NT100Y1- A Section 3 Chapter 1: Language in the Global village We need language to make it possible to engage in meaningful communication; but even between conversations among speakers with the same language, there can still be misunderstandings Marshall McLuhan, a cultural and communications theorist created the concept of I ntercultural communication (IC), which is a world where instant communication among people of different backgrounds is made possible through mass telecommunications technologies (global village) Koine (lingua franca) as a word used in ancient Greece to describe language that became a common vernacular in the Hellenistic world; it loses those indigenous features of a language and focuses on the generic medium of the language to make it easier for people of different backgrounds to converse English is a global lingua franca; spoken in more countries around the world than any other language. Also, widespread languages can also function as regional koines
Intercultural communication Defined as the exchange of verbal messages (spoken or written) between individuals f rom different linguistic and cultural backgrounds by means of common language Multicultural communication is where several languages are used and mixed in different ways in order to communicate in many intercultural situations around the world certain aspects of a koine words and structures can be used differently by native speakers that would be harder for non-natives to understand communication can be misunderstood Calquing or lexical interference is when native English or Italian speakers enter i nto a conversation that unfolds in one or the other language as the common koine Cognates words in different languages that have the same origin, but may not have the same meaning Interference Interference study has shown that calquing, linguistic borrowing and other language mixing has been phenomena that have been significant factors in bringing about change and even generating new forms of language Pidgens and creole tongues are an example of languages that have sprung to make communication possible between two or more groups that speak different languages
o o o
Pidgens t ake shape when people of different language backgrounds have been brought together Creoles result when pidgens undergo standardization into separate languages Mutual intelligibility occurs when intercultural speakers have a surface
level understanding of the common English code used In variants of English koine that have developed, new dialect forms of English that are springing up from multifarious modes of contact involving many acquired from of English
Communication and miscommunication in the Global village Ongoing research on IC is making it rather plain that a message can be interpreted correctly only if the sender and the receiver possess the same structural and conceptual knowledge built into the language used to transmit the message The scientific study of IC should, above all else, seek to provide insights into how such communication ubnfolds and how differences are really matters of communication noise Verbal programming (the construction of messages); two dimensions o Pragmatic dimension: understanding that language is used as a means of i nteraction in a variety of social settings/interaction fields (ex. speech can i nform and question, promises, requests, and other social actions) Relies on argumentation; attempt in persuading the addressee by p resenting reasons to support a standpoint. This kind of persuasion effects the deepest and most stable changes in the attitudes rather t han the peripheral route of persuasion, based on emotions, authority or pure association of ideas Failure occurs when people misunderstand the pragmatic force of a l inguistic expression Logico-semantic dimesion: how people use languages to represent the world conceptually, to combine simple concepts into more complex ideas and use simple and complex concepts to reason about the world through valid i nference schemes Relies on the control of metaphorical strategies (ex. money is liquid) Failure occurs when people perform a communicative action that the other culture considers inadmissible, or inappropriate to the social context
o
Non-verbal dimension (ex. body language and visual communication)
The study of IC is, in sum , gradually forcing linguist ics to expand it s field of inquiry i nto territories t hat would have been unim aginable before t he advent of t he global v illage
Language Language is a product of logos, t he power of reason residing in the human soul t hat had transformed humans for insentient brutes into sapient, rational creatures Greeks understood that language allows humans to converse in a logical fashion; in a structured way that is considered to make sense among speakers of that language Logos are also seen as potential barriers because the categories and values embraced by different people can vary (ex. when the Greeks came into contact with t he Persians and Asians, they discovered a behavior that was despised at home was accepted and even commanded in another place The quest for reasonableness and universality that characterizes ancient Greek Philosophy initially emerged also as an attempt to cope with this cultural shock Multilingualism is the norm in the world, monolingualism is the exception o o o o Most countries around the world have more than one language that is spoken regularly to carry out their daily affairs Different languages spoken have different communicative and social f unctions Diglossia (or multiglossuia, two languages) is the specialization of functions of languages Triglossia: Several local or ethnic vernacular languages Regional or national koine International language (used for higher education) Multilingualism and the adoption of english as a global koine is seen as antithetic and a threat to national languages and multilingualism Multilingualism presents us with different perspectives and insights and enables us to reach a more profound understanding of the nature of the human mind and spirit, while common language is an amazing world resource which presents is w ith unprecedented possibilities for mutual understanding and enable us to find f resh opportunities for international cooperation Universal Principles Economizing principles are the basis that all languages world-wide are built on o o Lexemes: a small set of sounds that are able to produce an infinity of words Morphemes : bits of words
