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Fundamental Question
a. What is the relationship between language and culture?
b. Humans are the only animal to have culture.
c. Humans are the only animal to have language.
d. How do the two connect?
e. What is language? what members of a particular
society speak (Wardhaugh 1).
Language as Grammar
The object of a science of linguistics (Saussure).
Noam Chomsky
(1928)
SyntacticStructures
ReviewofSkinner:Verbal
Behavior(1959)
UniversalGrammar
differencebetweensurfacestructureand
deepstructureinlanguage
Grammar
Three sub-systems
Representational
Phonology (sounds), graphic, gestural
Lexical
(Syn)tactic = syntax
Language as communication
Language as Text.
The Interaction of People
The Interpretation of Texts
What do you communicate? Ideas? Emotions?
Intentions?
How do you communicate?
Messages:
The interpretation of messages
The construction of messages
Language as thing
Language as an element in social constructs.
Language planning, code switching, dialect
debates.
Competence v. Performance
Langue
Structure
Structural
universal
v
v
v
v
parole
event
communicative
dialect
Desperate Definitions:
Sociolinguistics is an attempt to
find correlations between
linguistic structure and social
structure
Sociolinguists
whatever it is, is about asking
important questions concerning
the relationship of language to
society (Wardhaugh 11)
Methodological principles
Wardhaugh p. 18
1. Cumulative
2. Uniformation
3. Convergence
4. Subordinate shift
5. Style shifting
6. Attention
7. Vernacular
8. Formality
More Discussion
There is a connection between questions 1
and 4 on p. 19 of Wardhaugh. What can we
say about historical vs synchronic
linguistics, about written vs spoken
language?
Squishy
I told you sociolinguistics is squishy. Can
you all remind me what we learn about our
topic of study from chapter 1 of Wardhaugh
and this pitiful powerpoint? What is most
important? 3 things? 5 things? 10 things?
What will you remember in 10 years about
it?
L. Ron Hubbard
All men are your slaves," he once
wrote in a diary entry unearthed
during a 1984 lawsuit. He
reportedly once claimed to have
written a manuscript that contained
such brutal truths that anyone who
read it went insane or committed
suicide.