NAMES OF GROUP MEMBERS

1) ANN-MARIE AGBOR AYAMBA ARREY 07KO77

2) FOZOH ETIEN NGOPANG 10H852
3) BRILLIANT AKYEH FORBANG 09KO69

THEORIST: DANIEL JONES

BIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL JONES

Daniel Jones was a prominent British phonetician of the 20th century, born on the 12th
September 1881 and later died on the 4th of December 1967.In 1900, He studied briefly at
William Tilly’s Marburg language Institute in Germany where he was first introduced to
phonetics and later in 1903, received a BA degree in mathematics. From 1905-1906, he studied
under Paul Passy a professor of phonetics at école de Haute etude at Sorbonne (university of
Paris) and also one of the founders of the International phonetic Association. He briefly took
private lessons from British phonetician Henry Sweet and became a part-time lecturer at
university college London in 1907 and was afterwards appointed to a full-time position. He later
became the head of department of phonetics in 1912 after his marriage to Passy’s niece Cyrille
Mottein 1911. Years after his position as head of department, he was appointed to a chair in
1921, a post he held until his retirement in 1949. From 1906, Jones was an active member of the
international phonetics association, and was assistant secretary from 1907-1927. Jones
propounded the theory of phonemes.
PRECURSORS OF DANIEL JONES
Jones never made claims to having played any role in actually devising the phoneme
concept. As he states explicitly in his brief, but salient, resume History and meaning of the term
‘phoneme’ HMTP (Jones 1957), he merely absorbed and passed on the work of others. Early in
his career, Jones had been profoundly influenced both by Henry sweet’s (1845- 1912) notions
with regards to and narrow forms of transcription and the similar ideas of the French phonetician,
Paul Passy (1859-1940). As early as 1888, Passy (whom Jones regarded in many ways as his
mentor) had produced what he termed a ‘regle d’or’ for phonetic transcription: ‘ ne noter dans les
textes que les differences significatives’ (quoted in HMTP:5).
The problem of the phonetic description of vowels had been a long standing worry going
back to the era of ancient Indian linguists. The 19th century British phoneticians had worked
seriously on this topic. However, a good number of phoneticians attempted a description of these
vowels. Some precursors such as Alexander Melville Bell devised an ingenious iconic phonetic
alphabet which included an elaborate system for vowels. Also, Alexander Ellis had also
suggested vowel symbols for his phonetic alphabets. Henry Sweet on his part did much work on
the systematic description of vowels, producing an elaborate system of vowel description
involving a multitude of symbols. Jones however is the one who generally credited with having
gone much of the way towards a particular solution to this problem, through his scheme of
« cardinal vowel » a relatively simple system of reference vowels which for many years has been
taught systematically to students. The preceding paragraph would expanciate more on Jones’
theory of phonemes.

Theory propounded by Daniel Jones

Daniel jones is noted for his theory on phonemes. Two years later in the colloquial Sinhalese
Reader (Perera and jones 1919, henceforth CSR). Jones and his co-author redefined the phoneme
in terms very similar to those he would adhere to for the rest of his career. He therefore define
phoneme as:

1
 …a group of related sounds of a given language which are so used in connected speech that no
one of them ever occurs in positions which any other can occupy.
This was later on referred to as canonical exemplification, followed by a statement of the
implications of transcription.
Thus the K’s in the English word keep, call are distinct speech sounds, but they belong to the
same phoneme (the English k-phoneme). This is because the first variety of k only occurs before
the sound i: and the second does not occur in that position in English. The two kinds of k can
without ambiguity be written with the same letter (k) in phoneme writing.
Jones had therefore arrived at the dual criteria of phonetic similarity and complementary
distribution although the latter term is a Structuralists usage which Jones accepted for the first
time only in HMTP (p.8) while at the same being unwilling to take on the validity of “free
variation “within a phoneme definition. Therefore, phonetic similarity and complementary
distribution were to be the cornerstone of Jones’s form of phonetic theory. Meaning as such was
excluded from his definition, but, nevertheless, Perera and Jones go immediately specified the
semantic function of the phoneme in distinguishing word meanings, as opposed to speech sound
which belong to the same phoneme(i.e. allophones), which cannot distinguish one word from
another. Jones also reiterated these views in similar terms in 1923 in the pronunciation of
Russian (Trofimov and Jones 1923), adding that phonemes should be regarded as ‘distinctive
‘and such a distinction could be said to be significant.
After 1925, the concept of the phoneme began to play an increasing significant role in Jones’s
thought, as is reflected in the number of articles which he published on this theme. To him,
phoneme is an attempt to clarify the statements which he had in the pronunciation of Russian
(1929).Jones ‘on phoneme’, provides a definition which emphasises once again the significance
of phonetic similarity and complementary distribution:
… a family of sounds, which take its place in particular sound sequences...a family of sounds in
a given language, consisting of an important sound of the language together with other related.
He gave a lot of examples of these features from numerous languages. As in jones (1929), the
semantic function of the phoneme is regarded as a consequence of the above and emphatically
not a part of the definition itself. The same approach brings out in his theory of phoneme and its
importance in practical linguistics, the first paper which he gave to the first international
congress of phonetic sciences at Amsterdam. This very brief treatment is written on similar lines
to his previous phoneme articles but is significant for taking the definition one stage further,
stressing the importance of the word as a phonological unit.
…a family of sounds in a given language, which are related in character and are such that no
one of them ever occurs in the same surrounding as any other in words.
In addition this paper introduces the concepts of the ‘diaphone’ and the ‘variphone’. The
diaphone represents the range of sounds heard as realisation of a particular phoneme across
language varieties, for example between different regional dialects. The variphone covers the
possible variation in the realisation of a phoneme within a single idiolect-similar to the concept
of ‘free variation’. Both of these terms were eventually to be treated at greater length in the
phoneme: its nature and use (JONES 1967[1950].henceforth the phoneme).
In ‘some thoughts on the phoneme’ (Jones 1944:134), Jones finally arrives at the following
often quoted definition of the phoneme:
…a family of sounds in a given language which are related in character and are used in such a
way that no member ever occurs in a word in the same context as any other member.
Jones is equally noted for his scheme of cardinal vowel. This relatively simple system of
reference vowels for many years has been taught systematically to students within the British
traditional. Much of the inspiration for this scheme can be found in the earlier publication of Paul
Passy. He also reduced this to a simple quadrilateral diagram which could be used to help

2
visualise how vowels are articulated. In the original form of the Cardinal vowels, Jones
employed a dual-parameter system of description based on the supposed tongue height: ( close vs
open) is represented on the vertical axis. Front vs back: on the horizontal axis indicates the
portion of the tongue raised on the horizontal axis. Lip-rounding is also built in to the system ,so
that front vowels(such as i ,e ,a )have spread or neutral lip postures ,but the back vowels (such as
[o ,u ])have more marked lip –rounding as vowel height increases. Jones thus arrived at a set of
eight “primary cardinal vowels” ,and recorded these on gramophone disc in 1917(-[i ,u],half
close [e ,o ],[half open Ɛ,Ɔ],open[ą a])
Later modifications to his theory allowed for an additional set of eight “secondary cardinal
vowels” with revise lip-rounding ,which permit the representation of eight secondary cardinal
vowels (front rounded and back unrounded). He devised symbols for central vowels and
positioned these on the vowel diagram. He made two further discs recording for linguaphone in
1943 and 1956. They included close ([y w], halfclose [ф y], halfopen [æɅ], open [ɶɒ])
Daniel Jones’ Major Works
Jones’ early books included extremely influential surveys of English phonetic and works on
English intonation. He also produced notable lexicographical work in the form of pronunciation
dictionaries. Jones’ pioneering research on non-European languages featured groundbreaking
descriptions of tone languages.
In 1917, he became the first western linguist to use and promulgate the term ‘’phoneme’’, and
in his later years he devoted much time to express his views on the phoneme concept. In 1921,
Jones was granted a chair at University College London.
Jones’ system of cardinal vowel is one of his most lasting legacies. Developed by 1917, it is
still to this day employed in much current linguistic descriptive work. Daniel Jones also defined
a socially determined type of British English,( which is labeled Received Pronunciation or RP)
which could be used as a standard for phonetic description and as a model for non-native
learners.
In 1938, Jones wrote on concrete and abstract sounds which he read at the third
international congress of phonetic sciences at Ghent. Here Jones attempts to apply a
philosophical theory of ‘’abstractness’’ to the idea of the phoneme, linking this to the ideas on
the nature of human existence.
Daniel Jones produced phonetic/phonological treatments which were mainly for their time
on the sound systems of Cantonese, Tswana, Sinhalese, and Russian. He was the first
phonetician to produce, in his ‘’ Sechuana Reader’’, a competent description of an African tone
language including the concept of downstep. Downstep is linked to the description of tones in
African languages. Jones helped developed new alphabets for African languages, and suggested
systems of Romanization for Indian languages and Japanese. He also busied himself with support
for revised spelling for English through the simplified spelling society.
Apart from Jones’ many published works, he will be remembered for having acted as mentor
to numerous scholars who later went on to become famous linguists in their own right. These
include names like Lilias Amstrong, Harold Palmer, Ida Ward, Helen Coustenoble, Arthur Lloyd
James, Dennis Fry, A.C. Gimson, Gordon Arnold, J.D. O’Connor, Clive Sansom, and many
more.
Criticisms of Daniel Jones’ Approach
According to Beverley Collins, many critics claimed that Daniel Jones (1881-1967) was
interested only in a limited practical view of the phoneme, a concept which excluded theoretical
approaches, the whole being based exclusively on phonetic and distributional criteria, and
capable of being dismissed disparagingly by the joke term ‘Joneme’ (Abercrombie 1983:8).
Jones’ contribution to the development of phonemic theory usually center on the criticism
that he promulgates an essentially practical view of the phoneme, tied closely to his experience

