Behaviourism

Malinowski and Firth believed that the description of a language could not be complete without some reference, to the context of situation in which the language operated. This is behaviourism, associated first in linguistics with Bloomfield. Bloomfield defined the meaning of a linguistic form as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer. This is going much further than either Malinowski or Firth. The made statements of meaning in terms of the situation. Bloomfield is essentiall , defining meaning as the situation. Bloomfield illustrated his views with !ack and !ill. "n the situation !ill is hungr , sees an apple and with the use of language gets !ack to fetch it for her. "f she had been alone #or if she had not been human$ she would have first received a stimulus #%$ which would have produced a reaction # &$ ' she would have made a move to get the apple. The diagramed( % &

%ince, however, !ack was with her, the stimulus produced not the reaction &, but a linguistic reaction #r $ that of speaking to !ack. The sound waves resulting from this in turn created a stimulus for !ack, a linguistic stimulus #s$, which results in his non ' linguistic reaction & of getting the apple. The diagramed( % r ))))) s &

Meaning, according to Bloomfield, consist in the relation between speech #which is shown b r ). s $ and the practical events #% $ and #& $ that precede and follow it. *ne important point for the theor is that the stimulus and the reaction are ph sical events. The predisposing factors must, however, carr a great deal of the weight of explaining the linguistic facts. For not onl ma the same apparent situation produce +uite different linguistic responses but also the same linguistic response ma occur in +uite different situations. Bloomfield himself had noted that "m hungr might be uttered not onl b someone who reall was hungr but also b a naught child who did not want to go to bed. For linguistics, however, the theor has no value. The facts,

especiall those concerning predisposing factors, are totall unknowable and no more open to observation than the thoughts, images, etc., of the mentalists that Bloomfield despised. Bloomfield had a curious and rather misplaced faith in science and scientific description. More pertinentl , he suggested that we can define the meaning of a speech form accuratel when this meaning has to do with some matter of which we possess scientific knowledge and gave as an example the ordinar meaning of salt as sodium chloride #,a-l$. But the fact it is not clear how this meaning is related with the illustrated b !ack and !ill. "t is clear that Bloomfield was wrong. . much more elaborate theor , which claims to overcome this difficult , is that of %kinner in /almer #0120(32$. The essential arguments are that language behavior can be accounted for in a wa that is in principle no different

from the behavior of rats in laborator condition that behavior can be explained in terms of observable events, without reference to the internal structure of the organism. The basic notions are stimulus, response and reinforcement.