:
The sender encodes a message using a code and sends it through a channel → the receiver receives a message and encodes it → the whole situation takes place in a context (environment of the communication) ↓
→ FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE:
REFERENTIAL → describes a situation, an object or a mental state, what the reality is like
EXPRESSIVE → emotive/ affective, reveals information about the sender's emotional state
CONATIVE → engages the receiver directly, ordering the receiver to do sth, for example : “Be quiet!”
POETIC → focuses on the message for its own sake, especially in poetry and commercial slogans
PHATIC → using language only for purpose of interaction to maintain some relationship, we say sth just for the sake of good manner, fo example : “Good morning!” or “Bless you!”
METALINGUAL/ METALINGUISTIC → use of language to talk about or describe language
RONALD WAYNE LANGACKER → father of Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Grammar:
→Cognitive Linguistics → relates to cognitive processes in our brain
→Cognitive Grammar → considers the basic units of language to be symbols or conventional pairs of sound and meaning
HERBERT PAUL GIRCE → he introduced the Maxims of Conversation/ Conversational Maxims:
MAXIM OF QUALITY → TRUTH:
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
MAXIM OF QUANTITY → INFORMATION:
Make your contributions as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
MAXIM OF RELATION → RELEVANCE:
Be relevant.
MAXIM OF MANNER → CLARITY:
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary “profixity”)
Be orderly.
↑Based on cooperative principle: “make your conversational contribution such as is required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the top exchange in which you are engaged”.
FERDINAND DE SAUSSERE → he developed the model of the linguistic sign:
the concept of object which appears in our minds when we see or hear the signifier
the shape of a word (sequence of letters or sounds)
JOHN ROGER SEARLE → developed a classification of illocutionary speech acts:
REPRESENTATIVE → speech acts which commute a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition
DIRECTIVE → speech acts which cause the hearer/ receiver to take a particular action (e.g. commands, requires)
COMMISSIVE → speech acts which commits a speaker to some future actions (e.g. promises, oaths)
EXPRESSIVE → speech acts which express the sender's attitude and emotions (e.g. thanks, excuses, congratulations)
DECLARATIVE → speech acts which change the reality (e.g. pronouncing somebody guilty, pronouncing somebody husband/ wife, baptism of a child)
JOHN MC HARDY SINCLAR → the father of corpus linguistic:
→ the COBUILD project → an intention to create a dictionary with the highest frequency in the language
→Cobuild English Language Dictionary (1987) → first dictionary based on word frequency (on corpus)
BENJAMIN LEE WHORF → the linguistic relativity principle or Sapir- Whorf hypothesis:
→an idea that differences and the way language encodes cultural and cognitive categories affects people think
→people of different languages behave and think differently
→our language determines our thoughts
LUDWIG LAZARUS ZAMENHOF → he created the Esperanto Language:
→at that time there are many conflict between/ among people
→he wanted to create only one language to avoid conflicts
→it would enable people of any origin to communicate in order to avoid conflicts
1
SPEECH ACT
LOCUTIONARY → the performance of an utterance (what sb says), for example: “Do you have a watch?” → I want to know if you have a watch.
ILLOCUTIONARY → the real intended meaning of an utterance, for example : “Do you have a watch?” → I want to know the time.
PRELOCUTIONARY → an effect of an utterance, for example : „Do you have a watch?” → Somebody tells me the time.