3
as an articulatory phonetician. There is a popular opinion that he misses the greater flexibility of
more theoretical approaches.
Anderson (1985: 176) claims that Jones did not eliminate meaning from his definitions for
the reason that the American structuralists later did, namely from a general rejection of meaning
as a valid linguistic category; but rather from considerations of conceptual clarity.
Daniel Jones’ statements on vowels has been questioned and most linguist now consider
that the vowel quadrilateral must be viewed as a way of representing auditory space in visual
form, rather than the tightly defined articulatory scheme envisaged by Jones. Nevertheless, the
international phonetic Association still uses a version of Jones’ model.

References
Asher, R.E.(1994), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, Oxford: Pergamon
Press.
Collins, B. and Mees, M. (1998), “The Real Professor Higgins, the life and career
Of Daniel Jones”, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Collins, B. and Mees, M.(1998), Daniel Jones, The Phoneme and The ‘Joneme’.
Jones, D.(1917b), The Phonetic Structure of the Sechuana Language, Transactions
of the Philological Society 1917-20, pp. 99-106;rpt in Jones (2002)

TOPIC: RESEARCH ON NIKOLAI TRUBETSKOY AS A LINGUIST.

PRESENTERS
1. AFUNGCHWI MERCY (03D364)
2. NZINGA TIANYI RAISSA (13S871)
3. TECKA MAH NJOM (13S937)

PLAN OF WORK:
1. His Biography
2. His major works
3. The theory he propounded. (what he stood for and what he stood against)
4. Who were his precursors?(the linguists who came before him and in one way or another
influence his own thinking/ ideologies)
5. What are the effects of his thinking on linguistic theorizing and on the understanding of
the nature of language?
6. Who were his critics?
7. References

1. HIS BIOGRAPHY
Prince Nickolai Sergeyevich Trubetskoy according to the New World Encyclopedia was born
in April 15, 1890 in Moscow, Russia into an extremely refined environment. His father was a
first-rank philosopher whose lineage ascended to the medieval rulers of Lithuania. Having
graduated from Moscow University in 1913, Trubetskoy delivered lectures there until the
revolution in 1917. Thereafter he moved first to the University of Rostov-na-Donu, then to the
University of Sofia and finally became the Professor of Slavic Philology at the University of
Vienna. He later on died in June 25, 1938 in Vienna from a heart attack attributed to Nazi
persecution following his publishing of an article highly critical of Adolf Hitler’s theories.
2. HIS MAJOR WORKS
Some of Trubetskoy’s major works include Anderson 1985, which describes the influence of
Trubetskoy on the Prague circle. An earlier but important work is also Baltaxe 1978, which

4
focuses on phonological issues. Toman 1995, includes a chapter on Trubetskoy that places his
linguistic interests in the larger of his Eurasianism. The Principles of Phonology is also one of
his most popular works which was published posthumously and elaborates his observations on
the linguistic function of speech sounds, the role of oppositions, and markedness, influenced by
his rejection of neogrammarian principles and his extension of the Saussearean insights
The Principles of Phonology summarized Trubetskoy previous phonological work and
stands as the classic statement of the Prague Linguistic School’s phonology, setting out an array
of ideas, several of which still characterize the debate on phonological representations. While
phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages,
phonetics is about the physical production and perception of the sounds of speech. As Phonetics
is a cross-language discipline, it is only fitting that Trubetskoy is credited with the change in
Phonological focus from diachronic, that is (how languages change over time) to synchronic
(study of a particular point in time, the only way to message a lot of data from various languages
without the time reference). Hence, Trubetskoy (1936) argues that form (contrast, systemic
patterning) must be studied separately from substance (acoustics, articulation). However, he did
not see the two as completely separate entity.
Also, Trubetskoy argues that phonology should deal with the linguistic function of sounds
(their ability to signal differences in word-meaning), as members of phonemic oppositions. The
phoneme was his smallest phonological unit. Above all, he is the founder of Morphophonology,
the branch of linguistics that studies the phonological structure of morphemes, the smallest
lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. Morphology as defined by Trubetskoy (1939),
refers to the way morphemes affect each other’s pronunciation.
3. THE THEORY HE PROPOUNDED
Nikolai Trubetskoy was a core member of the Prague School of Linguistics which was
highly influential in developing some areas of linguistics theory (including phonology)
particularly in the 1930’s. His most influential work, Principles of Phonology, was published
post-humously in 1939 shortly after his death. Trubetzkoy’s chief contribution in phonology was
taken in the sense of functional phonology. His notable contributions made to phonology are as
follows:
 Clarifying the distinction between phonetics and phonology by the criterion of
function
 Investigating insistently on phonic substance in terms of its various functions in
individual languages
 Emphasizing on the concept of phonological oppositions
(Primary) over phoneme (secondary)
 Classifying phonological oppositions typologically instead of binaristically.
His chief contributions in linguistics lie in the domain of phonology particularly in the analysis
of the phonological systems of individual languages in search of general and universal
languages.
One aspect of his work examines the idea of different types of “oppositions” in
phonology. These oppositions are based on phonetics (or phonological features). We will not
look at all the types of oppositions that he described but only a few that are of particular
relevance to this topic. That is, we would examine types of oppositions that are relevant to the
definition of phonological features. These are:
a) Bilateral oppositions
b) Multilateral oppositions
c) Privative(Binary) oppositions
d) Gradual oppositions
e) Equipollent oppositions

5
 a. Bilateral oppositions: it refers to a pair of sounds that share a set of features which no
other sound shares fully. For example, the voiceless labial obstruents /p,f/. Note that
obstruents are defined as having a degree stricture (a severe physical limit such as
stops/p,b/ and fricatives/f,v/) greater than that of approximants(/w,j/).
b. Multilateral oppositions: a group of more than two sounds which share common
features. For example, labial obstruents /p,b/f,v/ are both liabial and at the same time
obtruents. So, they share two features.
c. Privative (Binary) oppositions: one member of a pair of sounds possesses a mark or
feature, which the other lacks. Such features are also known as binary features which a sound
either possesses or lacks. Voicing is one of such features. A sound is either voiced on NOT
voiced. The sound which possesses that feature is said to be marked. For example [+voice]
while the sound lacking the feature is unmarked. For example [-voice]
d. Gradual oppositions: the members of a class of sounds possess different degrees or
gradations of a feature or property. For example, the three short, front, unrounded vowels
in English (/І/е/ӕ/) which are distinguished only by their height (i.e., tense, mid height
and low respectively). In this system, height would be a single feature with two or more
degrees of height.
e. Equipollent oppositions: the relationship between two members of an opposition is
considered to be logically equivalent. Consonant place of articulation can be seen in this
sense. Changes in place involve not just degree of fronting but also other articulator
changes. For example:/m,n/ are nasal bilabial and nasal alveolar respectively.
4. WHO WERE HIS PRECURSORS? (THE LINGUISTS WHO CAME BEFORE HIM
AND IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER INFLUENCED HIS OWN THINKING/
IDEOLOGIES)
Following De Saussure’s emphasis on the differential function of linguistic elements, both
Jackobson and Trubetzkoy attached great importance to the opposition among phonemes rather
than to the phonemes themselves. Thus, to say that English has the phonemes /s/ and /z/ is a
statement about a distinction which English speakers make phonetic entities. Jackobson and
others of the Prague school published actively in the 1920’s and 1930’s but it was Trubetzkoy
who provided the school’s most comprehensive and widely consulted work on phonology,
Principles of Phonology, which first appeared in 1939, the year after his death . He is also
responsible for the concepts of neutralization and archiphoneme which are consistent with the
functional view of the phoneme.
5. WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF HIS THINKING ON LINGUISTIC THEORIZING
AND ON THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE
His Principles of phonology became the classic statement of part of the Prague school linguistics
which later influenced both European and American Linguistics, most notably in Chomsky and
Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English. His post humously published Principles of Phonology
elaborates his observation on the linguistic function of speech sounds, the role of oppositions,
and markedness, influenced by his rejection of neo-grammarian principles and his extension of
the Saussearean insights.
6. WHO WERE HIS CRITICS?
To the best of our knowledge, Nikolai Trubetzkoy had no critics. He rather served as a
source of inspiration for many other linguists who drew insights from his works to
postulate present day theories of language.

