Linguistic Pedagogy

A Series of Articles on the Teaching and Learning of English as a Foreign Language

By A. S. Hornby

I. The Doctrines of de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was for many years a professor By many philologists in many countries at the University of Geneva. he is considered the founder of modern linguistics. His main doctrine has had a great influence upon linguistic methodology. The teachings of de Saussure, so far as linguistic methodology is concerned, are to be found in the volume CourS de Linguistique Gnrale* compiled after de Saussures death by his disciples Schehaye and Bally. They have been made known to students of linguistic methodology through the writings of Dr. H. E. Palmer, first in articles which appeared in the Bulletin of the Institute for Research in English Teaching (Department of Education, Tokyo) ten or twelve years ago, and in an article in Oversea Education (April, 1942). They are also set forth in This Language-Learning Business (Palmer and Redman). De Saussures doctrine is formulated in French, and it is by no means easy to find English equivalents for his terms. It is necessary to explain and to provide analogies. It should also be borne in mind that de Saussure treated language in the abstract. The application of the doctrine to teaching methods is the work of his followers. The main point of the doctrine may be stated briefly thus :Language (de Saussures langage) may be considered from two aspects, the first being the code aspect (de Saussures langue), and the second the activity aspect (de Saussures parole). Langage is the sum, the code and activity aspects together (or langue+ parole). Parole is langage - langue. Langue is langage - parole. The words langage, langue and parole are used by de Saussure with special connotations, and any attempt to supply single-word English equivalents would probably result in ambiguity and confusion. At various times Dr. Palmer has used for langue the terms language as code and language as an organized system of signs; for parole he
* Payot, Paris, 1915. Harrap, London, 1932.

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has used language as speech, language as a mode of social behaviour and language as an activity. For the sake of brevity the terms code aspect and activity aspect will be used henceforth in this article. The code aspect is the organized information about the language. It is to be found in the dictionaries and grammar books, in all the rules that can be formulated about the spelling, pronunciation, intonation, usages and so on of the language. Here is a quotation on this aspect from the Cours de Linguistique Gnrale. What is the langue? We do not consider it as being identical with langage: it is only a portion of it - an essential portion, it is true. It is both a social product of the faculty of language and a total of the necessary conventions adopted by the social body to allow the exercise of this faculty among individuals. Looked at as a whole langage is multiform and heteroclite, astride of several domains, physical, physiological and psychological; it belongs also to the individual domain and to the social domain; it does not allow itself to be classed in any category of human facts, because we cannot determine its identity. Langue, on the contrary, is a complete whole and in itself a principle of classification. From the moment we give it the first place among the facts of language, we introduce a natural order into a totality that lends itself to no other classification. It is not spoken language that is natural to man, but the faculty of constituting a code, i.e. a system of distinct symbols corresponding to distinct ideas ... The code is not a function of the individual speaker. The activity aspect of language is a series of acts of expression. It is not confined to spoken English, which is why it is misleading as an equivalent for de Saussures term parole. Here to use speech is a further quotation from the Cours de Linguistique G Parole is an individual act of will and intelligence, in which we must distinguish (1) the combinations by which the individual speaker utilizes the language-code in order to express his personal thought, and (2) the psycho-physical mechanism that makes it possible for him to exteriorize such combinations. Further light on the terms is supplied in the following quotations* from Professor Schehaye, the chief interpreter in Switzerland of the de Saussure doctrine. The term langage is a vague and convenient term with which
* in a letter to Dr. Palmer, printed in the Bulletin of the Institute for Research in English Teaching, Tokyo, June, 1934. contents welcome