Econom izing principle states t hat t he sound system of every language (Phonology ), consists of a limited number of sounds that can be combined to form words at i nfinitum
Syntax principles is another universal construction principle that asserts all language have rules for combining words to form phrases and sentences at i nfinitum; meaning-bearing units it adds to the meaning-making capacity of language
Usage principle asserts that all languages have strategies of usage that are governed by culture-specific traditions; they guide how words, phrases and sentences are used in conversations, dialogues and argumentation with specific social settings The kind of language that we use depends on the setting and interdependent social roles of the people interacting; it is deeply intertwined with our cultural knowledge of appropriate situations and roles Classificatory principle alludes to the fact that all languages serve a classificatory function and that the categories encoded by a language become i ntrinsic to the formation of peoples worldviews (ex. when looking at aboriginal languages, they use a specialized vocabulary that serve as a classificatory function when encoding realities that are perceived as critical by a particular culture) Changes in vocabulary mirror changes in society and culture specialized vocabulary has virtually disappeared Whorfian Hypothesis Whorfian Hypothesis posits that language categories predispose native speakers to attend to certain concepts as being necessary Sapir (1924) observed that if we cannot translate a philosophical text into eskimo language, it is due to the inherent inferiority of the language or of the cognitive abilities of the Eskimo Unstated knowledge colours all communication
Language design Each language is equal among equals; speakers are often unaware of what design feature is breached and the effects this can have on understanding (what has gone w rong) For example, why is the word pfriend un-english?; no words can exist with the cluster /pf/ at the beginning As a study of contact phenomena has shown over and over when sound system are in contact, inference occurs in a predictable fashion non-native speakers unconsciously apply the phonological features of their phonological systems to speak t he koine an (form accent )
Phonemes a re sound unit s t hat languages m ake available for t he creation of words; sound cues t hat signal points of meaning dist inct ions in an ut terance (ex. /l/ and /r/ a re phonem ic in English, dist inguishing between lip and rip, etc. t his can cause m iscommunications between speakers
Morphological structure regulates the choice of appropriate word forms to use in a given phonological context: the indefinite article form a is used before noun or adjectives beginning with a consonants not vowels (ex. the use of a and an); o Morphemes: smaller units than words; (ex. a or an)
Syntactic error is when English articles do not precede nouns and adjectives in a sentence, and instead follow them; when an article is out of place o Ex. f riend a of mine eats a lot of meat The violation of the p rinciple of congruity, which is a semantic inference, and cause more of a deleterious effect on the interpretation of a message compared to the other errors o The way that we combine concepts obeys a law of logical congruity, which is universal, but the lexicalization of concepts i n different languages is largely the result of historical and cultural processes, needs or traditions o Ex. a friend of mine d rinks a lot of meat: this implies that English has two p redecates (to eat and to drink) that differentiate the ingestion of as solid j ust a cultural fact The semantic system reveal that language, thought and culture are i nterdependent constituents of human life ex. Italians only have one word t hat describes a device that tells time, where we have many words that describe this such as watch, clock, etc. because in English, we refer to the portability distinction as necessary (importance of culture Whorfian h ypothesis )
o
Whorfian Hypothesis also raises some interesting questions about social i nequalities and the role of language that encodes them (ex. female critics claiming t hat English grammer was organized from a mans perspective )
Speech When asked a question, depend on the form it is being asked, the types of answers t hat are given can be different; an i nherent synergy, between the system of language itself manifestation of what we call the usage principle Language: the mental code, governed by principles o Acquired by exposure to speech samples in early childhood; they listen i nstinctively to speakers, gradually mastering the words to which they are exposed and associating them to objects, ideas and action
As children grow and m ature, t hey start to realize t hat speech patterns r eflect social values, rout ines, emphases and concepts, etc. o Language: abstract mentally stored forms, patterns and meaning categories Speech: vocal or non-vocal o Concrete, unique ut terances and contextualized communication events; u t terance is often seen as t he expression of an individual speakers att it udes, as an act corresponding to t he speakers goals and desires Sassure (swiss linguist) proposed t hat linguist ics should focus on langue, t he system of rules t hat members of a speech community recognize as t heir language , rat her t han on parole (speech) or the actual use o these rules in unique conversations, w ritings, etc. this is an error Speech has a definite and relatively stable typical form depending on sphere of human activity to which the utterance belongs Dell Hymes (1970s American linguist) proposed that knowledge of language entails more than linguistic competence, but also the ability to use language forms appropriately in specific social and interactive settings - communicative competence
o
Communicative competence deals with words used in conversation that are seen as cues of social meanings (tells us when its appropriate to say hello and goodbye) Cues can also be conditioned by a simple politeness; you tend to use different types of goodbye depending on your relationship with the other speaker invovlved; cues are socially- coded Honorifics are a linguistic form that encode aspects of social relationships between participants when giving each other a title (ex. either using your first/last name, t itles, etc.)