6
REFERENCES
Jackobson, Roman.’ Necrologie Nickolai Trubetskoy’.(1939)In Acta Linguistica.
Bloomington,IN: Indiana University Press.
New World Encyclopedia.
http://www.cercledeprague.org.

7
 PROF SALA: GROUP ONE
COURSE TITLE: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

NAME MATRICULE
AMANGIE NKEH ESTHER 10K296
SANDRA OVAH BUMA 10L808
KENGNE PIERRE ZACKE 07I185
RONKWU CLAUDIA MUNKI 1OHO59
AKWI LIZETTE 1OK226

TOPIC: WHO WAS FRANZ BOAS?

WHO WAS FRANZ BOAS?

Franz Uri Boas was born on July 9, 1958, in Minden, the Westphalia area of Germany,
into a Jewish family and died on December 22, 1942. He is considered both the founder of
modern and American Anthropology. He was a German-born anthropologist who founded the
relativistic, culture-centered school of American anthropology that dominated 20th century
thought. His parents (Meier Boas (1823-1899) and Sophie Meyer Boas (1828-1919) were well-
educated, liberal and socialized among the elite members of German society. At the very tender
age of 5, Boas exhibited a keen interest in nature and natural sciences, as such his parents
encouraged him to think independently and pursue his interests. Prior to his interest, Franz Boas
carried out his first anthropologic fieldwork among the Eskimo in Baffin land, Canada,
beginning in 1883. After attending the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn and Kiel, in 1881 he
earned a Ph.D. in physics, with a minor in geography from the University of Kiel. Boas was
credited as the first scientist to publish that the White and the Negro were fundamentally equal,
just as were all people. He pioneers the modern anthropology and gives its rigorous scientific
methodology, patterned after the natural sciences, and it was Boas who originated the notion of
"culture" as learned behaviors. In 1887 he immigrated to the United States, got married to Marie
Kackowizer Boas in 1861-1929) obtained his citizenship, and had six children with her. He
played a key role in organizing the American Anthropological Association and made
contributions in the field of physical anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, as well as cultural
anthropology. Boas described his anthropology theory or relativism as “civilization is not
something absolute, but… is relative, and … our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our
civilization goes”. In this light, Boas became noted as an innovative productive researcher who
contributed to statistical physical anthropology, linguistics and American Indian ethnology.

FRANZ BOAS MAJOR WORKS

Boas wrote six books and over 700 articles in his lifetime. A couple of his most notable
books are focused on Race, Language, and Culture, and Race and Progress. These major works
include:
The Mind of Primitive Man (1911)
Race, Language and Culture (1940)
Anthropology and Modern life (1928)
Kwakiutl Ethnography (1966)
Race and Democratic Society (1945)
The principle of Ethnological Classification (1887)

8
 WHAT THEORY DID HE PROPOUND?
The American anthropologist, Franz Boas, founded The Boasian Anthropology: he introduced
the idea that culture was what differed between races and ethnicities and, therefore, was what
must be studied to understand humanity. Boasian anthropology changed the idea of culture, as a
whole, from what a person, "ate, drank, religious views and their music tastes," to the complete
“mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the individuals of a social group."
Boasian anthropology is known to divide the anthropology discipline to include the four
subfields of linguistic, biological, archaeological, and cultural anthropology, a view that is still
popular in anthropology departments of many universities today. The most notable and attributed
ideas of Boasian anthropology are cultural relativism, diffusion, historical particularism, and
salvage ethnography.
a. cultural relativism
The idea that a person’s activities or beliefs should be understood in the terms and values
of their own culture not someone else’s. Cultural Relativism brought attention to the problem of
Ethnocentrism; which is the belief that one’s own culture is more valuable or better than
another. Ethnocentrism leads us to make premature judgments about a culture and the people that
are a part of that culture. Cultural relativism also led to the formation of ethnology. Ethnology
here is a comparison of cultures using ethnographic data, society, and culture. It is usually done
when anthropologists go into, "the field"- meaning they travel to a country and live with the
people there to get the best possible taste and experience of their culture. This data resulting from
ethnography helps us understand other cultures and how they are similar and different to other
cultures.
b. Diffusion versus Independent Invention.
Diffusion: Diffusion is a concept that refers to the spread of a cultural trait from one
geographical area to another through such processes as migration, colonization, trade, and
cultural borrowings. The concept of diffusion has been used to create two different diffusionist
schools: the British and German. The British school, led by G. E. Smith, held that all aspects of
culture and civilization were invented once and diffused outwards to spread throughout the
world. The German school, led by Graebner, used the principles of culture areas and culture
circles to account for independent invention. This theory argued that different aspects of culture
and civilization were invented in several different areas and diffused outwards in radiating
circles, culture circles.
Diffusion is the spread of an idea from culture to culture and independent invention is
where the culture forms a new idea on it’s own without any influence from another
culture. Agriculture developed in different continents (the Americas and Asia) at the same time
and because there was no trans-oceanic communication during its formation, we can say that it
was independent invention. However, things such as customs or rituals could be transmitted
through neighboring tribes through diffusion. Cultural diffusion can occur when tribes or
different peoples meet or it can occur when one culture enslaves another, which usually results in
them having to conform to their cultural beliefs and traditions. For example, when the Gauls
were enslaved by ancient Rome they adopted the belief in Roman gods and traditions; almost
completely forgetting their horse-god, Epona. Boas deemed it “necessary” to demand “proof of
historical relation” before accepting the theory of diffusion over the theory of independent
invention.
c. Historical Particularism
The term historical particularism refers to the idea that each culture has its own particular
and unique history that is not governed by universal laws. Historical particularism is an approach
to understanding the nature of culture and cultural changes of particular people. It is not a
particular methodology. Boas argued that the history of a particular culture lay in the study of the

9
individual traits of a particular culture in a limited geographical region. After many different
cultures have been studied in the same way within a region, the history of individual cultures
may be reconstructed. By having detailed data from many different cultures as a common frame
of reference, individual culture traits may be singled out as being borrowed or invented. This is a
crucial element of reconstructing the history of a particular culture. (Bock 1996:299).
This idea is important because it laid emphasizes on the study of culture. Historical
particularism was developed in contrast to Boas’ rejection of Lewis Henry Morgan’s idea of an
evolutionary path and the use of the comparative method. The evolutionary path used
generalities and universal themes to explain cultural similarities, but Boas “contended that
cultural traits first must be explained in terms of specific cultural contexts rather than by broad
reference to general evolutionary trends” . Boas and his followers would argue that cultures
cannot be compared or be subjected to generalities because each culture experienced a different
and unique history, even if it led to a similar cultural aspect. Historical particularism and the
concept of diffusion mentioned above actually go quite hand in hand. Traits that are similar
between cultures may have diffused through interaction between various cultures. However,
while these traits are similar, they will develop different and unique histories from their
movement through various societies.
d. Salvage Ethnography.
Salvage ethnography becomes a significant component of the Boasian approach to
anthropology. Salvage ethnography holds the belief that all cultures matter and it is important to
gather as much information as possible on cultures that may become extinct due to assimilation
or acculturation. This method of Boasian anthropology was most distinct when Boas himself was
ardently gathering and recording information on Native American cultures that were threatened
to be “lost through assimilation to expanding Euro-American cultures.” Salvage ethnography
places a lot of importance on documenting a culture, so that even when the culture's rituals,
beliefs, and customs are no longer being practiced it will still be preserved through time.
PRECURSORS
Boas was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin’s conception of evolution: that change
occurred in response to current pressures and opportunities. There was no one way and this is
how Boas viewed various societies as being adapted each to a unique circumstance, thus he
developed the principle of ‘cultural relativism’; The idea that each culture is the product of a
unique and particular history, and not merely generated by race and environment.
WHAT BAOS STOOD FOR?
To this end, Boas and his students stressed the importance of gathering as much data as
possible about individual cultures before any assumptions or interpretations are made regarding a
culture or culture change within a culture. He and his students took great pains to record any and
all manner of information. This included the recording of oral history and tradition (salvage
ethnology) and basic ethnographic methods such as participant observation. The emphasis on
intensive participant observation largely paralleled Malinowski’s fieldwork methods being used
by European anthropologists around the same time (see Functionalism for more). However, the
people being studied and the overall theoretical aims of these two schools were quite different.
Boas also stressed the importance of all sub-fields of anthropology in reconstructing history.
Ethnographic evidence must be used with linguistic evidence, archaeological remains and
physical and biological evidence. This approach became known as the four-field method of
anthropology and was spread to anthropology departments all over the United States by Boas’
students and their students. To Boas, cultures were unique and entirely separate entities, and
therefore could in no way shape , or form be compared to another even if under similar,
economic and environmental conditions. He thought very little of the individual as a whole as far

