1 / 41

Lecture 11

Lecture 11. Language Convention. How to tell good sentences from bad sentences?. Prescriptive view: resort to authoritative rules Descriptive view: resort to the native convention Generative view: resort to your own mind Is it a good sentence? You ain ’ t seen nothing yet.

catori
Download Presentation

Lecture 11

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Lecture 11 Language Convention

  2. How to tell good sentences from bad sentences? Prescriptive view: resort to authoritative rules Descriptive view: resort to the native convention Generative view: resort to your own mind Is it a good sentence? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

  3. Stylistic view: Resort to situation • We judge the correctness of a sentence not purely relying on our internalized grammar but also resorting to any possible stylistic association. • Language consists of varieties. The appropriateness of its usage is closely related to a specific situation.

  4. Many particular aspects of a language are totally conventional.

  5. Language convention relates to: national unification identity communication translation

  6. National Unification Language has a very strong power to represent the nationality. Thus it is regarded sometimes as one of the major factors by a government to strengthen the unification.

  7. Noah Webster, author of the first authoritative American English dictionary An American Dictionary of the English Language, once said: “Our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government.”

  8. Noah Webster’s Oath Break with British English and its eighteenth-century classical traditions.

  9. American Englishstarting from spelling

  10. Webster’s spelling book

  11. It was the custom for all such pupils to stand together as one class, and with one voice to read a column or two of the tables for spelling. The master gave the signal to begin, and all united to read, letter by lettwer, pronouncing each syllable by itself, and adding to it the preceding one till the word was complete. Thus a-d ad, m-I mi, admi, r-a ra, admira, t-i-o-n, shun, admiration. This mode of reading was exceedingly exciting, and in my humble judgment, exceedingly useful; as it required and taught deliberate and distinct articulation.

  12. T A B L E XIX[.] Words of Three Syllables, accented on the Second. a-chieve-ment ac-quaint-ance ad-do-men ad[-]ven-ture al-le-gro ap-pren[-]tice ap-prais[-]er ar-rear-age bis-sex-tile blas-phe-mer com-pen-sate com[-]pul-sive con-jec-ture con-sis[-]cate con[-]ta-gion con-ta-gious con-vul-sive cur-mud-geon con-tem-plate cor-ro-sive con-sis[-]cate

  13. Having witnessed American ambassador in London, John Hay exclaimed: “How our Ambassador does go it when he gets a roomful of bovine Britons in front of him… I never so clearly appreciated the power of the unhesitating orotundity of the Yankee speech, as in listening – after an hour or two of hum-ha of tongue-tied British men – to the long wash of our Ambassador’s sonority.” 政治家约翰•海伊亲眼看到了美国大使在伦敦的工作后感慨地说：“我们的大使真够能耐，他怎么忍受得了面前那一屋子迟钝的英国人……在听了一两个小时英国人那哼哼哈哈、张口结舌的谈吐后，再听我们大使那滔滔不绝、 音色圆润低沉的演讲，我从没有象现在这样清楚地欣赏到我们美国语言那庄严、洪亮的魅力。” John Hay American statesman:

  14. community or group identity— . Identity

  15. From the investigation by William Labov we see that class and style are two major factors influencing the speakers’ choice of phonological variants. After his introduction of class into sociolinguistics as an indispensable variable, more and more studies have proved gradually that one’s speech is one’s identity card.

  16. 中学生网络语言 “偶今天难过得死掉了，偶的＠>>-->--还没开 就要死掉了，今天GF和偶say3166, GG、MM 都到偶的烘焙机灌水噢， 555555~~~~~~~3Q3Q” 521（我爱你） 1314(一生一世 ) 菜鸟 (网上新手) 东东 (东西) MM（美眉）GG（哥哥） 94 （就是）　7456 （气死我了） ＧＦ(女朋友 ) ＢＦ(男朋友 ) 大虾（网络高手） 灌水（聊天室、BBS随意写） T人（踢人）；DD（弟弟）　 ^_O　挤眉弄眼地笑 ＮＰ(没问题 )CU(再见) BT（变态）

  17. Communication • Pragmatic distance: negotiable; speakers often shorten or lengthen the pragmatic distance by all kinds of means to serve their purpose. For example, two one-face friends happen to read books in the library face to face. A wants to borrow B’s cell phone. He may smile and say: • A: Buddy, let me use your phone, won’t you? • B: This is the library, sir.

