Lecture 13

1. Lecture 13 Language: we are what we speak

2. We are what we speak • Imagine having a telephone conversation with a person whom you do not know. What information can you immediately grasp about this person: • Gender • Nationality or ethnicity • Region of origin • Age • Emotional state(anger, sadness, elation,fear) • Mental state (anxious, confident, confused) • Physical state (just waking up, cold, drunk) • Class • Education

3. Edward Sapir, a famous American linguist: • “Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached (Sapir 1949: 69).

4. English ‘English ‘ world Russian ‘Russian’ world Spanish World ‘Spanish’ world ‘Hopi’ world Hopi

5. Adamic or naïve view of language LANGUAGE reflects WORLD WORDS are THINGS

6. Rene Magritte, surrealist painter. His works frequently display a juxtaposition of ordinary objects, or an usual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. • In his book, This is not a pipe, French critic Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox)

7. Learning a language • Learning a new language is not about learning the names for things. • Knowing the words for things does not allow to speak authentic language or understand others. • Assumption: language is a reflection of reality and that it refers primarily to reality. • BUT: our thoughts, feelings, and descriptions are conditioned, even shaped by the possibilities of our language. • As many experienced that no two languages are really equivalent.Structure, grammar, vocabulary, etc. • Translation is not a mere correspondence of words, but trying to convey the sense and meaning.

8. Theories of language • Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913): “language is a system of interdependent terms in which value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others”.

9. Language as a symbolic system • Each of us inherits a language; we learn it as babies. • “No society, in fact, knows or has ever known language other than a product inherited from proceeding generations” (Saussure 1959: 71). • Language – social invention and a social institution – no one person invented it. (Compare: Esperanto, computer languages).

10. Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Lingustics • Swiss linguist who taught at the University of Geneva • School of though, called structuralism • Central tenet of structuralism: the phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their network of relationships.

11. The sign, the signified and the signifier The signifier (sound) The signified (concept, idea) The Sign (word) [TRI:] A perennial plant TREE

12. A sign, a word, gets its meaning only in relation to or in contrast with other signs in a system of signs. father mother uncle aunt sister brother "The essential feature of Saussure's linguistic sign is that, being intrinsically arbitrary, it can be identified only by contrast with coexisting signs of the same nature, which together constitute a structured system"

13. Language is not just a system, it is a completely symbolic system. • There is no necessary connection between a sound/word and the concept signified. Different languages have different words for the same concepts. • That means that the relation is arbitrary and symbolic. • Each word represents a concept. • Rather than representing or reflecting the world, each language represents a conceptual scheme. • Words unite ‘not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image’ (Saussure 1959: 66).

14. The meaning of the particular sign does not exist by itself but emerges only in relation to all the other signs, not the external word. • Words are defined by other words. • Meaning, therefore, is a function of an environment of signs. • Example: afraid, fear, terrified, and dread. The relation is one of intensity.

15. The main points of linguistic theories: • Language is a symbolic system • There is no transparent relationship between words and things • Meaning is not the same as reference • The system is relatively arbitrary

16. Language, culture and reality • Assumption: we all see the same things • YET: we see what we are trained to see, what we are socialised to see. • Benjamin Whorf: explosion of empty gasoline barrels. • What was the cause: fumes or the language? • In English there is no word to describe ambiguous condition of empty but not empty.

17. Whorf-Sapir hypothesis • “The background linguistic system (grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas…We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds”.

18. The Hopi language • The Hopi language differs dramatically from Standard Average European language (SAE) • Tenses: English has three major tenses. • People can only experience present. Past and future are abstractions • But Westerners think of them as real, because their language forces them to do so. • Hopis perception of time: lack of tenses and resulting attitude towards it.

19. It is not possible to test Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. • Possible solution: to look at the problem developmentally: in the development of a child what comes first, thought or language? • Melissa Bowerman: linguistic and cognitive development proceed in parallel, each guiding and supporting the other.