Functions of Language
The functions of language refer to the different purposes that language serves in communication. These functions include expressing thoughts and ideas, conveying emotions, establishing social relationships, and providing information. Language also enables individuals to negotiate and influence others, as well as to create and maintain cultural identity.
8 Key excerpts on "Functions of Language"
eBook - ePub- R.L. Trask, Peter Stockwell(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Functions of Language The various purposes to which language may be put. We often tend to assume that ‘the function of language is communication’, but things are more complicated than that. Language serves a number of diverse functions, only some of which can reasonably be regarded as communicative. Here are some of the Functions of Language which we can distinguish: We pass on factual information to other people. We try to persuade other people to do something. We entertain ourselves or other people. We express our membership in a particular group. We express our individuality. We express our moods and emotions. We maintain good (or bad) relations with other people. We construct mental representations of the world. All of these functions are important, and it is difficult to argue that some of them are more important, or more primary, than others. For example, studies of conversations in pubs and bars have revealed that very little information is typically exchanged on these occasions and that the social functions are much more prominent. Of course, a university lecture or a newspaper story will typically be very different. This diversity of function has complicated the investigation of the origin and evolution of language.Many particular hypotheses about the origin of language have tended to assume that just one of these diverse functions was originally paramount, and that language came into being specifically to serve that one function. Such assumptions are questionable, and hence so are the hypotheses based upon them. Proponents of functionalism are often interested in providing classifications of the Functions of Languages or texts; see under Systemic Linguistics for a well-known example. See also : qualitative approach ; Systemic Linguistics Further reading : Bloor and Bloor 2004; Crystal 1997....
eBook - ePubApplying Linguistics in the Classroom
A Sociocultural Approach
- Aria Razfar, Joseph C. Rumenapp(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...11 Functions of Language Using Language around the World Learning Goals Understand the functional approach to language study. Explain and exemplify different Functions of Language. Understand the importance of language in relationship building. Analyze cultural differences in the building of relationships through language use. Develop student inquiry through cultural analysis. KEY TERMS/IDEAS: Functions of Language, languaculture, speech act, speech event Introduction Throughout this book, we have shown how language is used to accomplish specific purposes in a wide range of contexts and culturally organized activities. Again, we revisit the discussion of what constitutes the stability of language across time and space, and how does it vary from one activity to another. While we have provided many examples of various language functions, in this chapter we will discuss some viable candidates for common language functions shared between the world’s languages. In structural linguistics, common features of phonology, morphology, and syntax are described as linguistic universals. Similarly, we ask, “What are some functional and cultural universals of language?” Cultural universals, or functional universals, are different from linguistic universals in that they are not biological traits contained within the individual. Instead, the idea of functional universals is based on the idea that people from around the world have similar needs, problems, and purposes. As a result they organize similar activity systems and semiotic practices. These shared meaning-making systems from around the world have shared language functions. Early in this book we examined linguistic universals from a cognitive and linguistic point of view. Ideas like Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and Pinker’s language instinct sought to account for the nature, function, and purpose of human grammar...
eBook - ePubIntercultural Communication
A Discourse Approach
- Ron Scollon, Suzanne Wong Scollon, Rodney H. Jones(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...7 Forms of Discourse Functions of Language When we use the term “forms of discourse” we mean to include all of the different ways in which discourse might take form – specific genres and events and preferred styles and registers – as well as the fundamental conceptions about communication, its value, and its purpose that underlie these preferences. Participation in a discourse system necessarily entails mastery of a number of forms of discourse that are closely tied up with the kinds of social practices people in that discourse system engage in and the kinds of social relationships they are trying to maintain. Doctors must be able to conduct medical examinations; professors must be able to write academic papers; comedians must be able to tell jokes. At the same time, through these forms of discourse, discourse systems tend to promote more fundamental sets of theories about what kind of discourse is most desirable and what kind of people should make use of such discourse, for what purposes, and in what circumstances. Information and Relationship Communication theorists, linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists all agree that language has many functions. In previous chapters we have showed how all language must be used simultaneously in a communicative function as well as in a metacommunicative function. Of course, there is much discussion among researchers about how many functions there are and just which functions take priority in any particular case. One dimension on which there is complete agreement, however, is that virtually any communication will have both an information function and a relationship function. In other words, when we communicate with others we simultaneously communicate some amount of information and indicate our current expectations about the relationship between or among participants. At the two extremes of information and relationship, there are often cases in which one or the other function appears to be minimized...
