Functions of Language

12 Key excerpts on "Functions of Language"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties

  • Ulrich Ammon(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  1) the vernacular function of everyday social communion; 2) the vehicular function of regional (urban) communication; 3) the referential (cultural) function based on the products of a culture; 4) the function of myth and magic with reference to the sacred. All these functions can be filled by a single language L (Fi F 2 F 3 F 4 ). In multilingual societies however, they may indeed be filled each by a different language: Lj(Fi) L 2 (F2) L 3 (F 3 ) L 4 (F 4 ). In many African countries like Zaïre, for example, the home language (Lj) has served for the functions of phatic communion (a language for example like Togbo), a regional language (L 2 ), like Kikongo, for interpersonal regional communication, a school language (L 3 ) like French for cultural reference, perhaps a liturgical language (L 4 ) like Latin for the mystical functions (Mackey 1986). Apart from such psycho-ethnic language functions, each language fills a number of social functions. These are the ones which concern us here. Following the above operational criterion, the function of a language is what it is used for — not its potential, but its use. Some functions are, of course, more important that others — important, that is, language-wise. If a language is used in an activity that must go on for several hours every day — radio broadcasting, schooling, buying and selling, it uses more language than one that takes up less than an hour a week of most people's time — activities like church services, for example. It is evident that the domains of language use cannot, as some have done, be given equal weight (see 6). On the operational criterion of amount of use, we can divide language functions into three categories: work functions, leisure functions and service functions, each of which must be further divided into domains like school, church, office and the like.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Applying 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

  1. Understand the functional approach to language study.
  2. Explain and exemplify different Functions of Language.
  3. Understand the importance of language in relationship building.
  4. Analyze cultural differences in the building of relationships through language use.
  5. 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. This nativist account of language and its universal properties was assumed to be generalizable to all human beings. An assumption based, not on empirical evidence and actual human uses, but on deduction and an axiomatic truth (a fact accepted without evidence). However, in a functional approach to linguistics, and “linguistic universals,” we note that these “universals” are inductively discovered through case studies and empirical evidence of human langua

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Communication in Everyday Life

  A Social Interpretation

  • Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz(Author)
  • 1989(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Apparently they had correctly interpreted the teacher's desire to get them to change their behavior through appealing to their knowledge of the ten command- ments, and no one thought these were traditional command- ments their parents had somehow forgotten to mention, despite the teacher's use of traditional language (thou and shalt). The various functions of communication are rarely described in detail; those who say it is multifunctional often assume their readers will know what is involved. In the following pages, therefore, several suggested lists of functions of communication will be outlined and compared, and then two of the functions, usually ignored but ex- tremely important, will be described in further detail: metacom- munication and phatic communication. FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION One of the standard lists of functions in communication is that prepared by Roman Jakobson (1960). It initially was described as a list of the Functions of Language, but serves as an equally useful list of the functions of communication defined more generally, with only minimal changes required. Jakobson's list includes six functions: the referential, the emotive, the conative, the poetic, the phatic, and the metalingual. The referential function is that most generally acknowledged as important, though it has perhaps less significance than we generally grant it. It refers to fact that we need to pass on new information to others, and that we use language (com- munication) to do this. The focus here is the meaning of the message. Synonyms used by others for this function are denotative, cognitive, or new informational. The emotive function refers to the fact that we can convey information about the (emotional) state of the speaker at the same time as giving other new information to the listener. It is sometimes labelled the expressive function. The parallel to this is the conative function, which emphasizes the hearer.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Speaking Culturally

  Language Diversity in the United States

  • Fern L. Johnson(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  One important general function of language is to regulate boundaries between and among people. These boundary functions, explains Saville-Troike (1989), regulate interaction by unifying its speakers as members of a single speech community, and excluding outsiders from intragroup com-munication (p. 14). Boundaries for communication are often set, for exam-ple, between different professional and occupational groups by the use of technical vocabulary. Computer specialists, professors, bank tellers, insur-ance agents, auto mechanics, nurses and doctors, hair stylists, and lawyers all have their separate ways of speaking. Boundaries that are set by commu-nication establish who is inside and who is outside particular social or cultural groupings, and they can also function to create barriers. Speaking in a language that is not understood by everyone present illustrates how lan-guage-in-use functions as a way of excluding some participants from the conversation. When doctors or lawyers use technical language, they often reduce their patients and clients to mere bystanders. Conversely, language use can draw others in, serving to create solidarity. This might happen when African Americans who are strangers exchange some form of greeting and recognition of one another through distinctive language symbols; the vehicle could be as simple as referring to an African American woman as a sister or as complex as engaging in conversation that is densely packed with black dialect and rhetorical forms (considered in Chapter 5). Natural and Native Languages Primary human language is oral. The spoken word is the raw material for writing, with written forms of language consisting of re-presentations of human language. Any written version reduces speech to graphic conventions. Linguists use the term natural language to refer to oral language as it is spoken in specific speech communities and acquired by children. Writing