10
as culture is concerned and wanted to study each culture in its entirety rather than in its bits and
pieces
WHAT HE STOOD AGAINST:
Franz Boas viewed culture as a set of customs, social institutions and beliefs that characterize
any particular society. He argued that cultural differences were not due to race, but rather to
differing environmental conditions and other ‘accidents of history’ (Goodenough 1996:292).
Further, cultures had to be viewed as fusions of differing cultural traits that developed in
different space and time (Durrenberger 1996:417). In essence, to Boas talking of a person’s
culture without leaving in that environment was based on false assumptions. One needed to live
with the people and understand what their culture was all about before running in to any
conclusions.
CONTRIBUTION ON LINGUISTICS THEORISING
Boas made major contributions to the study of language. In 1911 Boas demonstrated that
traits thought to be fixed were really modified by the environment, through a study on the cranial
form. Many of his studies had to do with race. He came to the conclusion that “biological
differences between races are small”. He helped to establish the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. “Boas argued that because of intermarriage and mating, there
were no biologically pure races and that, the mixture of races had no harmful consequences.
Variations between individuals within races were greater than differences between races”.
Boas’ view on Anthropology is that anthropology should “provide an analysis of a unique
culture describing its form, the dynamic reactions of the individual to the culture and of the
culture to the individual”. This view clearly influenced Mead and Benedict as students. Boas
argued that customs and believes are not the objective of research. He sought to learn why they
exist, how they exist, and the history behind them. His research was more focused on
differences between societies, instead of similarities. His research showed that biology did not
determine culture; biology could be changed by the environment. To Boas, anthropology was
holistic and eclectic field of study so in order to access theories of cultural differences, one must
be familiar with biology, interrelations of humans and their environment and such specific
criteria as human migration, nutrition, child rearing customs and disease. Perhaps the most
important and lasting of Boas’ contributions to the field of anthropology is his influence on the
generation of anthropologists that followed him and developed and improved on his own work.
He was an important figure in encouraging women to enter and thrive in the field. The better
known of his students include Kroeber, Mead, Benedict, Lowie, Radin, Wissler, Spier, Bunzel,
Hallowell and Montagu (Barfield 1997:44).

CRITICISM
No matter how much influence Boas had on anthropology, he was still criticized. Boas
refused to theorize about developing anthropological laws and was seen by some as a hindrance
and a detriment to the field. He was focused on précised methodology and a strict scientific
method and was concerned about the reconstruction of history not with the formation of laws
derived from it (Hyatt 1940). Most of the criticism of historical particularism has arisen over the
issue of data collection and fear of making broad theories. Boas’ insistence on the tireless
collection of data fell under attack by some of his own students, particularly Wissler. Some saw
the vast amounts being collected as a body of knowledge that would never be synthesized by the
investigator. Furthermore, if the investigator was reluctant to generate broad theories on cultural
development and culture change, what was the point of gathering so much work in such detail?
Eventually, salvage ethnography was also abandoned in favor of ethnography dealing with
modern processes such as colonization and globalization. Instead of asking people about their
past, some anthropologists .

11
 REFERENCES
Barfield, Thomas ed. (1997) The Dictionary Anthropology. New York, Blackwell Publishers.
Barnard, Alan and Jonathan Spencer. Culture. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural
Anthropology, pp. 136-142. Edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer. Routledge,
London & New York.
Bock, Phillip K (1996). “Culture Change.” Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology Vol. 1, pp.
299-302. Edited by David Levinson and Melvin Ember. Henry Holt & Co., New York.
Bohannan, Paul (1973). High Points in Anthropology. Knopf, New York.
Boas, Franz. 1911. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Free Press. Online version
available at the Internet Archive
Boas, Franz. 1940. Race, Language, and Culture. New York: Macmillan
Brashkow, Ira (2004) “A Neo-Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries.” American
Anthropologist, Vol. 106, No. 3 (2004), pp. 443-458.
Brew, J. O. (1968) One Hundred Years of Anthropology. Cambridge, Harvard University
Press.
Caffrey, Margaret M. (1996) “Ruth Benedict.” International Dictionary of Anthropologists,
pp. 44-46. Garland Publishing, New York and London.
Darnell, Regna (1974) Readings in the History of Anthropology. New York, Harper & Row
Publishers.
Durrenberger, E. Paul (1996) “Ethnography.” Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology Vol. II,
pp. 416-422. Henry Holt & Co., New York.
Freed, Stanley and Ruth Freed (1991) “Clark Wissler.” International Dictionary of
Anthropologists, pp. 763-764. Garland Publishing, New York and London.
Golla, Victor (1991) “Edward Sapir.” International Dictionary of Anthropologists, pp. 603-
606. Garland Publishing, New York and London.
Goodenough, Ward (1996) “Culture.” Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology Vol. II, pp.
291-299. Henry Holt & Co., New York.
Lowie, Robert H. (1937) The History of Ethnological Theory. Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., New
York.
Matthey, Piero (1991) “Robert Lowie.” International Dictionary of Anthropologists, pp. 426-
427. Garland Publishing, New York and London.
Orta, Andrew (2004) “The Promise of Particularism and the Theology of Culture: Limits and
Lessons of ‘Neo-Boasianism.’” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 106, No. 3
(Sep., 2004), pp. 473-487.
Putzstuck, Lothar (1991) “Fritz Graebner.” International Dictionary of Anthropologists, pp.
247-248. Garland Publishing, New York and London.
Seymour-Smith, Charlotte (1986) Dictionary of Anthropology. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston.
Stocking, George W. (1968) Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of
Anthropology. The Free Press/Collier and MacMillan, Ltd., New York and London.
Verdon, Michel (2006). “The World Upside Down: Boas, History, Evolutionism, and
Science.” History and Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2006), pp. 171-187.
Willey, G. R. (1988) Portraits in American Archaeology. University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque.
Winthrop, Robert H. (1991). Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. New York:
Greenwood P.
Wolf, Mary Scharoff-Fast (1991) “Paul Radin.” International Dictionary of Cultural
Anthropology, pp. 565-566.

12
 DELL HYMES

ENG : 521-MODERNISM/POSTMODERNISM

Presented By

NCHANGNWI DELPHINE SUH /07L237

FUMBUI BASIL AGHA-A/10H836

Supervised By:
Prof. SALA

MAY 2015
PLAN

Nationality, Place of birth and Date of birth

Major Writings
Theories Propounded
Precursors
What he Stood for
What he stood against
Effects of his/her thinking on Linguistic Theorising
Criticisms and Context
References

Nationality, Place of birth and Date of birth

Dell Hymes was born on June 7 1927, Portland, Oregon in Charlottesville Virginia.
He was a linguist, socio-linguist, anthropologist, and folklorist. His research focused on the
language of Pacific Northwest. He was the 1st to call for a specific field of Anthropology (that is,
Linguistic Anthropology). He died on November 13, 2009. He worked in the Army as a decoder
and this influenced him to become a linguist. Even at a young age, Hymes had a reputation as a
linguist. He had his PhD at Indiana University in 1955. He was President of Linguistic Society of
America in 1982, President of the American Anthropological Association in 1983, American

13
Folklore Society, and was last person to have held three positions. He retired in 2000 and was
awarded the title "Emeritus Professor" until his death from complications of diseases on
November 13, 2009 (Wikipedia).

His Major Writings

Some of his major works include: a journal in 1972 entitled Language in Society,
Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach (1974), Editorial
Introduction: Language and Society (1972), The emergence of sociolinguistics: A reply to
samarin (2000) and The ethnography of speaking (1962).

Theories Propounded
These theories include the following: the ethnography of communication, ethnography
of speaking and ethno poetics. He published a paper in 1962, that called for a new area of study,
a kind of linguistics that explores language not just as a formal system of grammar, but as
something culturally shaped in the context of social life. He also called for a type of
anthropology that took speaking and communication broadly; as its focal subject matter. These
two helped to produce a type of linguistics that is grounded in social life of language.

Precursors
Hymes was influenced by linguists, anthropologists and sociologists like Franz Boas
who had earlier on introduced the world to ethnographic issues like the observant participation,
and had equally asserted that cultures vary and are therefore relative. Edward Sapir is another
precursor through his idea that language should be studied with respect to culture. Also, there is
Roman Jacobson, with his theory of communication and functions of language, and finally
Kenneth Burke, whom Hymes himself acknowledges thus, "My sense of what I do probably
owes more to KB than to anyone else" (Wikipedia). This indicates that KB to Hymes was his
most profound precursor.