eBook - ePubAn Introduction to Applied Semiotics
Tools for Text and Image Analysis
- Louis Hébert, Julie Tabler(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This yields six functions: Table 16.1 Factors of communication and Functions of Language Briefly, these six functions can be described as follows: (1) the referential function is oriented toward the context (the dominant function in a message like ‘Water boils at 100 degrees’); (2) the emotive function is oriented toward the addresser (as in the interjections ‘Bah!’ and ‘Oh!’); (3) the conative function is oriented toward the addressee (imperatives and apostrophes); (4) the phatic function serves to establish, prolong or discontinue communication [or confirm whether the contact is still there] (as in ‘Hello?’); (5) the metalingual function is used to establish mutual agreement on the code (for example, a definition); (6) the poetic function (e.g., ‘Smurf’), puts ‘the focus on the message for its own sake’ [(Jakobson, 1960, p. 356)]. (trans. of Tritsmans, 1987, p. 19) NOTE: OTHER NAMES Several competing names have been proposed for the “same” factors and functions. (A different name often indicates, insists on, reveals, hides, or even results in an important conceptual difference.) Some other names for the factors are (numbers refer to the table above): 1. referent, 2. sender or enunciator, 3. receiver or enunciatee, 4. channel. Some other names for the functions are: 1. denotative, cognitive, representative, informative, 2. expressive, 3. appellative, imperative, directive, 4. relational or contact, 5. metasemiotic (in order to extend the function to any semiotic act, such as an image), 6. esthetic or rhetorical. The functions: presence and hierarchy In a proper analysis, we start by determining whether each of the Functions of Language is present or absent. Each factor must be present and concordant in order for communication to succeed. Consequently, relations are established between all of the factors, particularly between the message and the other factors. But here, we are interested in particular relations or functions...
eBook - ePub- Geoff Thompson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...‘signalling how this message fits in with the preceding message(s)’), we are already beginning to set up categories of functions that we perform through language; and we can then go back to texts to see if there are other grammatical features that seem to be performing the same kind of function. But we are still in danger of ending up with a fairly random-seeming list of functions. Is there any way of arriving at an even more generalized grouping of meaning types, so that we can start to explain why we find the particular kinds of functions that we do? For this, we need to step back and, rather than looking at language structures, think about what we do with language. In the broadest terms, we use language to talk about things and events (‘It’s raining’) and to get things done (‘Sit down’). As we shall see, these are not mutually exclusive (the command ‘Sit down’ involves reference to the particular event of sitting rather than any other; and telling someone that it’s raining has the effect of changing their knowledge): indeed, the basic principle is that every time we use language we are doing both simultaneously. We will also see that we need to add a third major function, a kind of language-internal ‘service function’; but, having simply established here that it is possible to identify a very small number of broad functions, we can leave further specification until, in Chapter 3, we start exploring how these major functions can be used to illuminate and explain the choices that are available in language. I have at several points used the term ‘ choice ’ in discussing meanings. If we want to examine what a piece of language is intended to do (i.e. its function), we cannot avoid thinking in terms of choice. Clearly, speakers do not go round producing de-contextualized grammatically correct sentences: they have reasons for saying something, and for saying it in the way they do...
