Linguistics

Prepaerd by:
Hiwa Nooradeen
 Outline
 Linguistics and science
 Linguistics and Social Science
 The rise & Significance of studying linguistics
 Linguistic levels: Micro linguistics, Macro linguistics
 Traditional Grammar
 Differences between Linguistics and Traditional Grammar
 Descriptive Linguistics and Prescriptive Linguistics
 Linguistics and Science
• Linguistics is usually defined as the science of language or, alternatively, as the scientific study of language.
• Like any science, linguistics is a vibrant and developing discipline, with new ideas and novel observations
continuing to make their impact on a regular basis.
• Disciplines whose scientific status is unquestioned - physics, chemistry, biology, etc. - feel no need to
justify their claim to be called sciences. Why should linguistics be so concerned to defend the validity of its
title?
• Linguistics is empirical, rather than speculative or intuitive: it operates with publicly verifiable data
obtained by means of observation or experiment.
• Most linguists who contribute to the definition of their discipline as the scientific study of language do so
because they have in mind some distinction between a scientific and a non- scientific way of doing things.
They may disagree about some of the implications of the term ‘scientific’, they are in general agreement
about the Linguistics
 Linguistics and Social Science
• Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and the structure of
society. It takes into account such factors as the social backgrounds of both the speaker and
the addressee , the relationship between speaker and addressee and the context and manner
of the interaction, maintaining that they are crucial to an understanding of both the
structure and function of the language used in a situation. Because of the emphasis placed
on language use, a sociolinguistically adequate analysis of language is typically based on
recordings of everyday interactions. The sociolinguist may be interested in producing an
analysis of regional or social dialects in order to investigate whether different social groups
speak differently and to discover whether language change is in progress. Rather different
is research into the form and function of politeness in everyday interaction, an interest
which will lead to a search for markers of politeness in conversations and how these are
related to social dimensions
 Linguistics and Social Science
• Linguistic is important to the social sciences because language is so important when forming
societies. Language can also be used in many ways and can affect people in many ways. For
example, Eskimos or Inuits people have multiple words for snow, this is important for their
society because they are surrounded by snow most of the time. In all different societies and
cultures, language is crucial for bringing people together.
• Sociolinguistics is concerned with the influence of social factors on language use and language
structure, whereas the sociology of language investigates language with the aim of better
understanding the structure and organisation of society. There are, however, neither sharp
dividing lines between sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, nor between
sociolinguistics and its neighbouring disciplines such as psycholinguistics, social psychology,
ethnology, anthropology or human geography
 Significance of studying linguistics
• A teacher cannot teach a language by any of the current techniques without linguistic
knowledge –“what he ordinarily knows about linguistics is considerable, but his
knowledge normally suffers from being unsystematic”- he does make constant use of
what are basically linguistic concepts in this teaching.
• Insights or “linguistics” notions increase our understanding of the nature of language and
consequently of the nature of learning.
• Linguistics helps us understand our world. It captures unique conceptualizations of the
world and has its own ways of constructing words, phrases and sentences for
communicating ideas. As we compare the words and structures of various languages, we
come to a greater understanding of the world we live in.
 Linguistic levels:
Micro linguistics & Macro linguistics
• Micro linguistics one adopts the narrower view and in macro linguistics the broader view.
At its narrowest micro linguistics is concerned solely with the structure of language-
systems, without regard to the way in which languages are acquired, stored in the brain or
used in their various functions; without regard to the interdependence of language and
culture; without regard to the physiological and psychological mechanisms that are
involved in language-behaviour; in short, without regard to anything other than the
language- system. At its broadest, macro linguistics is concerned with everything that
pertains in any way at all to language and languages.
• Since many disciplines other than linguistics are concerned with language, several
interdisciplinary areas should have been identified within macrolinguistics and given a
distinctive name: sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, ethno- linguistics, stylistics, etc.
 Traditional Grammar
• Traditional grammar: Traditional grammar is a framework for the description of
the structure of a language. Traditional grammars are commonly used in language
education. Traditional grammars seek to describe how particular languages are
used, or to teach people to speak or read them. Traditional grammars generally
classify words into parts of speech. They describe the patterns for word
inflection, and the rules of syntax by which those words are combined into
sentences.
Differences between Linguistics and Traditional Grammar

• linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Linguists are interested in what is said, not what
they think ought to be said. They describe language in all its aspects, but do not prescribe
rules of 'correctness'.
• linguists regard the spoken language as primary, not the written. In the past, grammarians
have over-stressed the importance of the written word. It was difficult to cope with fleeting
utterances before the invention of sound recording.
• Linguistics does not force languages into a Latin-based framework. In the past, many
traditional textbooks have assumed unquestioningly that Latin provides a universal
framework into which all languages fit, and countless schoolchildren have been confused
by meaningless attempts to force English into foreign patterns.
 Descriptive Linguistics and Prescriptive
Linguistics
• Descriptive linguistics aims to describe the facts of linguistic usage as they are in practice,
whereas prescriptive linguistics attempts to prescribe rules of “correctness”, i.e. to lay
down normative rules as to how language should be used. Since the beginning of the 20th
century, linguistics has been increasingly critical of prescriptivism and has been favouring
the approach of descriptivism.
• Prescriptive linguistics attempts to legislate what speakers’ grammatical rules should be,
rather than what they are.
• First, and most important linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Linguists are
interested in what is said, not what they think ought to be said. They describe language in
all its aspects, but do not prescribe rules of 'correctness'.
 References
• Radford, Andrew, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen & Andrew Spencer (1999)
Linguistics. An Introduction. CUP.
•
• O'Grady, William; Archibald, John; Arono, Mark, and Rees-Miller, Janie. (2005)
Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition Boston: Bed-ford/St. Martins.

• Bieswanger, Markus & Annette Becker (2008), Introduction to English Linguistics,