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Where Lexicon and Syntax meet

  • Doris Schönefeld(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Functional approaches 97 4.2. Functional approaches The functional approach to language description is reflected in a number of individual models, which commonly understand language as a means of communicative verbal interaction, and consider linguistic features to be basically determined by their use (cf. Dik 1989: 3, 1991: 247). This is the reason why representatives of this approach take the function of linguistic phenomena as the basis for their analysis and description. Their common assumption is that language has COGNITIVE and SOCIAL functions which play a central role in determining the structures and systems that linguists think of as a grammar of a language. That is, this paradigm assumes that language is an open system whose internal organisation is less than optimally structured formally, and that this organisation is a complex response to its ecological setting - the communicative and interactional functions which it serves, and the full cognitive, social and physiological properties of the human user. (Thompson 1992: 37, cf. also Dik 1987: 82). That means that the rules and the subsystems of the language system can only be adequately recognised and described if their functions and conditions of use are properly accounted for: ...it [the language system D.S.] must be studied within the framework of the rules, principles, and strategies which govern its natural communicative use. In other words, the question of how a language is organised cannot be profitably studied in abstraction from the question of why it is organised the way it is, given the communicative functions which it fulfils. (Dik, 1989: 5-6) From this it follows that language must be analysed within the scope of human interaction in general and that essential data for the postulation of linguistic rules must be taken from actual language performance. With regard to my issue, Dik (1989: 7) characterizes that, in the functional paradigm, ...

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Teaching English

  A Linguistic Approach

  • John Keen(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  communicative competence. That is, he learns when and when not to speak, how formally to speak, what tones are appropriate and inappropriate, what can be said and what cannot. Every speaker also develops a model of what functions language can serve, and he uses that model to filter out unacceptable responses. But just as every speaker can use the grammatical rules of his language without necessarily being able to state them explicitly, so every speaker ‘knows’ the functional resources his language makes available to him without necessarily being able to make them explicit. Teachers, however, do need a fairly accurate, explicit model of language functions. Without it, the tasks they set students will tend to be biased in favour of the functions they intuitively feel to be important, to the detriment of other, equally important, functions.

  Several interesting theories of language function have been published recently. The reader may care to refer particularly to M. A. K. Halliday’s Explorations in the Functions of Language (1973) and to J. Britton’s The Development of Writing Abilities (11–18) (1975), details of which are included in ‘Further Reading’. But teachers need more than a theory; they need methods for working out what models of language function are presented in their students’ speech and writing. Such methods are important because the model of language function a teacher brings to the classroom is likely to be different to that of his students. The model which dominates education is what Halliday calls the representational model. This states that the main function of language is to communicate information. This information may be objective, as in ‘Shakespeare wrote Hamlet’, or subjective, as in ‘I’m feeling sad’. It is this function which is exploited when a teacher lectures and a class takes notes, and it is this function which a student must fulfil in writing up a science experiment, or writing an essay in history or geography. It is this function which people have in mind when they require ‘clear, simple English’, perhaps because this is the function that has the most tangible economic value.

  How ‘basic’ in fact is this function? Let us try to answer this by asking what Functions of Language human beings could not do without. To answer this question we may look at the early language stages of a child. For him the basic functions are those which impinge upon his direct needs. For him the statement, ‘I’m hungry’ is not an attempt to convey information about his inner state to someone – it is a means of getting someone to do something. The language we would need to get by on would consist of requests and complaints, not of statements of fact about the world. However the representational function is a valid and, in our society, a necessary one, and it must take its place on the curriculum. But it is important for teachers to remember that this function develops out of others, and that students must be given time and opportunity to assimilate their skills in other functions as a basis for learning how to exploit information-conveying functions.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Language in Social Worlds

