LANGUAGE MIND AND SOCIAL INTERACTION.
Linguistics as a discipline concerns the scientific study of human language. Linguistics regards the ways in
which members of discourse communities:
1. conceptualize their experience;
2. encode it into a linguistic form; and then
3. use it in social interactions.
Study of language regards both cognition (the way in which language structures thoughts in the human
mind) and communication (the way in which language serves social interactions).
As we acquire language, we discover our identity as individuals and our identity as social beings.
CHOMSKY’S THEORY ABOUT LANGUAGE= TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR.
Chomsky is interested in understanding more about language in order to understand more about the
processes of the human mind.
He doesn’t simply focus on how language is structured: he wants to focus on common rules that govern
all humans even though they speak different languages. (UNIVERSAL RULES THAT AFFECT THE
WHOLE HUMANITY)
He affirms that if everything starts from our brain, also the language belongs to our brain and consequently
we have to study it.
EX. Dog, Cane, Perro are different, but according to Chomsky these words are different only because of
their surface structure, but their deep structure is the same. So the deep structure is universal.
An Innate Language acquisition Device provides a series of common grammar principles- the Universal
Grammar.
Chomsky’s transformational-generative grammar:
-language is hence exclusively a cognitive, abstract knowledge completely detached from the social
contexts in which it is used.
So Chomsky wasn’t able to define language at all.
M.A.K HALLIDAY ON ‘LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS’
affirms that language serves for the progression of content: the speaker’s experience of the real world,
including the inner world of his own consciousness.
Language also serves to establish and maintain social relations, for the expression of social roles, which
include the communication roles created by language it-self. (ex roles of questioner and respondent).
Through this function, which we may refer to as Interpersonal, social groups are delimited and the
individual is identified and reinforced.
To recap for Halliday : the grammar of a language has developed to serve communication needs, the
ideational function of a language is important because it organizes experience in the mind and
helps human being to develop their own identity; the interpersonal function of language is
important
because it serves social relations and consequently, communication.
Halliday’s theory is known as SYSTEMIC- FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR:
The purpose of linguistics is the study of language as social semiotics, a system of signs that have been
developed to serve the communicative needs of people living in a social context.
For Halliday language is not seen as a biological evolution of the human brain (come diceva Chomsky);
is seen as a socio-cultural evolution prompted by the human beings’ need to communicate with each
other within their communities.
He also thinks that language fulfills these 3 main functions:
1. Ideational function: people thinking through/ by means of language in order to interpret
experience.
2. Interpersonal function: People acting through/ by means of language in order to interpret
experience.
3. Textual function: People organize and produce messages through/by means of language.
