- •The theory of Language Lecture 1
- •3 Approaches:
- •Language is a system of signs & a structure
- •3 Types of signs:
- •Lecture 2 Language & thought
- •Where do language & thought meet?
- •A series of planes:
- •Inner speech
- •Thought
- •Conclusions:
- •Language & thought from the point of view of cognitive linguistics
- •Language & Culture
- •Sapir’s understanding of language
- •The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- •Verbal means
- •Prototypical categories
- •Social stratification
- •Lecture 4 Language, Mind, Culture & Society
- •Are human beings absolutely alone & unique in their use of systems of signs to express social meanings?
- •Sociolinguistics
- •Language & gender
- •Lecture 5 Language as a means of communication. Discourse analysis.
- •Verbal message
- •Verbalization
- •Understanding
- •The origins of discourse analysis
- •Pioneers in the field of da (Labov, Grice, Sinclair)
- •Differences between text & discourse
- •Linguistic features of text – the product of the process of discourse
- •Lecture 6 Levels of analysis
- •Performatives vs. Statements
- •What governs the linguistic realization of these speech acts?
- •The parson may object to it: the pragmatic meaning of the utterance
- •Speech arts & culture
Speech arts & culture
Cross cultural variation
Different speech acts may be present only in certain cultures, given a particular situation
Permanent speech acts are carried out differently in different languages/cultures
In different languages/cultures the same speech acts may meet with different typical responses
Speech acts differ in directness/indirectness in different cultures
According to Van. Dijk
Text/talk is read/heard & interpreted on line, unit by unit (e.g., word by word)
On the basis of world knowledge, as well as knowledge of words, syntactic structure, overall meaning (topics), discourse structures & aspects of context (goals etc.) such units are assigned provisional meaning.
Parallel to this understanding of the respective units of the text language users activate an old, or construct a new (mental) model of the events or situation the text is about.
Models are both personal (featuring individual knowledge, beliefs, opinions of language users) as well social (applying general, socially shared knowledge), but each model is unique.
The whole process of understanding is coordinated by the model language users have of the communicative situation, namely their context model. The context model tells the language users what the aims of the discourse are, who are the participants & what are their roles, what they know & do not yet know, in what setting the discourse is being understood & so on. It is necessary to understand such diverse properties of discourse as its intonation, lexical & syntactic style, which meanings are expressed or left implicit & what speech acts are being performed. The process of discourse production may be characterized in a similar way but in a different direction starting with a mental model that is something you know or having an opinion about, is gradually (step by step) transformed in the meanings of a discourse & then expressed word for word, following the constraints of the context model.