Inner speech

Inner speech is a function in itself. It still remains speech. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. It is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings. It is a dynamic, shifting, unstable thing, fluttering between word & thought.

Thought

Thought creates a connection, fulfils a function, and solves a problem. The flow of thought is not accompanied by a simultaneous unfolding of speech. The two processes are not identical & there is no rigid correspondence between the units of thought & speech. It has its own structure & the transition from thought to speech is no easy matter. Thought does not consist of separate units. In the mind of the speaker the whole thought is present at once, but in speech it has to be developed successively. The transition of the thought to word leads through meaning. Thought is engendered by motivation. Behind every thought there is an affective-volitional tendency. To understand another’s speech it’s not sufficient to understand his/her thought & thus means we must know the motivation.

Conclusions:

1. Verbal thought is a complex, dynamic entity.

2. The relation of thought & word is a movement through a series of planes.

3. In reality, the development of the verbal thought takes the following course: from the motive which engenders a thought to the shaping of the thought, first in inner speech, then in meanings of words & finally in words. The development may stop at any point.

Language & thought from the point of view of cognitive linguistics

Language can reveal the mechanisms of cognition. It is a channel to penetrate into our minds. The world around us is not meaningful but rather acquires meaning through human mind. Meaning-construction is inferential process. Meanings are cognitive structures embedded in our patterns of knowledge. Our complex conceptual structures are manifested in language use & comprehension. Meaning is a mental representation may be structures & organized in different ways:

• Schemas

• Frames

• Scenarios etc.

Schema is any cognitive structure that specifies the general properties of a type of object or event & leaves out any specification of details that are irrelevant to the type. It is an abstraction that allows particular objects or events to be assigned to general categories.

Frame is a data-structure for representing a stereotyped situation. Like being in a certain kind of living room, or going to a child’s birthday party. It is a collection of slots & fillers that describe a stereotypical item. It has slots to capture different aspects of what is being represented.

Scenarios are situation specific. The scenario-based approach is used in interpreting written texts. The success of scenario-based comprehension is dependent on the text-producer’s effectiveness in activating appropriate scenarios.

Lecture 3

Language & Culture

Language does not exist apart from culture, i.e. from the socially inherited assemblage of practices & beliefs that determined the texture of our life.

Culture may be defined as a selected inventory of experience.

Language is a particular manner in which the society expresses all experience.

Aborigines that had never seen or heard about a horse were compelled to invent or to borrow a word for the animal when they made acquaintance with it. So, the vocabulary of a language more or less reflects the culture.

The complete vocabulary of language may be looked upon as a complex inventory of all the ideas, interests & occupations that take up the attention of the community.

Objects & forces in the physical environment become labeled in language only if they have cultural significance.

The link between form & meaning is a matter of convention & conventions differ radically across languages. Words are arbitrary in form but they are not random in their use.

Linguistic forms do not resemble what they signify & that is why they can be used to encode what is significant by convention in different communities.

The fact that there is no natural connection between the form of words & what they mean makes it possible for different communities to use language to divide up reality in ways that they suit them.

Bedouin Arabic has a number of terms for the animal which in English means ‘camel’. These terms are convenient labels for differences important to the Arabs, but none of them actually resembles a camel.

In English there is a whole host for terms of different kinds of dog & each will call up different images.