to express a general idea in the absence of all analysis; I use it constantly, but in reality it represents nothing precise or definable. La parole: every act of language, of communication, even if only a simple cry or gesture. La langue: the entirety of the conventions in a linguistic community, making it possible to express clear ideas by means of arbitrary symbols in accordance with certain rules. The code aspect of language is the aspect often given most emphasis in the study of dead languages. The codes for Latin and Greek are rigid for the obvious reason that Latin and Greek are dead. It was the code aspect that, until the reform movement began, was most stressed in the study of modern languages in most British secondary schools. It was easier to test from the examiners point of view. The average school teacher or college lecturer had spent years in acquiring this kind of knowledge, and naturally passed on to those under him what he felt best qualified to teach. The learner often ended his period of study with an accumulation of facts about the language: he was usually unable to understand it when he heard it, or to speak or write it well himself, though, by a process of patient deciphering he was usually able to read it. The activity aspect of language is that known to the foreign nursery governess. She does not worry her young charges with rules of syntax, with dictionaries, or with the rest of the apparatus of the teacher who uses the code approach. Yet the results are usually admirable: her charges achieve remarkable fluency in a comparatively short time. These then are the chief points of the doctrine. We have the two aspects of language, the code aspect and the activity aspect. The first may be compared to the railway guide, the cookery book, the golfers manual, or the engineers book of formulas and mathematical tables. The second may be compared to the railway system in operation, the cooks practical work at the kitchen table and cooking stove, practice with balls and clubs on the golf course, or the work which the engineering student does in the machine shop. The railway guide, even if as comprehensive as the pre-war Bradshaw, will be useless if the railway workers are on strike. The cookery-book will not feed a hungry man. The next step for the student of linguistic pedagogy is that of applying the doctrine to the teaching and learning of a foreign language. The new language may be approached solely from the code aspect, solely from the activity aspect, or from both aspects, either simultaneously or alternately. Complete reliance on the code aspect, 9
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experience shows, rarely brings useful results. Complete reliance on the activity aspect appears to give good results with very young children. We cannot feel so certain in the case of adult learners. Waiters in cosmopolitan hotels, stewards on liners, the dragomans in the Near East, do it is true, learn in this way. But the quality and extent of their linguistic knowledge are not usually of the kind considered desirable in academic work. Before we can decide on procedures, we have to consider numerous factors, of which the most important are :1. The Age of the Learner Very young learners are able and willing to submit to the procedures needed for learning a language from the activity aspect, i.e. listening to and obeying commands to perform actions, answering simple drilllike questions, going through repetitions, and engaging in the numerous other activities associated with the Direct-Oral Method. Adult learners are often unwilling to accept the necessity for such procedures: a too extensive use of them may arouse resistances. Young learners are often unable or unwilling to learn from the code aspect: they may be alarmed if presented with too much syntax, by charts of the speech organs, and the rest of the code apparatus. Adult learners often welcome all the codified information that is available (to the profit of the makers of books!), and delude themselves with the belief that they may acquire the new language by this means. 2. Conditions of Language Learning Is the new language to be studied in class for a few hours weekly, with little or no opportunity of using it outside? This is the case with most secondary school students. Or is the language to be studied in an environment where it may be heard on all sides, and where there are constant opportunities of using it? The large numbers of foreign students who came to Great Britain before 1939 to study in the Polytechnics, learnt English, and usually learnt it well, under these conditions. 3. The Aims of the Learner Are these four-fold, including understanding the language when spoken, speaking it, and reading and writing it? Or does the learner wish only to be able to read it (as in the case of those who wish to study technical books and periodicals)? Or does he wish to speak the language for purposes of social intercourse or travel, and have no particular desire to read extensively, either in literature or in technical publications? Or is he, perhaps, studying the foreign language merely because it is a compulsory subject in an exam ination syllabus ? length of time available, and the There are other factors, such as the
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competence of the teacher. These are so variable that it is not possible to consider them within the limits of a short article. The majority of language teachers are engaged in classroom work, usually in an area where their pupils have few opportunities of hearing Let us, therefore, and using the language outside lesson periods. consider their problems first. If the pupils are children, the new language is best presented in its activity aspect from the start, and for a considerable periodperhaps three or four years. For at least the first three months it is desirable to teach by methods almost exclusively oral. Reading is introduced gradually, care being taken that pupils have been made familiar in advance with all the words, collocations, and grammar mechanisms that occur in the reading material. New material is presented frrst from the activity aspect. Pupils listen, see, and understand ; they listen, understand, and perform actions ; they listen and make oral responses. They then read. The vocabulary and grammar mechanisms are carefully selected and controlled. When a sufficient quantity of material has been presented and digested in this way, it may be desirable to offer some code. This may include grammar, but not of the formal kind : it must be inductive. Code is to be used for the consolidation of what has been acquired earlier by activity procedures. The rules that are induced will be such as are useful for synthesis. Analysis must take a back place. The rules will be for sentence building, and will be illustrated by sentence patterns and substitution tables. Patterns for intonation will be induced from the oral work with which the class is already familiar ; they will not be For subsequent work, extending over produced from a text-book. three years at least, this same procedure will be used. New material will be presented from the activity aspect and consolidated by the use of code. The procedures with adult learners will be different. As has already been suggested, adult learners are usually less willing to submit to the disciplines required by the Direct-Oral Method. They are better able to grapple with the intricacies of codified information. It will be desirable, therefore, to present the new language from the code aspect at an earlier stage, in larger quantities, and at a faster rate. But adult learners should be made to realise that a mere accumulation of facts about the language, however well marshalled and however thorough the mastery of them may be, will not suffice to enable them to use the language. There must be activity : the learner must hear the language spoken and must speak it himself. Even if his aim is only reading, he should learn to use the new language.
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