What is Linguistics?

❶ WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?

• LINGUISTICS IS THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE(S), INCLUDING THE SOUNDS OR SIGNS, WORDS AND GRAMMAR RULES.
• WORDS IN LANGUAGES ARE FINITE, BUT SENTENCES ARE NOT. IT IS THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF HUMAN LANGUAGE THAT SETS IT APART FROM ANIMAL LANGUAGES, WHICH ARE ESSENTIALLY RESPONSES TO STIMULI.
• IT IS CONCERNED WITH THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION.
• IT IS GENERALLY A DESCRIPTIVE DISCIPLINE RATHER THAN A PRESCRIPTIVE ONE, WHICH MEANS THAT LINGUISTS DO NOT PRODUCE 'FAST RULES' ABOUT HOW TO USE A CERTAIN LANGUAGE, BUT RATHER CONCENTRATE ON DESCRIBING THE RULES WHICH (ESPECIALLY NATIVE) SPEAKERS SEEM TO HAVE INTERNALIZED.
• IT DEALS BOTH WITH THE STUDY OF PARTICULAR LANGUAGES AND THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL PROPERTIES COMMON TO ALL THE LANGUAGES OR LARGE GROUPS OF LANGUAGES.
• APART FROM THIS, THERE ARE VARIOUS DIFFERENT WAYS OF 'DOING' LINGUISTICS. FOR EXAMPLE, WE CAN CONCENTRATE ON LANGUAGE AS USED AT A CERTAIN POINT OF THE TIME e.g. IN 1989; THIS IS CALLED SYNCHRONIC LINGUISTICS.
• ALTERNATIVELY, WE CAN LOOK AT LANGUAGE FROM A DIACHRONIC POINT OF VIEW, WHICH INVOLVES ANALYZING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LANGUAGE DURING A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME e.g. DURING THE MIDDLE ENGLISH, OR THE 1950s ETC.
• LINGUISTICS IS A SCIENCE WHICH CAN EITHER BE STUDIED IN A THEORETICAL OR A MORE APPLIED WAY. FOR EXAMPLE, SOMEONE MAY BE INTERESTED IN FINDING OUT EXACTLY HOW QUESTIONS ARE FORMED IN ENGLISH (= THEORETICAL). ONCE THIS IS KNOWN THE KNOWLEDGE COULD BE APPLIED EG. TO LANGUAGE TEACHING, THEREBY (HOPEFULLY) ENABLING TEACHERS AND PUPILS TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE MORE EFFECTIVELY.

❶ LINGUISTICS INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING SUBAREAS OR SUBFIELDS:

• PHONETICS - THE STUDY OF THE PRODUCTION, ACOUSTICS AND HEARING OF SPEECH SOUNDS;
• PHONOLOGY - THE PATTERNING OF SOUNDS; I.E. THE SOUND SYSTEM;
• MORPHOLOGY - THE STRUCTURE OF WORDS, THE STUDY OF THE FORMATION OF WORDS;
• SYNTAX - THE STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES, THE STUDY OF THE FORMATION OF SENTENCES; THE COMBINATION OF WORDS INTO SENTENCES
• SEMANTICS - THE STUDY OF MEANING; THE WAYS IN WHICH SOUNDS AND MEANINGS ARE RELATED;
• PRAGMATICS - LANGUAGE IN CONTEXT; THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN USE.

• It also includes explorations into the nature of language variation (i.e. dialects), language change over time, how language is processed and stored in the brain, and how it is acquired by young children.

• Although linguistics is still largely unfamiliar to the educated public, it is a growing and exciting field, with an increasingly important impact on other fields as diverse as psychology, philosophy, education, language teaching, sociology, anthropology, computer science, and artificial intelligence.

• Each human language is a complex of knowledge and abilities enabling speakers of the language to communicate with each other, to express ideas, hypotheses, emotions, desires, and all the other things that need expressing.

• Linguistics is the study of these knowledge systems in all their aspects: how is such a knowledge system structured, how is it acquired, how is it used in the production and comprehension of messages, how does it change over time?

• Linguists consequently are concerned with a number of particular questions about the nature of language.