Argumentation Communication always involves different minds and a starting common ground which communication can grow and provide foundations for bridging a gap Argumentation is a mode of communication where differences and reason play a role in resolving a difference of opinion reasonably In many intercultural situations, argumentation turns out to be problematic; this had led people to dismiss argumentation as inherently confrontational and unsuitable for a fruitful intercultural dialogue The English languages gives a negative definition for argumentation that other cultures do not have; English chooses to focus on mainly the fact that arguments are p resented when there is a difference of opinion between people and highlights the potential for conflict
L inguist ics Descript ion of language dates back to fift h century BC by Indian scholar Panini who compiled a grammar of Sanskrit language of India; first ever to show how words are governed by design principles Greek Scholar Dionysius Thorax wrote comprehensive grammar of Greek t hat has r emained a basic model to t his day, showing how t he parts of speech relate to each other in t he form ation of sentences Language surveys were conducted in order to determ ine which grammatical facts w ere universal and which were specific to different languages; surveys revealed t hat i n some sounds in related words between languages corresponded in regular ways; (ex. t hey concluded t hat t his linked lat in and English historically; comparative g rammar making such linkages) The study of sound correspondences led to conclusion that some languages must have descended from the same undocumented language Differences among languages descended from Proto-indo-european language that was undocumented and created different languages from sound shifts of various k inds Diachronic: t he comparative study of sounds/ synchronic: systematic study of a language at a specific point in time Sassures plan for the study of language was the notion of difference, which claims t hat the structures of a language do not take on meaning and function in isolation, but rather in relation to each other (ex. distinction between opposing meanings of cat and rat show that /r/ and /k/ consonants are important in English for establishing meaning) structuralism Boas saw that the goal of linguistics is the study of how langue reflected the cultural emphases of the speech community that used it (ex. the way we used language to t alk to hierarchy and friends is different) o His objective was to show that people living in different cultures and using different languages have all developed parallel systems for their understanding of words Between the Sassure-Boas paradigm, a standard repertoire of notions and techniques was required; Bloomfieldian manual of techniques Noam Chomsky argued against their notion claming that the understanding of language as a universal faculty could never be developed from a piecemeal analysis of the disparate sounds, words forms, etc.; theory of language needs to explain why t here is a similar unconscious plan for constructing sentences rule- making p rinciples
o
o o
Transformational rule when t wo sentences have become merged into t he same surface st ructure; t ransformations enable us to find sim ilarit ies b etween linguist ic constructions t hat appear different Believed t hat linguists would eventually find t hat t hey could conflate d ifferent languages into a universal set of r ule- making principles
People argue against his view, claiming that It leaves out what is interesting i n the grammar of most languages Linguistic is divided into two fields: o Theoretical, concerned with building language models or theories to describe languages and to explain the similarities and differences among them o Applied, concerned with applying the findings of linguistic research to language teaching, dictionary preparation, speech therapy, etc.
Global Linguistics The goal of GL is fundamentally bring together scholars to study how speakers of different languages interact in intercultural settings; to reach a better understanding of languages used in intercultural settings by documenting the kinds of interference phenomena that characterize such settings Linguists should be native speakers if they aim to investigate since they can analyze t heir own intuitions better than anyone else GL research should unfold as a comparative and cross-cultural form of inquiry, studying the languages of groups of people in order to determine how their similarities and their differences shape IC GL is the examination of the role of language in global communicative contexts