- Bernard Guerin(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The first might be asking favours of people, giving rules to be followed, and telling people to do things. Remember that these will only work if the social relationship resources, exchanges, and reciprocities are in place—the words themselves do nothing. Because of this, the second general function of using words is there to manage our social relationships, and this might include breaking the relationship off, telling jokes to friends, telling someone how lovely they look, talking about something you saw on television or in the newspaper, or inviting someone to a picnic. This latter group make up some of the weirdest forms of language, but they are vitally important to our social lives (humour, rituals, gossip, entertainment). A good exercise to do is to trace during a day or two all the forms of language you use in these categories. All the while also trace who is the audience, what is your relationship with the audience, and what you exchange or reciprocate with the audience. You will learn a lot about yourself if you do this thoroughly. Remember that you are not just tracing your language patterns but your patterns of different social relationships. What are the main types of language we use? First, there is everything that is currently called ‘cognition’ within psychology, and all of the events we call ‘thinking’. But I will deal with these in the next chapter as they commonly seem different (and they indeed have special properties compared to language spoken out loud). For example, everything we call ‘memory’ or recall is really about language use, and therefore inherently depends on the social context not on whether it is true or false. These forms include thinking, consciousness, discernment, hearing voices, and rumination. Second, there are uses of language to get people to do things...
eBook - ePubFoundations in Sociolinguistics
An ethnographic approach
- Dell Hymes(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The burden of proof ought to be, and I believe will come to be, on those who think that linguistics can proceed successfully without explicit attention to its functional foundations. I do not try to say here what functions speech has overall or in particular communities. I try only to show that, whereas linguists usually treat language in terms of just one broad type of elementary function, called here “referential,” 44 language is in fact constituted in terms of a second broad type of elementary function as well, called here “stylistic.” Languages have conventional features, elements, and relations serving referential (“propositional,” “ideational,” etc.) meaning, and they have conventional features, elements and relations that are stylistic, serving social meaning. Substantive functions, in the sense of human purposes in the use of speech, employ, require, and indeed give rise to characteristics of both kinds. A general study of language comprises both, and even a study seeking to limit itself to what is referentially based cannot escape involvement with what is not. Involvement with stylistic function, and social meaning, reveals that the foundations of language, if partly in the human mind, are equally in social life, and that the foundations of linguistics, if partly in logic and psychology, are equally in ethnography (cf. Hymes 1964a: 6, 41). The term “function” is so readily misunderstood in linguistics today that I should explain something I do not intend. In many minds, the term “function” in the study of language has become associated with behaviorism as espoused by B. F. Skinner. It should be clear that the appeals to knowledge, creativity, and even freedom and liberation (chs. 4, 10) in this book bring my approach under Skinner’s obloquy. A commitment to an ethnographic “mentalism,” however, does not require one to avert one’s eyes from functions, just because Skinner has written about them (cf. Hymes 1964e)...
eBook - ePubThe Cognitive Sciences
An Interdisciplinary Approach
- Carolyn P. Sobel, Paul Li(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...This ability makes possible our use of language for the large and varied set of intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, and social purposes characteristic of human behavior, ranging from the straightforward transfer of information to the exploration of ideas, from poetry to deception, from sarcasm to joking and play. CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE Although the differences among languages spoken in different parts of the world fairly jump out at us, these languages are in fact far more similar than we generally perceive. That this is so is not surprising, for all human languages—those known only through historical documents and comparative studies as well as those currently spoken—reflect the linguistic capacity of the human brain. The fact that it is possible for us to express so much that other species cannot has to do with the way our language is constructed. We are not limited to a specific utterance to express a given meaning, though there are utterances that do this: “Ow,” for example. Nor are we limited to a number of stock expressions, though we have those, too, such as “How do you do?” Our language is not made up simply of a set of expressions like these, wrenched from us or trotted out for social purposes. Rather, it is constructed of a fairly small set of sounds, known as phonemes (about 40 in English), that most often have no meaning in themselves: nnn, eee. These we string together one after the other to form meaningful bits and pieces: morphemes (ex-, -ism) and words (needle). The number of words made from phonemes is large; depending on how you define word, sources vary in the numbers cited from around a half million to well over a million. Large, yes—but finite. Except for a small set of words exhibiting onomatopoeia (meow, clang), the strings of sounds making up our words and parts of words bear no necessary or logical relation to their meaning...