What he Stood for

He stood for the fact that the society is a necessary element in the study of language,
since man who uses the language, is part of the society. It is due to this that he studied the
languages of the Pacific Northwest as he made a comparative ethnographic study and thus, he
promoted the idea of context language use.
Hymes opined that in order to better study how people talk, "the starting point is the
ethnographic analysis of the communication conduct of a community" (Hymes 1974, 9). In the
same source, he further describes communication conduct as "what people do when they
communicate with each other" (9). Some of such conducts include gesticulations and facial
expressions, which can be also be referred to as paralinguistic features. This enhanced his
formulation of the ethnography of communication theory.
He formed the notion of communicative competence, which holds the view that language
use varies from one society to another, and that cultures shape our language.
He proposed six basic units that should be noted when studying the communication of a
particular culture (speech community, speech situation, speech event, communicative act,
communicative style and ways of speaking). For instance, a speech community includes a group
of people that use common signs as they communicate in a specific way, which is different from
other groups. Hymes (1972) defines a speech community as "people who share 'rules' for when
and how to speak" (54). He added that for one to be considered a member of such a community,

14
he must share at least a single way of speaking with the other members. For example, those who
study English Language can be a speech community if their way of speaking with that of other
disciplines like the sciences. A speech situation attempts to find out the time when people talk or
do not talk. A speech event has a beginning and end, and centres on the activities controlled by
rules or norms of a speech (Hymes 1974). On the other hand, communicative acts describe what
action is carried out when a specific word is used, meanwhile communicative style is the manner
in which someone often speaks (which can be a characteristic feature of that person). Lastly,
ways of speaking describes those patterns of speech that are characteristics of a culture. For
instance, answering a telephone call in English can be considered a way of speaking because it is
characteristically patterned-one often waits for the phone to finish the ring before picking up.
Then the receiver first begins the talk (Schegloff, 1968).
Hymes also stood for the fact that one good way to study a narrative relies on its implicit
form. By this, he indicates that what renders a text poetic is its implicit structure, which includes
the way the story is organized in lines, stanzas, verse, and the formal features of grammar that
link the various parts of the story.
He promoted the notion of "ethno poetics", whereby he tried to identify those hidden
cultural ways of speaking, that pertain to a specific group (s) in a specific place.
Also, that language in a given community varies from other communities. It is for this
reason that he proposed an ethnographic investigation of the various ways that language is used
across speech communities highlighted in the "ethnography of speaking".

What he stood against

He idea of "communicative competence" was contrary to Chomsky's "competence",
which centres on the knowledge of grammatical rules that are involved in understanding and
forming language. To him, not only is grammar important, but also the way we speak it and the
context (Adapted from the wikipedia).
He also decried the fact that most scholars in the fields of Linguistics, Anthropology and
Literature, avoid including folklore in its original language, which he deems significant in those
fields.
He equally stood against the translation of stories although this is somehow ironical given
the fact that he had once been a decoder. To him, translated texts become inadequate for
understanding as opposed to the original text. He draws an example from Navajo, which its
translated version omits utterances such as "uh", "so" and "well", whose linguistic and semantic
meanings are necessary for the comprehension of the text.
Finally, he argues against the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, or the idea that language that one
speaks is reflective of his or her mental ability (that is, how well he/she knows it). To him, the
extent of this ability depends on circumstances in which it was acquired, and its place in the
linguistic repertoire of a person and a community. ( All Adapted from the Wikipedia).

Effects of his/her thinking on Linguistic Theorising

His claim that language is related to the society has contributed much in linguistic studies
like in sociolinguistics.
His "Speaking Model" also brings out sixteen components that can be applied to many
sorts of discourse including linguistics. Some are: message form, message context, setting and
scene.
Still with regards to the above model, this affects linguistic theorising as he observes that
to effectively speak language, one does not only need to learn its vocabulary and grammar, but
also be able to use the words well in different contexts.

15
 Lastly, "ethnography of communication" permits and facilitates an understanding of the
way people communicate or various patterns of usage.

Criticisms of the Theory

In a text entitled Working with Spoken Discourse, Cameron observes this in relation to
Hymes' ethnography of communication, "if you are mainly concerned with the way a certain
speech event fits into a whole network of cultural beliefs and practices, you will spend more time
describing things that are external to the talk itself: who the speakers are, where they are, what
beliefs and customs are important in their lives" (2). In fact, she condemns the theory for
focusing more on the way people talk than what they actually say. Thus, the model in her
opinion should be used as a guide and not a template.
According to Lindlof and Taylor in Qualitative Communication Research Methods,
ethnography of communication studies "produce highly detailed analysis of communication
codes and their moment-to-moment functions in various contexts. In these analyses, speech
communities are constituted in local and continuous performances of cultural and moral matters"
(5). In other words, analysing a speech or communication seems to centre more on cultural and
moral matters than the message it passes across. Hence, the theory to them is better used in
studying interactions of members within a given speech community.

References
Cameron, Deborah (2001). Working with spoken discourse. London: Sage Publications. pp. 53–
67.
Carbaugh, Donal (2005). Cultures in conversation. Mahwah N.J.: L. Erlbaum Assiociates.
Gumperz, J.J., & Hymes, D.H. (1972). The Ethnography of Communication. Special issue of
American Anthropologist, 66 (6), Part II: 137-54.
Lindlof, Thomas R. & Taylor, Bryan C. (2002). Qualitative communication research methods
(2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Littlejohn, Stephen W.; Foss, Karen A. (2011). Theories of human communication (10th ed.).
Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press.
Hymes, D.H. (1961). Functions of speech: An evolutionary approach. In F. Gruber (Ed.),
Anthropology and education. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia.
Hymes, D.H. (1962). The Ethnography of Speaking. In T. Gladwin & W. C. Sturtevant (Eds.),
Anthropology and Human Behaviour. (pp. 13-53). Washington, DC: Anthropology Society of
Washington.
Hymes, Dell (1964). "Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication". American
Anthropologist 66 (6): 1–34.
Hymes, Dell (1976). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach (8th ed.).
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hymes, Dell (1962). "The ethnography of speaking". In Gladwin, Thomas; Sturtevant, William
C. Anthropology and Human Behavior. Washington, D.C.: Anthropology Society of
Washington.
Philipsen, Gerry. "Speaking "like a man" in Teamsterville: Culture patterns of role enactment in
an urban neighborhood". Quarterly journal of speech 61 (1): 13–22.
Sherzer, Joel (1983). Kuna ways of speaking: An ethnographic perspective. Austin: The
University of Texas Press.

16
Internet Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/org/wiki/Ethnography_of_communication.

17
NAME: KONGLIM GEORGE WIYLANYUY
MARICLE: 09H559
COURSE LECTURER: Prof. SALA BONAVENTURE
DATE: Saturday 6th Juin 2015

PRESENTATION ON JACQUES DERRIDA

Life
Derrida was born on July 15, 1930, in a neighbourhood christened El-Biar in the capital city
Algiers, Algeria, into a Jewish family that became French in 1870. His parents, Haïm Aaron
Prosper Charles (Aimé) Derrida and Georgette Sultana Esther Safar named him "Jackie", "which
they considered to be an American name", though he would later adopt a more "correct" version
of his first name that is ‘Jacques’ when he moved to Paris. Derrida was the third of five children.
He spent his adolescence reading works of philosophers and writers (such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, and André Gide) as he considered them as instruments of revolt
against family and society. He equally read works of writers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul
Sartre. He passed into the French Higher Teacher Training Institute (École Normale Supérieure)
in Paris in 1952. He completed his master's degree in philosophy on a dissertation about Edmund
Husserl. Derrida received a scholarship for studies into Harvard University, where he spent the
1956–1957 academic year reading works on James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’. In June 1957, he wedded
the psychoanalyst Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston and they raised a family of three boys. In
1964, Derrida got a permanent teaching position at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, which
he kept until 1984. In 1967, Derrida published his first three books which were “Writing and
Difference, Speech and Phenomena, and Of Grammatology.” He completed his Doctorate degree
in 1980 with a brilliant defense which was later published in English translation as "The Time of
a Thesis: Punctuations". In 1983 he co-founded with François Châtelet the Collège international
de philosophie (CIPH) which had as main objective to provide a location for philosophical
research which could not be carried out elsewhere in the academy. Derrida became full professor
at the Institute of social Sciences (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in Paris from
1984. In 1986 Derrida became Professor of the Humanities at the University of California,
Irvine, where he taught until shortly before his death in 2004 due to pancreatic cancer. Derrida
taught in several universities around the world including Johns Hopkins University, Yale
University, New York University, Stony Brook University, The New School for Social Research,
and the European Graduate School. He had a significant influence upon the humanities and
social sciences, including philosophy and literature, law, anthropology, historiography,
linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, political theory, feminism, and gay and lesbian
studies.
His precursors
He spent his adolescence reading works of philosophers and writers such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, and André Gide as he considered them as instruments of revolt
against family and society. Other influences upon Derrida are Martin Heidegger, Plato, Søren
Kierkegaard, Alexandre Kojève, Maurice Blanchot, Antonin Artaud, Roland Barthes, Georges
Bataille, Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Lévinas, Ferdinand de Saussures, Sigmund Freud, Karl
Marx, Claude Lévi-Strauss, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, J.L Austin and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Theory propounded
Derrida is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. In
other words he is accredited for being the originator of deconstruction. Several times, he
questioned the dominant discourses in Western philosophical tradition and Western culture, and

