Riassunto esame Linguistica inglese, prof. Camaiora, libro consigliato Aspects of discourse and genre, Ulrych

Cap. 1 A functional approach to language

The study of linguistics concentrates on the nature and on the use of a language; there are two different ways of looking at language:

Psycholinguistic approach

Intra-organism approach: theorized by Halliday, who describes the language as the brain’s capacity to store language and to use it in communication; the language is seen as a social activity and the emphasis has been placed on “language as doing” or “what the speaker does”: it means that we use language according to what we are doing and (in which social – cultural activity we are engaged). This approach examines and describes not only the formal aspects of language, but also how they mean, paying attention on what function they have. Sentences are in fact produced and perceived not in isolation, but as part of particular context or of situation within a communication process: the way in which language users segment and sequence their discourse depends on the textual and situational context.

Language functions: Austin

People use language to achieve different aims and purposes and every kind of communication hasn’t only a referential meaning, but it wants to perform actions. For example, when we say “It’s raining”, this could be just an assertion, or a complaint, or also a request of an umbrella: we have to interpret this utterance in order to understand its function. We can carry out different activities through language, such as agree, disagree, assert, blame, deny, explain, promise, etc. The first to investigate the ability of a sentence to perform actions was Austin, the author of “How to do things with words”, who distinguished three kinds of acts that can be performed by an utterance:

• The locution – the formal, literal meaning of a meaningful utterance;
• The illocution – the force which accompanies the utterance and is the communicative act which is performed by it;
• The perlocution – the effect on the actions, thoughts or beliefs of the addressee.

These three acts together make up a speech act and a text is made up of a concatenation of speech acts, one influencing the other.

Language functions: Jakobson

Jakobson, a linguist of the Prague School of Linguistics, distinguished six kinds of language functions:

• The cognitive or referential function: when the language is used in order to transmit information;
• The expressive or emotive function: when the language is used to indicate the mood or attitude of the speaker;
• The conative functions: when the language is used to influence the behavior of the person to whom it is addressed;
• The poetic or aesthetic function: it manifests itself in the form of an utterance and not just in the meaning or the content of its separate words (in poetry it is generally combined with other functions);
• The phatic function: it is used to open the channel of communication and to maintain contact between addresser and addressee;
• The metalingual function: it focuses on the code or language.

Other functions can be derived from these:

• The imaginary function: it is a part of the referential function regarding imaginary contexts;
• The magic function: if the referential function becomes an addressee of a conative message;
• The exhortative function: it is a part of the conative function.

Metafunctions of language: Halliday

Halliday identified generalized functions of language which define the total meaning of the adult language system: he called them “metafunctions” or “semantic macro-functions”. According to Halliday, all languages are organized around three main kinds of meaning:

• The ideational or reflective meaning: it is represented by transitivity; so the way in which different types of process of the external world are interpreted and expressed;
• The interpersonal meaning: it is represented by mood and modality (es. the speaker’s judgements and predictions);
• The textual meaning: it is represented by theme structures, which express the organization of the message (so how clauses relate to the surrounding discourse and to the context of the situation).

These metafunctions are the manifestations of two very general aims:

• To understand the environment: the language has a referential function, because it names and describes things in the environment this is the language for which represents information, the speaker as an observer;
• To act with language on the other in the environment: this types of aim involves our interpersonal exchanges and our attempt to influence the attitudes and behavior of others.

Language use is functional, its function is to make meaning, these meanings are influenced by the social and cultural context in which the exchange takes place, the communication involves choosing some linguistic items and discarding others (semiotic process). This means that people use language to achieve a goal and that any use of language is motivated by a purpose.

Cap. 2 Text, context and genre: socio-cultural aspects of English

Language as a social activity

We can experience language not in isolation but always in relation to the social setting which is made up of people, actions and events. This social environment is called by Halliday “context of situation”. It is also important to notice that this “context of situation” is characterized by the presence of all those features of the social setting which are relevant to the communicative event that is taking place. Many of these ideas were first developed by Firth, the author of famous books such as “Speech”, “Tongues of Men” and “Papers in Linguistics”: he became professor in general linguistics in England in the University of London and then at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Firth saw language as a mode of action, because language is a way of doing things, of behaving and make other people behave in relation to surrounding. He also realized that to study the way in which language performs actions, it is necessary to take real examples that occur in real life.

Context: co-text and context of situation

A text is a complex entity which isn’t just a sum of its parts, but also a group of relationships, which confer meaning on each other and can only be interpreted in relation to each other. We can then distinguish between:

• Context: it is the extra-linguistic context in which a text occurs and it refers to what goes on in the total environment beyond the physical realization of language;
• Co-text: it is the linguistic context in which a text occurs and it is composed of the words and sentences that “go” with the text.

In order to interpret a text we need in fact linguistic and non-linguistic items: for example when we say “Alt” in Italian, we can translate it into English with “Halt”, if it is for example said by a soldier, or with “Stop”, if we are referring to a sign on the road. From this example we can understand how important the context and the co-text are. This distinction between context and co-text was first made by Malinowski, who faced the problem of illustrate his ideas on the remote culture of a group of South Pacific islanders to an English-speaking public. He had different alternatives:

• Free translation: it was comprehensible to an English audience, but gave no insights into the source language and culture, we lose the original characteristic of the language;
• Literal translation: it conveyed the flavour of the original language, but wasn’t comprehensible to English readers;
• Translation with an extended commentary: it provided information about the immediate situation in which they were uttered (context of situation) and also about the total cultural background and the mentality (context of culture). It was the most acceptable, because context of situation and context of culture are both important to interpret texts.

This relationship between these two different contexts were then developed by Firth, who found out a set of variables that are, according to him, necessary in the context of situation:

• The participants in the situation;
• The action taking place (verbal and non-verbal);
• Other relevant features of the situation;
• Effect of the verbal action.

Than Jakobson puts forward six constituent factors as making up any speech event.