ARELLANO UNIVERSITY

Andres Bonifacio Campus

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND

SOCIETY

Michael C. de Guzman, LPT, EdD

Course Facilitator
TOPIC 1: The Nature of Language and the Discipline of Linguistics

DESIRED LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the session, the learners are expected to:
1. elucidate the nature of language and the discipline of linguistics;
2. distinguish the elements of the English language system; and
3. manifest interest in learning and achieving proficiency in the English language.

ENGAGE
DIRECTIONS: Using the KWL Chart, fill in the columns with the necessary information that
will help you in understanding the nature of language and the discipline of linguistics.
K- what I already KNOW W- what I WANT to know L- What I LEARNED about
about this topic about this topic this topic

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 EXPLORE
The Nature of Language

🖉 Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used by a common group of

people in communication.

🖉 It is the method of human communication, either spoken or written, using words in

a structured and conventional way.

🖉 Language is a system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and
feelings to each other.

🖉 It is a system of communication, a medium for thought and a social interaction.

Characteristics of Language

The Structuralists believe that language can be described in terms of observable

and verifiable data and the behavior of language as it is being used. They describe language
in terms of the regularities and patterns or rules in language structure. To them, language is
a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily assigned to the objects, states and concepts to which
they refer, used for human communication.

🖉 Language is a means of communication. It is a very important means of

communication between humans of their ideas, beliefs, or feelings. Language gives
shape to people’s thoughts and guides and controls their entire activity.

🖉 Language is primarily vocal. Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds only

produced by the speech apparatus in the human body. Writing is only the graphic
representation of the sounds of the language. While most languages have writing
systems, a number of languages continue to exist, even today, in the spoken form
only, without any written form. Some linguists say that speech is primary, writing
secondary.

🖉 Language is speech. The primary medium of language is speech. Language is

“primarily what is spoken only secondarily what is written.” Therefore, it is assumed
that speech has a priority in language teaching.

🖉 Language is a system of systems. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic

combination of sounds. Sounds are arranged in certain fixed or established
systematic order to form meaningful units of words. Language is a system of
structurally related elements or building blocks for encoding meaning. The elements
are phonemes (sounds), morphemes (words), tagmemes (phrases and
sentences/clauses). Language learning, as it is assumed, entails mastering the
elements or building blocks of the language and learning the rules by which these
elements are combined from phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase to sentence.
 🖉 Language is arbitrary. There is no inherent relation between the words of a language
and their meanings or the ideas conveyed by them. To put it in another way, there is
no one to one correspondence between the structure of a word and the thing it stands
for. That language is arbitrary means that the relationship between the words and the
“things” they denote is merely conventional.

The Transformationalists believe that language is a system of knowledge made

manifest in linguistic forms but innate and, in its most abstract form, universal.

🖉 Language is a mental phenomenon. It is not mechanical.

🖉 Language is innate. The presence of the language acquisition device (LAD)

predisposes all normal children to acquire language in an amazingly short time.

🖉 Language is universal. It is universal in the sense that all normal children acquire a
mother tongue but it is also universal in the sense that, at a highly abstract level, all
languages must share key features of human languages.

🖉 Language is creative. It enables us to produce and understand sentences we have

not heard nor used before.

The Functionalists believe that language is a dynamic system through which

members of a community exchange information. It is a vehicle for the expression of functional
meaning such as expressing one’s emotions, persuading people, asking and giving
information, making people do things for us.

This theory emphasizes meaning and functions rather than the grammatical
characteristics of language that lead to a language teaching content consisting of categories
of meaning and functions rather than by grammatical structures.

The Interactionists believe that language is a vehicle for establishing interpersonal

relations and for performing social transactions between individuals. It is a tool for creating
and maintaining social relations. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be
specified and organized by patterns of exchange and interaction.