  • W. Peter Robinson(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  We must recognize that the pursuit of clarification and refinements within the verbal domain alone leads to infinite regression – to appreciate the mean-ing and significance of concepts and their hypothesized relations requires an assessment of the realities which they are intended to describe and explain. Functions of Language 49 4 It should additionally be realized that any taxonomy will be inad-equate. The inadequacy will stem partly from the nature of language it-self, and partly from human behavior. Both have possibilities for change and re-organization within and beyond present imaginings. The inevita-ble inadequacy also stems from the degree of generality attempted. To have any generality entails missing some contrasts that could be made. For particular and limited objectives, more detailed analyses of the situa-tions under consideration will be required, but it is to be hoped that a general framework can keep investigators sensitive to functions over and above those hopefully contained within their immediate perspective. Figure 3.1 Functions of Language Distinguished by Focus of Attention. Capital letters are used to denote the object of focus, lower case for functions. After Jakobson, (1960) 50 Functions of Language With these desiderata in mind, I am obliged to reject the classifications of functions so far offered and to prefer an elaboration of Jakobson’s logi-cally derived taxonomy. In a concluding statement at a symposium, “Style in Language” Jakobson (1960) (see Figure 3.1) offered an artistically pre-sented classification linking functions with different possible prime foci of an utterance. He took six components of the speech event – addresser, addressee, context, message, contact and code – and associated a focus on each of these with functions labelled respectively: emotive (expressional), conative, referential, poetic, phatic, and metalingual.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Linguistics For Dummies

  • Rose-Marie Dechaine, Strang Burton, Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • For Dummies

    (Publisher)

  10 Part I: Looking at Language through the Lens of Linguistics Uncovering the Traits of Language Linguistics is the study of language; it’s not the study of languages. What’s the difference? Although linguists look at individual languages, when they do, they have the big picture in mind. Their goal is to understand the nature of human language. Individual languages are like different models of cars. For cars, each model varies according to engine size, wheelbase, transmission, and passenger capacity, but they all share a common set of traits. Same thing with languages — each language varies according to sound inventory, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and so on, but they all have a common set of traits. Most linguists agree that all human languages have the following six traits in common: ✓ Language is used to communicate. ✓ Language is composed of arbitrary signs. ✓ Language is hierarchically organized. ✓ Humans produce and perceive language using auditory, visual, and even tactile modalities. ✓ Language is unique to human beings. ✓ Humans are genetically endowed for language. Individual linguists focus on specific language traits. A functionalist focuses on the communicative function of language. A formalist focuses on the organization of language. A speech scientist focuses on speech production and perception. A gestural analyst focuses on gesture production and visual perception. An audio-visual analyst focuses on the integration of speech with gesture and the integration of audition with vision. A biolinguist focuses on the biological foundations of language, while a psycholinguist focuses on the cognitive base of language. Trait 1: Language is used to communicate Language is used to communicate concepts and intentions. To do this, it uses a system of signs with assigned meanings that communicate messages from one person’s mind to another.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology

  • N. J. Enfield, Paul Kockelman, Jack Sidnell(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  That is, since language is fundamentally an instrumental tool, it is reasonable to assume that its structures are informed by the structure of our experience and our cultural models of experience. Functionalists take the internal organization of language to be a complex adaptive response to the ecological settings in which language is found, the interactional functions which it serves, and the full cognitive, social, and physiological properties of the human user. Functional linguistic research is aimed at clarifying the relationship between linguistic form and function, and at determining the nature of the functions which appear to shape linguistic structure, foremost among which are facilitating effective communication and assisting cognition. Functional linguistics has always included both scholars who are working on description (what languages are like) and those working on explanation (why languages are the way they are). In this chapter, we will offer a brief overview of scholarship in func- tional linguistics, and then focus on constituency, a specific problem which has attracted significant attention from functionalists. In the second part of the chapter, we will examine constituency from the per- spective of a natural outgrowth of functionalism in linguistics, namely a concern with the function of grammar in its ecological habitat, conversa- tional interaction. Prominent early proponents of a functionalist perspective include Bolinger (e.g., 1952, 1965), Firbas (e.g., 1964, 1992), Halliday (e.g., 1967– 68), and Sapir (e.g., 1921, 1949), inter alia. A community of functionalist linguists, however, didn’t begin to form until the 1970s, focused around the work of such scholars as Comrie, Dixon, and Givo ´ n.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Sociolinguistics / Soziolinguistik. Volume 1

  • Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, Peter Trudgill, Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, Peter Trudgill(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The typical linguistic features of the so-called practical and theoretical languages, actualized in technological and scientific liter-ature, coincide with what we now call lan-guage for specific purposes. — The differen-tial and functional view has been put not only in this classical shape, but also in a surprising number of creative variations. Very near to the original idea comes the Neo-Firthian con-cept of functional language types. Another attempt aims at a classification of different forms of actualization of the language system in speech. It is emphasized that a language for specific purposes is different from a socio-lect in that it is determined by the topic and not by the interest of a definite social group. — From still another point of view a language for specific purposes is nothing more than the restricted use of language in certain domains of human activity. The re-stricted variants have become known under the name of registers and characterized by their vocabularies as well as their syntax and certain stylistic phenomena. 4.3. Functional Stylistics Functional stylistics (cf. art. 38) as a relatively independent component of functional speech analysis has provided a substantial stimulus to the study of language differentiation. In-stead of functional languages, however, it examines functional styles as complexes of stylistic features at various levels, resulting from a process of selection that is determined by the author's intention, by the content and the form of his message and by the effect desired. Languages for specific purposes are in this way reduced to scientific style as a very general characterization of nearly all branches of science and technology. — The classical distinction is made between the styles of a) official communication, b) science, c) journalism, d) conversation, and e) literature.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Communicative Functions and Linguistic Forms in Speech Interaction: Volume 156

  • Klaus J. Kohler(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  267 6 Linguistic Form of Communicative Functions in Language Comparison The framework of core communicative functions developed in this mono- graph is a theoretical construct of human interaction, based on observation in European languages and on the a priori postulate that there are functions of speech communication as part of human behaviour that are common to all language communities but have language-specific formal exponents. The con- stant inter-language communicative functions determine the transmission of meaning between speakers and listeners and trigger the variable intra-language forms. In this sense, function precedes form. This postulate offers a powerful methodological frame for the comparative study of formal across-language manifestations. Among such postulated interlanguage communicative func- tions are the following: Argumentation, Question versus Statement, Information Selection and Weighting, High-Key Intensification. It is the speech scientist’s task to investigate how the functions are formally mani- fested in the languages of the world, thus giving comparative prosodic research new direction. 6.1 Application to Mandarin Chinese In a first step, some preliminary Mandarin Chinese data have been collected and analysed within this communicative framework. The discussion will focus on Argumentation in 6.1.1, and on Question/Statement in 6.1.2. In both cases, manifestations are set against those in German and English. Since tonal features are tied up in the lexical tones of a tone language, it is a prime question how speakers implement the categories of the functional framework as over- lays of the lexical tone distinctions. 6.1.1 ARGUMENTATION Watching Stephen Frears’s film The Queen, with Helen Mirren in the role of Queen Elizabeth II, shortly after its release in 2006 I became aware of the actors’ control of prosody in communicative Argumentation. In the opening

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Language and Man

  Anthropological Issues

  • William C. McCormack, Stephen A. Wurm, William C. McCormack, Stephen A. Wurm(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  There is continuity at the same time on another level, in that the initial functions which language serves for the child evolve at the same time into the types of situation, or contexts of language use. The situation type determines for the adult the particular variety or register he uses and the set of semantic configurations (and the forms of their expression) that can be recognized as typically associated with the abstract properties of the context of situation. We could express this dual continuity another way by saying that, whereas for the very small child in Phase I, the concept of FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE is synonymous with that of USE OF LANGUAGE , for the adult, however, the two are distinct, the former referring to what are now incorporated as components of the linguistic system while the latter refers to the extralinguistic factors determining how the resources of the linguistic system are brought into play. But both FUNCTION and USE develop in a direct line from their origins in the child's first system of meaning potential. We have interpreted the linguistic system as essentially a system of meanings, with associated forms and expressions as the realization of these meanings. We have interpreted the learning of language as learning how to mean. At the end of Phase II, which in the case of Nigel was at about 22£ to 24 months, the child has learned how to mean, in the sense that he has mastered the adult linguistic system. He has mastered a system that is multifunctional and multistratal. This system has a massive potential; in fact it is open-ended, in that it can create indefinitely many meanings and indefinitely many sentences and clauses and phrases and words for the expression of these meanings. The child will spend the rest of his life exploring the potential of this system; having learnt how to walk, he can now start going places.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book