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1 Language
Human beings can communicate with each other. We are able to exchange
knowledge, beliefs, opinions, wishes, threats, commands, thanks, promises,
declarations, and feelings only our imagination sets limits. We can laugh to express
amusement, happiness, or disrespect, we can smile to express amusement, pleasure,
approval, or bitter feelings, we can shriek to express anger, excitement, or fear, we can
clench our fists to express determination, anger or a threat, we can raise our eyebrows
to express surprise or disapproval, and so on, but our system of communication before
anything else is language. In this book we shall tell you a lot about language, but as a
first step towards a definition we can say that it is a system of communication based
upon words and the combination of words into sentences.
Jakobson, on the other hand, had come into contact with the work of Ferdinand
de Saussure, and developed an approach focused on the way in which language
structure served its basic function - to communicate information between speakers. He
was one of the founders of the "Prague school" of linguistic theory. According to
Jakobson, language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. An outline
of those functions demands a concise survey of the constitutive factors in any speech
event, in any act of verbal communication. Thus Jakobson distinguishes six
communication functions, each associated with a dimension of the communication
process:
Dimension:
1. context
2. message
3. sender
4. receiver
5. channel
. 6 code
Functions:
1. referential (= contextual information)
2. aesthetic (= auto-reflection)
3. emotive (= self-expression)
4. conative (= vocative or imperative addressing of receiver)
5. phatic (= checking channel working)
6. metalingual (= checking code working)
Jacobsons three main ideas in linguistics play a major role in the field to
this day: linguistic typology, markedness and linguistic universals. The three concepts
are tightly intertwined: typology is the classification of languages in terms of shared
grammatical features (as opposed to shared origin) markedness is (roughly) a study of
how certain forms of grammatical organization are more "natural" than others, and
linguistic universals is the study of the general features of languages in the world.
Another linguist, Holliday, like Saussure, sees language as a social and cultural
phenomenon as opposed to a biological one, like Chomsky. Some of Hollidays early
work involved the study of his son's developing language abilities. Holliday
identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. Children
are motivated to acquire language because it serves certain purposes for them.
The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and
social needs. Holliday calls them:
1.1. Speech
Therefore, in order to briefly state some of the most important features of speech
communication in the following points:
1. Speech arose through Onomatopoeic words but few of these exist in language
2. Speech arose through people making instictive sounds caused by pain, anger or
emotions. For ex. nterjections
Language has as its main features the use of sound signals, arbitrarines the need
for learning dualtiy of patterns, displacement creativity (productivity)p atterning,
structure dependence. Other minor features of language are language reveals patterns
of how mind works; is a means for mental and social development; language is a
property of the individual as well as of the society;it is a predictor of social identity.
Also, language is a predictor of social identityand it is used for cultural preservation
and transmission. Language can be used by some to exert their power over others.
The direction of changes in language is not predictable. Language is not monolithic
but varied. It exhibits variatiosn (e.g.Dialects). Self-talk can be regarded as a form of
language; we talk in our minds: inner speech. using language for thinking. We cannot
help but to process and understand what we hear. Language, unless recorded, flies
away the moment we speak it. All the language have the same potential for
development. Language facilitates abstract thought (i.e. Thinking) Language is
adaptable & flexible to accommodate new communicative needs.