18
trying to modify them. Derrida referred to deconstruction as a radicalization of a certain spirit of
Marxism. Derrida attempts to approach the very heart of the Western intellectual tradition,
characterizing and characterizing this tradition as “a search for a transcendental being that serves
as the origin or guarantor of meaning”. Derrida contributed to the understanding of certain
deeply hidden philosophical presuppositions and prejudices in Western culture with the
argument that the whole philosophical tradition rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories such as
(sacred/profane, mind/body) and that any text contains implicit hierarchies by which an order is
imposed on reality and by which a subtle repression is exercised. These hierarchies exclude
subordinate and hide the various potential meanings. Derrida refers to his procedure of
uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as deconstruction of Western culture.
Deconstruction remains an attempt to expose and undermine such metaphysics through his idea
of “Différance within deconstruction” which posits that the meaning of words come from their
sychronity with other words within the language and their diachrony between contemporary and
historical definitions of words. He redefines the relationship between the signifier/signified. This
corroborates Ferdinand de Saussure’s idea of semiology which stipulates that terms get their
meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language. This reiterates Derrida's
most quoted and famous assertion, which appears in an essay on Rousseau, in Derrida’s book
entitled “Of Grammatology”(1967) is the statement that "there is no outside-text". In other
words, “there is nothing outside context.” This means that from the moment there is meaning,
what follows is nothing but signs. Derrida likewise Ferdinand de Saussure considered language
as a system of signs where words have meaning only because of contrast-effects with other
words.Derrida argues that "logocentrism," creates "marked" or hierarchized binary oppositions
that have an effect on everything from our conception of speech's relation to writing to our
understanding of racial difference.
What Derrida stood against
“Logocentrism” is a term coined by a German philosopher called Ludwig Wages in the early
1920s. Heidegger referred to logocentrism as a science that situates the “word” or the “act of
speech” as epistemologically superior in a system or structure in which we may only know or be
present in the world by way of logocentric metaphysics. Derrida strongly argues that
logocemtrism creates marked or hierarchized binary oppositions that have an effect on
everything from our conception of speech’s relation to and to our understanding of racial
difference. According to Derrida logocentrism is a pure phallocracy.
Derrida was concerned about elaborating a critique on the limits of phenomenology (founded by
Edmund Husserl in the early years of the 20th century). Phenomenology is a systematic reflection
on and study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in the acts of
consciousness. His first lengthy academic manuscript written as a dissertation for his Masters
degree and submitted in 1954 was geared towards this concept of Edmund Husserl. He went
ahead in 1962 to publish a book entitled “Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An
Introduction”, which contained Derrida’s own translation and review of Husserl’s essay.
What he stood for
Derrida was engaged in rethinking politics and the political itself within and beyond philosophy.
He attempted to democratize (a transition to a more democratic political regime. It could be a
transition from an authoritarian regime or political system to a democratic political system) the
university scene and to politicize it by trying to elucidate the dominant discourses that held
hostage Western philosophical tradition and culture. Derrida insisted that a distinct political
undertone had pervaded his texts from the very beginning of his career.

Name : MULUH YOLANDE TEKWI

Matricule : 10F240

19
Course Code : ENG- 521 ( Modernism and Post Modernism)
Course Instructor: Prof. SALA

ROLAND BARTHES

HIS LIFE
According to Graham Allen in Roland Barthes, Allen stipulates that Roland Barthes was a
French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. He was born on 12
November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. He was the son of naval officer Louis
Barthes, who was killed in a battle in the North Sea before his son was one year old. His mother,
Henriette Barthes, raised him in the village of Urt and the city of Sorbonne.
However, from 1935 to 1939 at Sorbonne, Barthes showed great promise as student. In
fact, he earned a License in classical letters, dough he was plagued by ill health throughout this
period, suffering from Tuberculosis, which often had to be treated in the isolation. This repeated
physical breakdowns disrupted his academic career, affecting his studies and his ability to take
qualifying examinations. It also kept him out of military service during World War II. In 1952,
Barthes settled at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he studied Lexicology
and Sociology. During his seven-year period there, he began to write a popular series of bi-
monthly essays for the magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles, in which he presented his dismantled
myths of Popular culture. Knowing little English, Barthes taught at Middlebury developing
similar kinds of theoretical inquiry to that pursued in Barthes' writings. In 1970, Barthes
produced what was consider to be his most prodigious work, the dense, critical reading of
Balzac’s Sarrasine entitled S/Z. College in 1957, where he met his future English translator of
much of his work, Richard Howard, that summer in New York City.
By the late 1960s, Barthes had established a reputation for himself. He traveled to the US
and Japan, delivering a presentation at Johns Hopkins University. During this time, he wrote his
best-known work, the 1967 essay, The Death of the Author, which, in light of the growing
influence of Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction, would prove to be a transitional piece in its
investigation of the logical ends of structuralist thought. Barthes continued to contribute with
Philippe Sollers to the avant-garde literary magazine Tel Quel, which was Throughout the 1970s,
Barthes continued to develop his literary criticism; he developed new ideals of textuality and
novelistic neutrality. In 1971, he served as visiting professor at the University of Geneva. In
1975 he wrote an autobiography titled Roland Barthes and in 1977 he was elected to the chair of
Sémiologie Littéraire at the Collège de France. His last major work, Camera Lucida, is partly an
essay about the nature of photography and partly a meditation on photographs of his mother, who
had died. On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes was knocked down by a laundry van while
walking home through the streets of Paris. One month later he succumbed to the chest injuries
sustained in that accident and one month later, Bathes died that is, on 26 March 1980 at the age
of 64.
His major works include.
The Death of the Author. Written in 1968. In it, Barthes saw the notion of the author, or
authorial authority, in the criticism of literary text as the forced projection of an ultimate
meaning of the text.
S/Z, which was the dense critical reading of Balzac’s Sarrasane
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, which was the inspiration for the name of 1980s new
wave, The Lover Speaks.
His last and major work was, Camera Lucida, it was partly an essay about the nature of
Photography and partly a meditation on photographs of his mother, who had died
His Precursors

20
 His philosophies were influenced by the works of other philosophers such as Karl Marx,
Jacques Derrida, Philippe Sollers to name a few.
His philosophies
Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of
schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design theory, anthropology
and post-structuralism.
To begin, in his philosophy Semiotics and myth, Barthes talks of myths as second older
signs 0r connotations. He explains this through a picture of a full, dark bottle , which he calls the
signifier that relates to a specific signified the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing experience. To
him, motivations for such manipulations vary, from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to
maintain the status quo. However, these insights brought Barthes in line with similar Marxist
theory.
Also, in Barthes’ Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, he is concerned
with examining the correspondence between the structure of a sentence and that of a larger
narrative, thus allowing narrative to be viewed along linguistic lines. As a matter of fact, Barthes
split this work into three hierarchical levels, the functions, actions and narrative. To him, the
Functions are the elementary pieces of a work, such as a single descriptive word that can be used
to identify a character and the character would be an action, and consequently one of the
elements that make up the narrative.
In his concept of Textuality, analyzing texts, Barthes makes a distinction between a
traditional work and what he calls “the Text”. He argues that traditional texts render the reader
passive because the author has control of the narrative. To him, the Text enables the reader to
actively engage in its production because it is not restricted by conventions of genre, linearity, or
author control. Also, Barthes explains that a written text is the primary communication system.
His concept was drawn from Saussure’s conception of semiotics, the science of the way signs
behave within society. He goes further to distinguish between readerly and writerly texts.
Readerly texts, he argues, have pre-determined meaning and adhere to the status quo both in
style and in content. In contrast, writerly texts have a proliferation of meaning and a disregard of
narrative structure which places the reader in an active position of control.
Moreso, elements of both readerly and writerly texts can be interpreted through what Barthes
calls the Five Codes, in order to reveal a text’s plural meaning, Barthes recommends breaking
the master text into lexias and then determining which of the codes — hermeneutic, proairetic,
semantic, symbolic, or cultural are at work in the lexia. The five codes represent five different
ways of seeing meaning in a text. They act as lenses that highlight different aspects of the
narrative.
Criticisms.
Many of his works challenged traditional academic views of literary criticism and of
renowned figures of literature, but, his unorthodox thinking led to a conflict with a well-known
Sorbonne professor of literature, Raymond Picard, who attacked the French New Criticism
,which was label that he inaccurately applied to Barthes, for its obscurity and lack of respect
towards France's literary roots.
Moreso, since his trip to China during the Cultural Revolution influenced his
philosophies, it was disparaged that Barthes seemed indifference to the situation of the Chinese
people, and said that Barthes has contrived amazed to bestow an entirely new dignity upon the
age-old activity, so long unjustly disparaged, of saying nothing at great length.
Aside being criticised, Barthes also criticized Michelet, a critical analysis of the French
historian Jules Michelet, Barthes developed the notions, applying them to a broader range of
fields. He argued that Michelet’s views of history and society are obviously flawed. In studying
his writings, he continued, one should not seek to learn from Michelet’s claims, rather, one

21
should maintain a critical distance and learn from his errors, since understanding how and why
his thinking is flawed will show more about his period of history than his own observations

References
Réda, Bensmaïa, (1987). The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text, trans. Pat
Fedkiew, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Louis-Jean, Calvet, (1994). Roland Barthes: A Biography, trans. Sarah Wykes, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press
Jonathan, Culler, (2001). Roland Barthes: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Michael, Moriarty, (1991). Roland Barthes, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Allen, Graham , (2003). Roland Barthes. London: Routledge.

