Exploring Language in Global Contexts

Jeffrey Gil, Sky Marsen, Jeffrey Gil, Sky Marsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000593877
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This accessible and engaging textbook offers a practical approach to understanding the complexity of language by exploring language use and language learning in a wide variety of contexts.

Bringing together leading specialists who are active researchers in the field of linguistics, this book introduces readers to major fields of language study by focusing on social, cultural and historical factors that show the dynamic nature of language. Topics explored include first and second language acquisition, grammar, meaning-making and pragmatics, language use and technology, language variation, and English as a global language. This book surveys major principles and shows how to apply them through structured discussion topics and activities to facilitate a greater understanding and appreciation of language.

This is essential reading for undergraduate students taking courses in linguistics and language use, and a valuable resource for students of communication studies, media studies, sociology and anthropology.

1 How Does Language Work?

Jeffrey Gil and Sky Marsen

DOI: 10.4324/9781003240099-1

How often and how do we use language? Consider an example. Kelly wakes up in the morning and says good morning to her partner, listens to the radio news over breakfast, reads and responds to emails on the train on the way to work, gives a presentation at a meeting, watches YouTube videos in her lunch break, phones her mother after lunch, discusses a new project with colleagues and ends her day by watching television and discussing the day’s events with her partner. Language is used in all these activities. In addition, language is used in thought and making sense of the phenomena we perceive every day.

Humans have used language for at least 30,000 years (Genetti, 2014). It is an essential part of our lives and is intricately connected to everything we do, as Kelly’s story shows. But what exactly is language?

The definition of language is controversial, and many debates exist around it. For example, some approach it from the perspective of communication, others from the perspective of the structure of the brain and some others approach it as a structured system that involves sounds or signs that signify meaning. From the first perspective, David Crystal (n.d.), writing in the Encyclopedia Britannica, defines language as “a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves”. Taking the second perspective, Noam Chomsky (2006) sees language as “the result of the unfolding of a genetically determined program” (p. 4). This view, known as “nativist”, focuses on the cognitive aspects of language, shared by all humans. It asserts that there is a “universal grammar”, an underlying linguistic structure that we all possess, even though each language develops in its own way. Taking the third perspective, Fromkin et al. (2018) hold that language consists of a set of sounds (or signs), and that to speak a language means knowing these sounds (or signs), how they combine to form words, what these words refer to and how these words combine to form sentences. As they put it, knowing a language “means knowing the sounds and meanings of many, if not all, of the words of the language, and rules for their combination – the grammar which generates infinitely many possible sentences” (p. 9).

The chapters in this book take an eclectic approach that explores language from these various perspectives. Of course, humans are not the only living beings who communicate. What distinguishes human language from animal communication?

Design features of human language

There are five unique characteristics, or design features, of human language that distinguish it from animal communication. These are: displacement, arbitrariness, cultural transmission, productivity and duality.

Displacement

Displacement is the ability humans have to talk about things that are not in the immediate here and now. For example, we can talk about events that happened in the past and speculate about events that may happen in the future. We can also talk about imaginary people, places and things. Animals, on the other hand, can only communicate about what is happening in their immediate environment at the current point in time. Their sounds, calls and signals are reactions to stimuli they encounter in the moment, such as a warning to another animal which has just entered their territory or an alert to others of an approaching predator (Crystal, 2008; Yule, 2020). So, when your pet dog barks to say he’s hungry, he means he’s hungry now, not that he was hungry last night or that he will be hungry next week.

Bees are a partial exception to this rule. They are able to locate a source of food, then fly back to their nest and communicate the location of the food source to other bees through a dance. However, they are only able to use this ability to describe the location of the most recent food source they encountered; they cannot describe the locations of food sources from the past or possible future food sources. In addition, they can communicate only about a food source in this way, not any other aspect of their experience (Crystal, 2008; Yule, 2020).

Arbitrariness

Arbitrariness means there is no natural connection between a word and what it refers to. To put it another way, we cannot tell what a word means just by its sound, shape or appearance (Yule, 2020). The English word “cat”, for example, does not look like the animal it represents.

Of course, all languages have some words whose pronunciation does suggest meaning. These are called onomatopoeic words. In English, we have “buzz”, “meow” and “splash”. But words such as these make up a very small percentage of the language, and they also vary from one language to another (Fromkin et al., 2018). In English, a dog says “woof woof” and a frog says “ribbit ribbit”, but in Mandarin Chinese, a dog says “wang wang wang” and a frog says “gua gua gua”. These differences derive from the sound systems of the languages in question.

Animal communication does not have arbitrariness. The sounds, calls and signals that animals use are mostly linked to what they refer to. For example, they may use a sound, call or signal only in a specific situation such as attempting to establish territory, or only at a specific time such as during mating season (Yule, 2020).

Cultural transmission

The ability to acquire language is widely thought to be genetically innate to human beings. However, we are not born knowing a specific language such as English or Russian. We learn the language spoken by the people around us – most often our parents and siblings – when we are babies and young children (Yule, 2020). To demonstrate this, imagine there was a baby born in Japan to Japanese parents, then adopted by English-speaking Australians and raised in an English-speaking environment in Australia. That baby would have the physical features of a Japanese person but would speak English, not Japanese (Yule, 2020).

In contrast, animal communication is biological; animals are born knowing certain sounds, calls or signals, and will use these instinctively. Members of the same animal species do not show significant differences in behaviour across geographical areas, even when they are far apart. So, regardless of where in the world an animal was born and raised, it will produce the same sounds, calls or signals as other members of its species (Crystal, n.d.; Yule, 2020).

