Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics
"Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics" covers fundamental ideas in the field, such as phonetics, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It explores the structure and function of language, including its sounds, grammar, meaning, and use in communication. The book provides a comprehensive overview of key linguistic concepts and their relevance to understanding language and its role in society.
5 Key excerpts on "Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics"
eBook - ePubCanadian English
A Sociolinguistic Perspective
- James A. Walker(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...While some linguists do tend to focus on some aspects of a particular language (e.g. the sound pattern of English), linguistics is not concerned with studying an individual language but rather with the study of language in general: what its structure is, where it comes from and what it is used for. Because language is so intimately caught up with every aspect of human life, it can be studied from a number of different perspectives: Physical : How is language stored in the human brain? How does it get there? What is the nature of mental representation? How are other activities of the brain (knowledge, thoughts, feelings) converted into language, and how is language physically produced as speech? Structural : What units does language consist of? What governs how those units are combined or altered? Cultural/social : What do people use language for? What role does it play in expressing and influencing human culture? What role does it play in creating and expressing social meaning? What effect does it have on society and culture? Thanks to this breadth of potential perspectives under which language can be studied, linguistics is variously considered to be a cognitive science, a social science and part of the humanities. Within linguistics, we normally distinguish core linguistics from those approaches to the study of language that overlap with other scholarly disciplines, such as psychology (psycholinguistics) and sociology (sociolinguistics)...
eBook - ePub- R.L. Trask, Peter Stockwell(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...LANGUAGE The central object of study in linguistics. The term language covers several rather different concepts which need to be carefully distinguished. To begin with, of course, we need to distinguish between an individual language – such as English or Swahili – and language in general. Most linguists believe that all individual languages necessarily possess important properties in common – otherwise, linguistics would be a somewhat unrewarding discipline – and every individual language is therefore a combination of these universal properties with a number of accidental and often idiosyncratic features. For many (not all) linguists, it is these universal properties which are of greatest interest, but the only way we can get at these properties is by scrutinizing individual languages. In this enterprise, strategies differ. Some linguists prefer to analyse a few languages in exhaustive detail, in the hope of identifying subtle abstract principles concealed deep in the data; these principles constitute universal grammar. Others, though, dismiss this approach as narrow and misleading, and prefer to proceed by surveying large numbers of structurally different languages and looking for both generalizations and interesting diversity. The ultimate goal of linguistics is the elucidation of the human language faculty (called langage by Saussure). To this end, linguists have usually found it essential to distinguish between the abstract mental system of rules, principles and constraints which are shared by speakers (called langue by Saussure and competence by Chomsky, though the terms are not quite equivalent) and the real utterances produced by individual speakers on particular occasions (Saussure’s parole, Chomsky’s performance)...
eBook - ePubDoing English Language
A Guide for Students
- Angela Goddard(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The subject area of linguistics grew up around the study of spoken language, and in some universities it is called ‘speech science(s)’. Phonetics and phonology (how sounds are produced and the sound systems of languages) are an important part of linguistic study, and form the basis for clinical applications for health professions such as speech and language therapy. More will be said about the sound system when we discuss metalanguage, in Chapter 7. Writing does of course feature in research with a language focus: for example, critical discourse analysis, which aims to study issues of language and power (see Fairclough 2001) often uses written texts, such as newspaper articles, as data. But this type of discourse analysis has a strong interdisciplinary framework, where researchers connect language use with some of the critical questions that are addressed in other subject areas. Chapters 5 and 6 look at the contribution that ideas from Literary and Media Studies, and Creative Writing, can make to analysing language, particularly written communication. Chapter 7 takes the idea of interdisciplinarity further afield....
eBook - ePubLanguages and Social Cohesion
A Transdisciplinary Literature Review
- Gabriela Meier, Simone Smala(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...394). Such understandings go back to Brumfit’s much-cited definition, which describes applied linguistics as “the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which language is a central issue” (1995, p. 27). For the purpose of this book, we draw on the arguably distinct disciplines that are covered under this broader umbrella field of applied linguistics, including sociolinguistics, sociology of language, language policy and planning, and language education. We selected these disciplines as they seek to understand the connection between languages and social cohesion, among other concerns. Sociolinguistics is concerned with the study of how societies affect language: more precisely how “the history of social relations among populations, including economic, political and demographic factors” influences the use of language(s) and language varieties (Sankoff, 2001, p. 3). The related field of sociology of language is interested in how language affects society (Darquennes, 2015 ; Vetter, 2015). Language policy and planning is a research field that is concerned with how languages are organised in a given society, including in the public sphere, media and education (Ricento, 2014 ; Wright, 2004). Language education seen from this perspective can therefore overlap with all the disciplines above. Thus, we draw on literature from these disciplines to develop a definition of language and how this may relate to social cohesion. Defining language Language has been conceptualised differently over time and in different fields. It has been conceptualised as a fixed code or system (de Saussure, 1966), as an instrument for communication (Halliday, 1985), as a dynamic tool for social action (Atkinson, 2011) and for mediation (Council of Europe, 2018 ; Lantolf, 2011) as well as a tool for identification (Norton & McKinney, 2011) that occurs in zones of contact between language groups (Vetter, 2015)...
eBook - ePubThe Cognitive Sciences
An Interdisciplinary Approach
- Carolyn P. Sobel, Paul Li(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...8 The Role of Linguistics in Cognitive Science Language Acquisition First-Language Acquisition Stages in First-Language Acquisition The Social Aspect of First- Language Acquisition Second-Language Acquisition Bilingualism Language Deprivation Language Acquisition in Abused or Feral Children Language Acquisition in the Deaf and Hearing Impaired Language Loss (Language Attrition) Causes of Languages Loss Aphasia The Role of Computational Linguistics Computational Modeling of Language Language and Thought L inguists search for the underlying commonalities among languages. Some reconstruct rules of languages no longer spoken, and some focus on the rules of languages currently spoken. The data they describe contribute to our knowledge of the types of rules and principles underlying languages. From these data we can infer much about the functioning of the cognitive processes that produce them. As you read in Part 1, cognitive psychology attempts to understand the processes our minds engage in, the cognitive architecture that makes it all possible. Thus, language is of great interest to those of us in the field of cognitive psychology, concerned as we are with issues of learning and of the representation of knowledge in the brain. The following is a look at some of the areas in cognitive psychology in which language plays a major role and where the overlap with linguistics is plain. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION First-Language Acquisition It is helpful to address at this point, because it is far from obvious, the way in which human infants acquire a language (or languages, for many learn more than one in the environment in which they are raised). The word infant indicates this state of affairs: Its meaning in Latin, from which we borrowed it, is “not speaking”. How do you generally judge when an infant has become no-longer-an-infant? Probably you consider key elements in this judgment to be whether the child walks and talks...
