Functionalism / Cognitive Linguistics

Week - 9

Distinct grammatical theories that employ a functional approach.

• Prague school was the earliest functionalist framework developed in the 1920s.

• Simon Dik's Functional Grammar, originally developed in the 1970s and 80s, has been influential and inspired many other functional theories, including Functional Discourse Grammar.

• Michael Halliday's systemic functional grammar argues that the explanation of how language works needed to be grounded in a functional analysis, of certain critical functions as human beings interacted with their ... 'eco-social' environment.

• Role and reference grammar, developed by Robert Van Valin employs functional analytical framework with a somewhat formal mode of description. In RRG, the description of a sentence in a particular language is formulated in terms of its semantic structure and communicative functions, as well as the grammatical procedures used to express these meanings.

• Danish functional grammar combines Saussurean structuralism with a focus on pragmatics and discourse.

Simon Dik’s functional grammar

• In the functional paradigm a language is in the first place conceptualized as an instrument of social interaction among human beings, used with the intention of establishing communicative relationships. Within this paradigm one attempts to reveal the instrumentality of language with respect to what people do and achieve with it in social interaction. A natural language, in other words, is seen as an integrated part of the communicative competence of the natural language user. (2, p. 3)

Halliday’s Systemic functional grammar (SFG)

• It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called systemic functional linguistics. In these two terms, systemic refers to the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making meaning“, functional refers to Halliday's view that language is as it is because of what it has evolved to do Metafunction - multidimensional architecture of language“ reflects the multidimensional nature of human experience and interpersonal relations.”

Grammatical functions

• Functions exist on all levels of grammar, and even in phonology, where the function of the phoneme is to distinguish between lexical material.

• Semantic function: (Agent,Recipient, etc.), describing the role of participants in states of affairs or actions expressed.

• Syntactic functions: (e.g. subject and Object), defining different perspectives in the presentation of a linguistic expression

• Pragmatic functions: (Theme and Rheme, Topic and Focus, Predicate), defining the informational status of constituents, determined by the pragmatic context of the verbal interaction.

Influences (scope)

• Halliday describes his grammar as built on the work of Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev, Malinowski, J.R. Firth, and the Prague school linguists, work of the American anthropological linguists Boas, Sapir and Whorf. His "main inspiration" was Firth, to whom he owes, among other things, the notion of language as system. Among American linguists, Benjamin Lee Whorf had "the most profound effect on my own thinking". Whorf "showed how it is that human beings do not all mean alike, and how their unconscious ways of meaning are among the most significant manifestations of their culture.

• From his studies in China, he lists Luo Changpei and Wang Li as two scholars from whom he gained "new and exciting insights into language". He credits Luo for giving him a diachronic perspective and insights into a non-Indo-European language family. From Wang Li he learnt "many things, including research methods in dialectology, the semantic basis of grammar, and the history of linguistics in China.

Children’s grammar

• Michael Halliday (1973) outlined seven functions of language with regard to the grammar used by children:

• the instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen;

• the regulatory function of language is the control of events;• the representational function is the use of language to make statements,

convey facts and knowledge, explain, or report to represent reality as the speaker/writer sees it;

• the interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance;

• the personal function is to express emotions, personality, and “gut-level” reactions;

• the heuristic function used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment;

• the imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas.

Functional styles and functional stylistics

• Style is a system of interrelated language - serving a definite aim in communication. It is the coordination of the language means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive features of each style and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves. Each style, however, can be recognized by one or more leading features which are especially conspicuous. For instance the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristics of the style of scientific prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized. A style of language can be fined as a system of coordinated, interrelated and inter-coordinated language means intended to full-fill a specific function of communication and aiming at a defined effect. Style of language is a historical category.

• The English literary system has evolved a number of styles easily distinguishable one from another. They are not homogeneous and fall into several variants of having some central point of resemblance or better to say. All integrated by the invariant - i.e. the abstract ideal system. They are:1) Official (documents and papers);2) Scientific (brochures, articles, other scientific publications);3) Publicistic (essay, public speech);4) Newspaper style (mass media);5) Belles-lettres style(genre of creative writing);Each of mentioned here styles can be expressed in two forms: written and oral.

• Stylistics is a side that examines the complex of stylistically marked elements of any language level.1) Scientific style is employed in professional communication to convey someinformation. It’s most conspicuous feature is the abundance of terms denotingobjects, phenomena and processes characteristics of some particular field of science and technique. Also precision clarity logical cohesion

Language variation

• Language use varies in many dimensions. Three major dimensions are the following: - Regional: dialect variation -Social: sociolect or class dialect variation - Functional: register or functional style variation.

• Language space which is covered by a single user is known as his `idiolect'.

• English is also used as a trade language by non-native speakers, in the form of a pidgin language and, in societies for which a pidgin has become a native language in the course of two or more generations, also creole languages.

• Some of these characterizations of the varieties of English point to the notion of `register', the variation of language with type of use

Cognitive linguistics (CL)

• branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms. It is thus closely associated with semantics but is distinct from psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical findings from cognitive psychology in order to explain the mental processes that underlie the acquisition, storage, production and understanding of speech and writing.

• Cognitive linguistics is characterized by adherence to three central positions. First, it denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind; second, it understands grammar in terms of conceptualization; and third, it claims that knowledge of language arises out of language use.

• Finally, cognitive linguistics argues that language is both embodied and situated in a specific environment. This can be considered a moderate offshoot of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, in that language and cognition mutually influence one another, and are both embedded in the experiences and environments of its users.

Cognitive psychology

• Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking." Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into various other modern disciplines of psychological study including educational psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, and economics.

Semantics

• Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotation.

• Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through language

• Semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse (termed texts, or narratives). The study of semantics is also closely linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units /compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonym etc

Speech and Writing

• Speech contains a lot of features which writing doesn't have. The main ones are non-fluency features. These are natural in speech (in particular: spontaneous speech). Stuff like; + fillers ("you know") +voiced pauses ("umm") +elongation of sound (errrrmmmm -which is presented as er:::::m in a transcript-) etc.. :) -speech is presented in the form of a transcript as opposed to just normal written stuff. This means that any pauses, non-fluency features, etc.. can be noted.

• Writing is planned so someone has thought about what they were going to write. Therefore it will be more structured than speech. ..

Presentation on a Theory or Theorist

• Time: 10 minutes (6 + 4(discussion)

• Topic

- Introduction – importance – reason to choose