Productivity

Productivity is the ability to produce an infinite (unlimited) number of novel (new) utterances. This means that humans can invent new words and combine existing words to make new sentences. Some of the ways we create new words are by combining two separate words into a new word (e.g. bookcase, textbook, toothpaste), combining the beginning of one word with the end of another word (e.g. smog from smoke and fog, motel from motor and hotel), shortening existing words (e.g. fan from fanatic, fax from facsimile) and borrowing words from other languages (e.g. English borrowed piano from Italian, sofa from Arabic and tycoon from Japanese).

We can also put together the words in our language to make sentences that have never been said or written before. Fromkin et al. (2018) give this example: “Ben Hall decided to become a bushranger because he dreamed of pigeon-toed giraffes and cross-eyed elephants dancing in pink shirts and green berets on the wind-swept sands of the Nullarbor” (p. 7). This is a unique sentence, and we can make many more to describe any experience we have or situation we encounter. Word games, puns, puzzles and riddles are all examples of language use which rely on this creativity (Genetti, 2014; Yule, 2020).

Animals have a set number of sounds, calls or signals. For example, cicadas have four signals, vervet monkeys have 36 vocal calls and lemurs have three vocal calls. Each sound, call or signal refers to something in particular, such as danger (Yule, 2020). Members of these species cannot invent new sounds, calls or signals. Nor can they combine existing ones in new ways (Yule, 2020).

Duality

The final design feature of human language is duality. Duality means that human language has two levels of organisation, sound and meaning. To take the example of the word “bin”, we can think of this word as consisting of three sounds, b-i-n. Individually, each of these sounds has no inherent meaning. However, we also know that in this particular sequence they refer to the container for rubbish, giving “bin” meaning. Because we can think of language as sounds, we can also take the same three sounds in “bin” and combine them differently to get “nib” which has a different meaning (Crystal, 2008; Yule, 2020).

Animals cannot break their sounds, calls or signals into separate parts. For example, a dog cannot separate “woof” into w-oo-f. Neither can a dog combine these sounds in a different way to get “foow” (Yule, 2020).

Humans communicate through signs. However, there are more sign systems than language, for example, body language, sign language, and mechanical and electronic codes. How are these different from language as we have defined it in this chapter?

Sign systems

According to semiotics (the discipline that studies signs), a sign is a perceptual element (such as a sound, image or tactile stimulus, that is, what you can hear, see or touch) that stands for something else (Chandler, 2022). The gap between this element and the object, concept or emotion that it stands for is where signification takes place and meaning is created. A major non-linguistic sign system is the human body. When we are in physical presence with others, we communicate with our bodies as much as, if not more than, we do with language. Some scholars believe that non-verbal communication can account for up to 80% of the effect we produce during social interactions. There is also consensus that non-linguistic signs, such as dress, posture and gesture, play a major role in job interviews and other situations where speakers need to make an impression on others (Eaves & Leathers, 2018).

A communication system that relies exclusively on the human body is sign language, used mainly by deaf people. This is a visual system in which gestures, facial expressions and posture represent concepts or words. Deaf sign languages contain a combination of gestures for alphabet letters and concepts (Baker et al., 2016). For example, although the sign for “bird” is represented symbolically, signs for individual bird varieties may need to be “spelled out” by gesturing letters that make up the word. Even though deaf sign language relies on visual signs emanating from the body, it doesn’t have a single, international form but, rather, consists of national varieties. Even countries that have the same language may have different sign languages, as is the case, for example, with Australian sign language (AUSLAN) and American sign language (ASL). In fact, ASL is closely related to French sign language because of historical connections, which means that an American using ASL is more likely to be understood by a French deaf person than an English or Australian one. Australian, British (BSL) and New Zealand (NZSL) sign languages are similar, and all three use two hands for gesturing. In contrast, ASL uses one hand.

A sign system that was intentionally created for strategic purposes (that is, to influence future events) is the Morse code. The Morse code was invented by American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse in the 1830s with the main aim to send telegraphs electronically. It’s an analogue system using dots and dashes that represent letters of the alphabet and numerals. Its first version was tailored for English only, but its possible applications and recognised potential quickly led to the development of the International Morse Code in 1851, a simpler and therefore more generalisable version. The Morse code consists of visual (flashing lights) or mechanical (electric pulses) signs to transmit messages. Combinations of these dots and dashes create words and phrases. For example, the distress signal SOS is created by three dots, three dashes and three dots. SOS does not actually stand for anything; it was chosen as the distress signal because it is easy to recognise in Morse code and unlikely to be confused with any other signal. Interestingly, although the Morse code is a sign system of its own that doesn’t use letters or sounds like language does, its dots and dashes are translated into linguistic meaning to be understood. It’s a compact and internationally recognised system that is language based, but not language constructed.

Now that we’ve established what language is and what separates it from animal communication and other sign systems, consider the various contexts in which language is used in our lives.

Learning languages

Jenny Parker grew up in Christchurch, on the South Island of New Zealand, speaking English as her first language. In high school, Jenny started learning Japanese. She enjoyed the classes and worked hard, but found learning new sounds and grammar structures difficult. She continued learning Japanese throughout university and then found a job in Japan. After spending five years in Japan, Jenny obtained a very high level of proficiency in Japanese, but still never sounded exactly like a native speaker in terms of pronunciation and grammar. During her time in Japan, she met Haru Takahashi, who had studied English during his school and university years. Haru had always done well on exams, understood how English grammar worked, and could re...