• What properties do all human language have in common?
• How do languages differ, and to what extent are the differences systematic, i.e. can we find patterns in the differences?
• How do children acquire such complete knowledge of a language in such a short time?
• What are the ways in which languages can change over time, and are there limitations to how languages change?
• What is the nature of the cognitive processes that come into play when we produce and understand language?

• Aside from language structure, other perspectives on language are represented in specialized or interdisciplinary branches:

• Historical linguistics;
• Sociolinguistics;
• Psycholinguistics;
• Ethnolinguistics (or anthropological linguistics);
• Matheology;
• Computational linguistics;
• Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.

• When you know a language, you know words in that language, i.e. sound units or signs that are related to specific meanings.

• However, the sounds or signs and meanings of words are arbitrary, for the most part, there is no relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.

Reasons for the Popularity of English as a Lingua Franca

1) Colonial History:

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the Massachusetts coast in 1620 after their journey from England, they brought with them not just a set of religious beliefs, nor only a pioneering spirit and a desire for colonization, but also their language. The language of English remained and it is still the predominant language of the world's greatest economic and political power.

• It was the same in Australia, too;
• When Commander Phillip planted the British flag in Sydney Cove in 1788, it was also language which was introduced to the natives.
• In other parts of the British Empire, English rapidly became a unifying and dominating means of control.
• It became for instance a lingua franca in India, where a number of indigenous languages existed. Also, the imposition of English as the one language of administration helped maintain the coloniser's power.

2) Economics:

The spread of commerce throughout the world is a major factor, with the United States being the first world economic power. The spread of international commerce has taken England along with it. Globalization, positively seen by the journalist Pilger John represents a threat to the identities of individual countries and local control, but not the spread of English.

3) Travel:

Much travel and tourism is carried on, around the world, in English. A visit to most airports shows signs not only in the language of the country but also in English, just as many airline announcements are glossed in English, too. So far, English is the preferred language of traffic control in many countries and is used widely in sea travel communication.

4) Information Exchange:

A great deal of academic discourse around the world takes place in English. It is often a lingua franca of conferences and many journal articles in fields as diverse as astrophysics and zoology have English as a kind of default language. Internet language is also mainly in English: this is due to the internet's roots in the USA and the predominance of its use there in the early days of World Wide Web. English = focus of many linguistic descriptions. It is taught worldwide in thousand of language institutions.

5) Popular Culture:

In the Western world, at least, English is a dominating language in popular culture. Pop music in English saturates... Thus many people who are not English speakers can sing words from their favourite English performing artists, just as foreign audiences (or viewers) repeat words spoken by familiar stars coming out of the USA.

Creole

• It is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers [...] A creole is a normal language in almost every sense.
• A creole arises when the children of pidgin speakers use their parents' pidgin language as the mother tongue.
• A creole has native speakers.

Pidgin and Creole

The simple structure of the pidgin is the starting point for the creole. Now that it is being acquired as a first language, its vocabulary expands and its grammar increases in complexity so that it is capable of expressing the entire human experience of its mother tongue speakers.

Three Circles - Kachru (1985)

Three Concentric Circles of Englishes

• The Expanding Circle e.g.,
  • China
  • Indonesia
  • Korea
  • South Africa
  • CIS
  • Caribbean Countries
  • Israel
  • Nepal
  • South America
  • Zimbabwe
  • Egypt
  • Japan
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Taiwan
• The Outer Circle e.g.,
  • Bangladesh
  • Kenya
  • Pakistan
  • Sri Lanka
  • Ghana
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Tanzania
  • India
  • Nigeria
  • Singapore
  • Zambia
• The Inner Circle
  • USA
  • UK
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • New Zealand

Braj Kachru (1985)

• He suggested the division of the English-speaking world into 3 concentric circles.
• In the first "Inner Circle" Kachru puts countries like Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States where English is spoken as a first language.
• In the second "Outer Circle" are all the countries where English is spoken as a second or significant language (Singapore, India, Pakistan, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria).
• In the third "Expanding Circle" we find countries where English has acquired cultural or commercial importance (China, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Greece, Japan, Israel).