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LECTURE The Classification of Modern Linguistic Studies

Modern linguistics is a comprehensive study of language that encompasses its structures, uses, and development, while also connecting to various fields of human activity. The discipline is divided into numerous specialized branches, such as applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics, each focusing on different aspects and levels of language analysis. Key trends in modern linguistics include generative, cognitive, and functional linguistics, reflecting the diverse approaches to understanding language and its role in human communication.

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19 views4 pages

LECTURE The Classification of Modern Linguistic Studies

Modern linguistics is a comprehensive study of language that encompasses its structures, uses, and development, while also connecting to various fields of human activity. The discipline is divided into numerous specialized branches, such as applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics, each focusing on different aspects and levels of language analysis. Key trends in modern linguistics include generative, cognitive, and functional linguistics, reflecting the diverse approaches to understanding language and its role in human communication.

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LECTURE

THE CLASSIFICATION OF MODERN LINGUISTIC STUDIES

Modern Linguistics as a Subject of study


The science of language studies everything that is verbalised. Moreover,
language as a multifaceted and complex phenomenon is traditionally investigated
first as some structural formation whose dogmas were suitable for the
correspondent development of science in general, but now language is analysed as
the most important and crucial means of human communication; as a part of
cultural issues; as an instrument of regulating the world through its categorisation;
as a reflection of a human being, etc.
So, today we can speak about many linguistic problems in connection with other
fields of human activities.
"Linguistics can be defined as the systematic inquiry into human language –
into its structures and uses and the relationship between them, as well as into its
development through history and its acquisition by children and adults. The scope
of linguistics includes both language structure (and its underlying grammatical
competence) and language use (and its underlying communicative competence)."
(Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use, 6th ed. Wadsworth, 2012)
"Linguistics is concerned with human language as a universal and
recognizable part of the human behaviour and of the human faculties, perhaps one
of the most essential to human life as we know it, and one of the most far-reaching
of human capabilities in relation to the whole span of mankind’s achievements."
(Robert Henry Robins, General Linguistics: An Introductory Survey, 4th ed.
Longmans, 1989)
"There is often considerable tension in linguistics departments between those
who study linguistic knowledge as an abstract 'computational' system, ultimately
embedded in the human brain, and those who are more concerned with language as
a social system played out in human interactional patterns and networks of beliefs.
Although most theoretical linguists are reasonable types, they are sometimes
accused of seeing human language as purely a formal, abstract system, and of
marginalizing the importance of sociolinguistic research."
(Christopher J. Hall, An Introduction to Language and Linguistics: Breaking the
Language Spell. Continuum, 2005)
The "tension" that Hall refers to in this last passage is reflected, in part, by
the many different types of linguistic studies that exist today.
The course of Modern Problems in Linguistics is intended to explain the
current state of knowledge about language.
Branches of Linguistics
Like most academic disciplines, linguistics has been divided into numerous
overlapping subfields – "a stew of alien and undigestible terms," as Randy Allen
Harris characterized them in his 1993 book The Linguistics Wars (Oxford
University Press).
In fact, some of the most innovative work in contemporary language studies
is being carried out in even more specialized branches, some of which hardly
existed 30 or 40 years ago.
Here, is a sample of those specialized branches: applied linguistics,
cognitive linguistics, contact linguistics, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis,
forensic linguistics, graphology, historical linguistics, language acquisition,
lexicology, linguistic anthropology, neurolinguistics, paralinguistics, pragmatics,
psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and stylistics.
Approaches to Language Differences: general assumptions and goals.
Traditional Grammar: – knowledge of language taken for granted
– exhaustive account (description) of “facts”
– multiplicity of categories and concepts
– no insistence on rigorous consistency
Structuralism: – knowledge of language taken for granted
– taxonomy of structural patterns
– empiricism & behaviorism
– “discovery procedures”
Generative Linguistics: – knowledge of language: mental grammar
– language acquisition
– creativity of language
– parsimony
– rigorously consistent
Cognitive Linguistics: – cognitive schemata
– conceptual and linguistic metaphors
Branches of Linguistics Distinguished in terms of:
1. Aspects of language
2. Levels of analysis
3. Commitment to general assumptions
4. Interdisciplinary problems and goals
They are
1. Aspects of language:
a. Historical, regional, and socio-cultural variation
(1) Synchronic linguistics—state of language
(2) Diachronic linguistics—language change
(3) Dialectology—regional and socio-cultural varieties
b. Knowledge of language vs. use of language
(1) Grammatical theory—theories of competence / mental grammar
(2) Pragmatic theory—theories of performance / language use
2. Levels of analysis:
Syntax
Morphology
Phonology
Semantics
3. Approaches
Traditional Grammar
Structuralism
Generative Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics, etc.
4. Complex “interdisciplinary” problems and goals
Applied linguistics (e.g., language teaching, machine translation, etc.)
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Linguistic philosophy
Anthropological linguistics, etc.
In the variety of the approaches to linguistic problems there are
three main trends in modern linguistics:
* generative linguistics (what and why is generated, a creative characteristic of the
language human activity)
* cognitive linguistics (language and thinking ratio, cognition, word and thought,
what we use when think) Cognitive linguistics, language personality theory,
language world picture, linguoculturology (concept), psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics
* functional linguistics (functional grammar, the function of the language elements
in the process of communication) discourse analysis, sociolinguistics
Characteristics of modern linguistics:
Expansionism
Anthropocentrism
Functionalism
Explanatoriness

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