22
UE ENG 521: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

TOPIC:
DISCUSS EDWARD SAPIR AND HIS
CONTRIBUTIONS TO LINGUISTICS
Presented by:
 RONKWU Claudia MUNKI - 10H059
 AKWI LIZETTE – 10K226
 TABE JULIETTE AGBOR – 94J174

Lecturer:
PR. BONAVENTURE SALA

Academic year: 2014 – 2015

Layout

Introduction
Biography
Major Works
Theory propounded
Precursors
Contributions
Effects (positive and negative)
Conclusion

INTRODUCTION
This work aims at bringing out the personality of Edward Sapir. It also has as objective to
show his major works, the theory he propounded, his precursors, positive and negative effects of
his theory to linguistics and the existing body of knowledge in general.

BIOGRAPHY
Edward Sapir was born on january26 1884 in Lautenberg Germany.He was of a dual
nationality this Germano American. At the age of five he immigrated to the United States with
his family. Sapir studied Germanic Linguistics at Columbia where he came under the influence
of Franz Boaz who inspired him to work with Alfred Kroeber documenting the indigenous
languages there. He was employed by the geological survey of Canada for fifteen years when he

23
became one of the most significant linguist in North America alongside Leonard Bloomfield He
was later offered a professorship at the university of Chicago and later professor of
Anthropology at Yale. Sapir studied the ways in which Language and culture influenced one
another and with the help of his student Benjamin Lee Whorf, they were able to bring out the
Linguistic Relativity or the ‘’Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’’. Sapir later died on February 4th 1939 at
the age of 55.

HIS MAJOR WORKS

Edward Sapir was one of the pioneers of Modern Linguistic Anthropology and a main
contributor to the development of formal descriptive linguistics. He was a leading figure in
cultural anthropology and an outstanding stimulant of status in the relationship between
personality and culture. He is noted for his contributions to the study of North American Indian
Language. He was also a champion in the American descriptive school of structural Linguistics.
He was a prolific writer in poetry, literary essays, music and scholarly works with a unique style
of writing. His publications include: Language 1921 which was mostly influential, a collection of
essays, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality [1949].

THEORY HE PROPOUNDED
Edward Sapir propounded the theory of HYPOTHESIS [Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis theory]. This
theory holds that, there are certain thoughts of an individual in one language which cannot be
understood by those living in another language. The Hypothesis Theory also states that the way
the way people think is strongly affected by their native language. It is important to note that,
Hypothesis is a very controversial theory championed by Sapir and his student Whorf. The idea
in this theory is further expatiated in his article “Anthropology and Sociology 1927’’ where he
argues that, anthropology can contribute towards an understanding of people and their behavior
hence Language should be studied within the social and cultural Context.

EDWARD SAPIRS PRECURSORS

A prominent precursor of Sapir’s theory is Franz Boaz in his graduate course in Germanics at
Columbia. Sapir with his interest in language came in contact with Franz Boaz with whom he
learned of the great potentialities of the anthropological study of language. From this point Sapir
focused on Linguistics and Anthropology which is Language and Thought.

EDWARD SAPIRS CONTRIBUTIONS TO LINGUISTICS

Edward Sapir’s affects linguistics thinking through his principle of Linguistic Relativity. This
principle states that, the structure of a language affects the way in which its respective speakers
conceptualize their world that is, their views and how it influences their cognitive process. To
him, language determines thought just as linguistic categories and usages influence thoughts and
certain non-linguistic behaviors. Hence the language a human being speaks determines the way
he or she interprets the world around him and this is what he calls Linguistic Determinism
To add, Sapir says that. There exist two versions of linguistic relativity. These are the strong and
weak version. The strong version has to do with the fact that language determines thought and
those linguistic categories limits and determines cognitive categories. But the weak version holds
that linguistic categories and usages influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic
behavior.
Aside these linguistic categories, Sapir proved that the methods of comparative linguistics are
equally valid when two indigenous languages are involved. This is viewed in his 1929 edition of
Encyclopedia Britanicia.In this light he focuses on Native American languages and modern
comparative linguistics. He also proposed some language families like Hokang and Penultoan.

24
He developed the phonemic theory which is the analysis of the sound of a language according to
the pattern of their distribution.
EFFECTS OF SAPIRS THEORY
The effects of Sapir’s theory and contributions can be seen from the positive and the negative
respectively.
Positively, Sapir achieves success because his theory shows the window through which one can
view the cognitive process not as an absolute but also as a phenomenon different from other
linguistic approaches. His theory makes complete sense in that one’s language and culture will
have an effect on the decoding of language and his society hence the relationship between
language and culture, anthropology and sociology.
Negatively, Sapir’s theory was criticized by a number of critics. To them, the term” Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis’’ is considered a misnomer [a name that did not suit what it referred to]. And this is
for several reasons:
Because Edward and Lee never coauthored anything and never stated their ideas in terms of a
hypothesis. Also, the distinction between the strong and the weak version of the Hypothesis is
also a later invention. And finally, they never set up any dictionary [a difference between two
completely opposite ideas] although often in their writings, their views of relativity in principles
are phrased in stronger and weaker terms.

CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, one can consider Edward Sapir a very important figure in linguistics and the body
of language through his works, theory and contributions to language. Though he has been
criticized by some critics for his combined efforts with his student Lee, he still remains vital in
the study of linguistics.

REFFERENCES
http//www.britannica.com/EB checked/topic 523671/Edward Sapir.
Sapir, Edward.[2005].In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
Lucy, John A.[1992a],Grammatical Categories and Cognition: A case study of the Linguistic
Relativity Hypothesis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ENG 521: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

TOPIC: BENJAMIN LEE WHORF
PRESENTED BY:
MBUTOH DIVINE MPINPIN 10G799
NGWAFOR EMILIE-JACKSON 09F663
AKWANWI ESSIEL 10K224

BENJAMIN LEE WHORF.

BIOGRAPHY
The son of Harry Whorf and Sarah Edna Lee Whorf, Benjamin Lee Whorf (the
American) was born in April, 24th 1897 in Winthrop Massachusetts. His father was an artist, an
intellectual and designer- first working as a commercial artist and later as a dramatist. Benjamin

25
had two younger brothers, John and Richard who became notable artist. John was an
international renowned painter and illustrator while Richard was an actor in films. Benjamin was
the intellectual of the three and at a very young age, he started conducting chemical experiments
with his father’s photographic equipments. He read extensively and was interested in botany,
astrology and Middle American pre-history. It is also worth mentioning here that, at the age of
seventeen, he began to keep a diary in which he recorded most of his thoughts and dreams. He
married Celia Inez Peckham in 1920 and they had three children called; Reymond Ben Whorf,
Robert Peckham Whorf and Celia Lee Whorf.
Benjamin Lee Whorf was a chemical engineer by profession, but took up an interest in
linguistics in 1924.This interest first drew him to the study of biblical Hebrew but later, he
moved on to study indigenous languages of Mesoamerica. Professional scholars were impress by
his work, and in 1930, he received a grant to study the Nahualt language in Mexico. On his
return, he presented several influential papers on the language at linguistic conferences.
Whorf is widely known as an advocate for the idea that, because of linguistic differences
in grammar and usage, speakers of different languages conceptualise and experience the world
differently. He conceived this idea with his mentor, Edward Sapir. Whorf then gave this idea the
name “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”. Sapir preferred it to be “Linguistic relativity” because; he saw
the idea of having implication similar to Einstein’s principle of physical relativity.
In the 1960s Whorf’s views fell out of favour and he became the subject of harsh
criticism by scholars and critics like Roger Brown, Eric Lenneberg, Max Black, Donald
Davidson, Mc Whorter, John Lock, Plato, Jerry Fodor etc, who considered language structure to
primarily reflect cognitive universals rather than cultural differences.
He published three articles in his last years on earth titled M.I.T Technology Review.
They were,
 Science and linguistics
 Linguistics as an exact science
 Language and logic
Some of his major works or writings include;
 The comparative Linguistics of Uto-Aztecan (1935)
 Maya writing and Decipherment (1935)
 Discussion of Hopi Linguistics (1937)
 Science and Linguistics (1940)
 Linguistics as An Exact science (1940)
 Languages and Logic (1941)
 Grammatical Categories (1945)
 An America Indian Model of the Universe (1950)
 A Review of General Semantics (1950)

Sources of influence on Whorf's thinking

Whorf's illustration of the difference between the English and Shawnee gestalt
construction of cleaning a gun with a ramrod. From the article "Language and Science",
originally published in the MIT technology Review, 1940. Image copyright of MIT Press.
Whorf and Sapir both drew explicitly on Albert Einstein’s principle of general relativity; hence
linguistic relativity refers to the concept of grammatical and semantic categories of a specific
language providing a frame of reference as a medium through which observations are made.
Following an original observation by Boas, Sapir demonstrated that speakers of a given language
perceive sounds that are acoustically different as the same, if the sound comes from the
underlying phoneme and does not contribute to changes in semantic meaning. Furthermore,
speakers of languages are attentive to sounds, particularly if the same two sounds come from