Scope of Linguistic Studies

1. Phonology – combination of sounds into organized units of speech, the combination

of syllables and larger units. It describes the sound system of a particular language
and distribution of sounds which occur in that language. Classification is made on the
basis of the concept of the phoneme. Phonology is the study of the sound system of
language: the rules that govern pronunciation. It is the component of a grammar made
up of the elements and principles that determine sound patterns in a language.

2. Phonetics – studies language at the level of sounds: how sounds are articulated by
the human speech mechanism and received by the auditory mechanism, how sounds
can be distinguished and characterized by the manner in which they are produced.

3. Morphology – studies the patterns of formation of words by the combination of sounds

into minimal distinctive units of meaning called morphemes. It deals with the rules of
combining morphemes to form words, example, suffixes or prefixes are attached to
single morphemes to form words.
 Morphology is the study of word formation; it deals with the internal structure of words.
It also studies the changes that take place in the structure of words, e.g. the
morpheme “go” changes to “went” and “gone” to signify changes in tense and aspect.

4. Syntax – deals with how words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form
clauses and clauses join to make sentences. Syntax is the study of the way phrases,
clauses and sentences are constructed. It is the system of rules and categories that
underlies sentence formation. It also involves the description of rules of positioning
elements in the sentence such as noun phrases, verb phrases, adverbial phrases,
etc.

Syntax also attempts to describe how these elements function in the sentence, i.e.
the function that they perform in the sentence. For example, the word “girl” has
different functions in the following sentences:

a) The girl is reading a new novel. (subject of the sentence)

b) She gave the girl a new novel. (indirect object)

5. Semantics – deals with the level of meaning in language. It attempts to analyze the
structure of meaning in a language, e.g. how words similar or different are related; it
attempts to show these interrelationships through forming “categories”. Semantics
accounts for both word and sentence meaning.

6. Pragmatics – deals with the contextual aspects of meaning in particular situations.

Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in real communication. As distinct
from the study of sentences, pragmatics considers utterances – those sentences
which are actually uttered by speakers of a language.

7. Discourse – the study of chunks of language which are bigger than a single sentence.
At this level, inter-sentential links that form a connected or cohesive text are analyzed.

EXPLAIN
DIRECTIONS: Analyze the caricatures below. Identify the views of language theorists
shown. Justify your answers.

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EXTEND
DIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions based on your understanding of the nature
language and the discipline of linguistics and the elements of the English language system.
Use the space provided for your answers.

1. Which among the views of the language theorists do you think is the most applicable
in language teaching in the new normal? Establish your reason/s.
2. Since language is primarily spoken, why is the word “symbol” included in the
definition of language?

3. What is the relationship between syntax and semantics? between syntax and
pragmatics?

4. Do animals have their own languages? Justify your answer.

 5. How can you exemplify and justify the word “arbitrary” in the context of having
dialects in a certain country or region?

EVALUATE
DIRECTIONS: Create an infomercial (video or drawing) of the nature of language from the
different views of language theorists. For videos, you must upload it on Google
Classroom/Yahoo Messenger Group Chat/Microsoft Teams. The video should be good for
2 minutes only. For drawing, use the space below.
References:

Understanding German – Ausfahrt – Bearman Cartoons.

Retrieved from
https://www.google.com/search?q=language+caricatures&sxsrf=ALeKk00iCh8Vb135BD
lKIvjTiuv
h4dtlQ:1593158018367&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZxoWOgJ_qAh
VVFogKHUAjDlAQ_AUoAXoECA0QAw#imgrc=VMDPa38icNqVUM

Byram, Michael. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning.

London; New York: Routledge, 2000.
(F) P51. R66 2000

Davies, Alan and Elder, Catherine. The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2004.
(F) P129 .H33 2004

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A Handbook for Language

Teaching. Johnson, Keith, and Johnson, Helen, eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. (F)
P129.E53 1998

Kaplan, Robert B. The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics. New York; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
(F) P129.O95 2002

Richards, J. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.

Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1992.
(F) P29.R52 1992
Covers psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language teaching.

Schmitt, Norbert. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold; New York:

Co-published in the US by Oxford University Press, 2002.
(F) P129.I576 2002