  18. A calls B “buddy” and uses an interrogative to show intimacy, regarding the other as an old friend. In other words, A intends to shorten the initial schoolmate relationship to a friend or family relationship. But B uses the opposite method, lengthening the pragmatic distance. He changes the initial schoolmate relationship to strange relationship-“sir”. Thus B rejects A’s request.

  19. Tongue and face One’s face, in pragmatics, is one’s public self-image, or the emotional and social sense of self that one has and expects others to recognize. Not every person is very tactful but no one dares to entirely ignore the conventional principles of different cultures related to politeness.

  20. Politeness is the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face.

  21. One has two kinds of faces – positive face and negative face. The former is one’s need to be connected, accepted, and treated as a member of the same group; the latter is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others.

  22. Correspondingly, people have positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies. The former draws attention to a common goal and appeals to solidarity by using such patterns as You and I have the same problem, so…; How about letting me…? The latter shows concern about imposition. (e.g. I’m sorry to bother you…) and typically uses a modal verb in a question: Could you …? I know you are busy, but might I ask you if …?

  23. In practice, most people use language in various ways depending on who is being addressed, where they are, and what kind of effect they want to produce. This is an essential aspect of pragmatic competence and goes beyond the scope of Grice’s cooperative principles. Therefore, Robin Lakoff, an American linguist, believes that two rules are enough behind pragmatic strategies: 1) be clear; 2) be polite. One rule for tongue and one rule for face, as we see.

  24. Functional varieties. Language choice -- diglossia and bilingualism In many speech communities two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions. The most familiar pattern is the standard language (known as the H variety) and the regional dialect (known as the L variety). This is known as diglossia. （双重语体）

  25. Mark Twain You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mark Twain and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another…

  26. Lexical level & syntactic level Translation

  27. Kaleidoscope An optical toy consisting of a cylinder with mirrors and colored shapes inside that create shifting symmetrical patterns when the end is rotated 万花筒

  28. Bolinger: How do we picture the outside world? If it is a kind of idealized entities that keep their shapes no matter what kaleidoscopic patterns they take whenever they are shaken up, our choice would fall on morphemes or words. If it is the patterns themselves, it will fall on sentences. This is because a sentence -- a particular sentence, not a sentence type -- does not mean in the same way that a word means. "

  29. Two levels of meaning(1) Lexical meaning is unchangeable. Seek for accuracy

  30. Proper comprehension He gave her a short answer. 他给了她一个简短生硬的回答。

  31. Idiomatic meaning • The Anglo-Saxons, by all accounts, were very sophisticated in the arts of speech. 据说，盎格鲁撒克逊人十分讲究言语艺术。 by/from all accounts 根据各种流传的说法。 e.g. He was by all accounts a rich man. 传言说他曾是一个有钱人。

  32. Lack of equivalent word We made a landfall at dusk after three weeks at sea. landfall: the first sight of land after a journey by sea or air. 在海上航行三周后的一个黄昏， 我们看到了陆地。

  33. Shades of word meaning She’s a real little madam! [Madam: girl or young woman who likes to get her own way ] 她可真是个我行我素的小姐！

  34. Meaning and function 他到老板那儿去投诉，碰了一鼻子灰：她叫他出去上一边呆着去。 He went to complain to the boss, but got very short shrift: she told him to get out and stay out. (short shrift: unfairly quick treatment; little attention) got very short shrift 碰了一鼻子灰 functional equivalents

  35. Two levels of meaning (2) Syntactic Pattern is changeable Seek for the same effect

  36. Seek for the same effect • 少年不识愁滋味 Gloom captured none of my salad days. • 十年一觉扬州梦 Ten years in Yangzhou, my fool’s paradise…

  37. Overlapping  merger 衣带渐宽终不悔，为伊消得人憔悴 衣带渐宽 憔悴 消得人憔悴: pine oneself away For you I’m pining myself away without regret.

  38. Language and culture Culture is an edifice of meanings and meanings are expressed by means of language, there is a very close relation between culture and language.

  39. 他只会马走日象走田。 He only knows the basic moves in the Chinese chess. Maintaining appropriate cultural features

  40. THE END

More Related