26
different phonemes. Such differentiation is an example of how various observational frames of
reference leads to different patterns of attention and perception.
Whorf was also influenced by Gestalt psychology, believing that languages require their
speakers to describe the same events as different gestalt constructions, which he called "isolates
from experience". An example is how the action of cleaning a gun is different in English and
Shawnee: English focuses on the instrumental relation between two objects and the purpose of
the action (removing dirt); whereas the Shawnee language focuses on the movement—using an
arm to create a dry space in a hole. The event described is the same, but the attention in terms of
figure and ground are different.
Degree of influence of language on thought
If read superficially, some of Whorf's statements lend themselves to the interpretation that he
supported linguistic determinism. For example in one oft quoted passage Whorf writes:
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we
isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in
the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has
to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds.
We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because
we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout
our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is of
course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all
except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data that the agreement decrees.
We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led
by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic
backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.
The statements about the obligatory nature of the terms of language have been taken to suggest
that Whorf meant that language completely determined the scope of possible conceptualizations.
However neo-Whorfians argue that here Whorf is writing about the terms in which we speak of
the world, not the terms in which we think of it. Whorf noted that to communicate thoughts and
experiences with members of a speech community speakers must use the linguistic categories of
their shared language, which requires moulding experiences into the shape of language to speak
them—a process called "thinking for speaking". This interpretation is supported by Whorf's
subsequent statement that "No individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality, but
is constrained by certain modes of interpretation even when he thinks himself most free".
Similarly the statement that observers are led to different pictures of the universe has been
understood as an argument that different conceptualizations are incommensurable making
translation between different conceptual and linguistic systems impossible. Neo-Whorfians argue
this to be is a misreading since throughout his work one of his main points was that such systems
could be "calibrated" and thereby be made commensurable, but only when we become aware of
the differences in conceptual schemes through linguistic analysis.

WHORF’S INTERESTS
Whorf was a man of varying interests ranging from chemical engineering that led him into the
Central of Mexico and linguistics that led him to Yale and back in the field among the Hopi in
Arizona and Pueblo in Central Mexico. His interaction among these people with language that
was unlike the Indo-European languages common among Europeans, he gained a new insight
into the rubrics involved in the daily lives of these local communities.
In the early 1930’s when Whorf was working in the Hopi Reserve in Arizona, he took up studies
of the Mayan language. He got interested in the way language was used in the Bible because he

27
“believed that fundamental human and philosophical problems could be solved by taking a new
sounding of the semantics of the Bible” (John B. Carroll). He listened closely to the words they
issued and watched closely the object designated by these words. At the end of this study, he
made and inventory of all these objects and the words allocated to them and it was published in
an article titled: A Central Mexican Inscription Combining Mexican and Maya Day Signs in the
late 1930’s.

(Benjamin, L. Whorf)
The figure above is taken from Whorf’s Science and Linguistics, (reprinted 1940) where he tries
to show the relationship between the signifier and the signified in Hopi, a non Indo-European
language and English language, an Indo-European language
It was a series of long term exploitation into what he called Language, Thought, and Reality.
The main goal was to locate the connection between words and the actual objects and actions
they represent in real life, a sort of the signifier and the signified. He further developed this idea
in his 1952 article titled Language, Mind, and Reality. He did a comparative study between the
structures of the English language and that of the Mayan language. In fact Whorf was basically
interested in the local primitive languages, their structures, semantic aspect, their relationship
with thought processes, etc.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Benjamin Lee Whorf though initially a chemical engineer became a “linguistic engineer” and
made a lot of contribution in the world of language. His curiosity in language and meaning led to
the formation of what he called the principle of linguistic relativity and the Cryptotype or convert
categories of language.
According to Whorf (1935), the principle of linguistic relativity stipulates that the
structure of a language affects the manners in which its users conceptualize their world and their
subsequent understanding processes. Elaborating on this principle which his former course mate,
Harry Hoijer later referred to as Sapira-Whorf hypothesis, Whorf said language determines
thought and linguistic categories limit and determine understanding. The hypothesis further
stipulates that those linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-
linguistic behaviours.
A new school of linguistic relativity scholars in the 80’s studied the effects of differences
in linguistic categorization on cognition, and found out a broad support for non-deterministic
versions of the hypothesis in experimental contexts. Some effects of linguistic relativity have

28
been shown in several semantic domains, although they are generally weak. Later on, a balanced
view of linguistic relativity was espoused by most linguists holding that language influences
certain kinds of cognitive processes in non-trivial ways, but that other processes are better seen
as arising from connectionist factors. Since a good portion of research in linguistics is based on
exploring the ways and extent to which language influences thought, the principle of linguistic
relativity and the relation between language and thought has also received attention in varying
academic fields, e.g. sociology, philosophy, anthropology, etc.
Cryptotype or covert categories are semantic or syntactic features that do not have a
morphological implementation, but which are crucial for the construction and understanding of a
phrase. It is understood in opposition to the phenotype or overt category, that is, category that is
overtly marked by this very phenomenon. According to Michael Halliday, Whorf's notion of the
"cryptotype" and the conception of "how grammar models reality" is one of the major
contributions of twentieth century linguistics. In a paper titled "Grammatical categories" (1937)
Whorf talked lengthily on his views that all grammatical categories must be in some way marked
in language to be able to contribute to meaning. He further noted that not all categories were
marked overtly; some are only marked overtly in exceptional cases, whereas in most or all cases
their marking is covert. For example, in the English system of gender, the gender of nouns only
appears when the sentence employs a singular pronoun and has to choose between "he", "she" or
"it". In the absence of the use of pronoun, the gender of the nouns is marked only covertly.
Summarily, Whorf’s interest on semantics via comparative linguistics helped to shape the
concept of meaning as later seen in Halliday’s works. Whorf said our day-to-day life
experiences, our common sense, our basic intuition into the “nature of things”, our dichotomy of
form and substance, our notion of time and space and matter, even life habit are all shaped by the
structure which our languages impose upon the flux of experiences. In The Relation of Habitual
Thought and Behaviour to Language, Whorl’s experience as an anthropologist, linguist,
grammarian, and fire insurance executive officer are all brought out to show the impact these
experiences had on him.

References
Alford, D. K. H. (1978). "Demise of the Whorf hypothesis". Proceedings of the Berkeley
Linguistic Society 4: 485–9.

Alford, D. K. H. (1981). "Is Whorf's Relativity Einstein's Relativity?" Proceedings of the

Berkeley Linguistic Society 4: 485–9.
Carroll, John B. The study of language. Cambridge : HarYard University
Press, 1 9 5 3 .
Chase, Stuart. "How language shapes our thoughts." Harper's Magazine,
April 1 9 54, pp. 76-82.
Chase, Stuart. The power of words. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1 9 54.
Doob, L. W. Social psychology. New York: Holt, 1 9 52.
Feuer, Lewis S. "Sociological aspects of the relation between language and
philosophy." Philosophy of Science, 20 : 8 5-100 ( 1 9 5 3 ) .
Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

29
Eng 525: Modernism and Post-Modernism
Lecturer: Prof. Sala
Presented by Group 8
Group 8Members
 Mbibah Derick Vershiyi 10G700
 Piyo Bwefuk Pam
 Ade Divine Ndesan

JOHN RUPERT FIRTH

(1) Personal Information
John Rupert Firth was a British linguist who was born in June 17, 1890 in Keighley, Yorkshire.
He died in December 14, 1960 in Lindfield, West Sussex at the age of 70.
Career history
John Rupert Firth was professor of English at the University of Punjab-Lahore .(1920-1928)
-Then Senior Lecturer at the University College London (1928-1938)
-Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of General Linguistics at the School of Oriental Studies,
University of London (1938-1956).
He was born and bred during the imperial subjugation and the existence of the British Empire.
He attended the Local Grammar school, studied for a BA and MA in History at Leeds University
and taught at Leeds Teacher Training College. Just before the First World War, he went to India,
still part of Britain’s Empire to work for the Indian Education Service.
He also undertook military service in India during the war. And in Afghanistan and
Africa, returning to the imperial Education Service after the armistice as a professor of English at
the University of Punjab. There he began his study of the areas of languages so as to provide
linguistic data for later publications. His stay India influenced his career greatly.

(2) Firth’s Works

Firth was not a very prolific writer. It may be important to note that his works were not really
meant for the highly sophisticated intellectual minds; rather his works targeted non-academic
audiences. Most of these works were published while he was in the London School of Oriental
Studies. These were later considered Firthian Linguistics. The works were:
 Firth, J. R. 1930. Speech. London: Ernest Benn.
 Firth, J. R. 1935. "The Technique of Semantics." Transactions of the Philological Society,
36-72.
 Firth, J. R. 1937. The Tongues of Men. London: Watts & Co.
 Firth, J. R. 1946. "The English School of Phonetics." Transactions of the Philological
Society, 92-132.
 Firth, J. R. 1948. "Sounds and prosodies." Transactions of the Philological Society, 127-
152.
 Firth, J. R. 1957. Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. London: Oxford University Press.
 Firth, J. R. 1957. "A Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930-1955" in J.R. Firth et al. Studies
in Linguistic Analysis. Special volume of the Philological Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
He was an important figure in the foundation of linguistics as an autonomous discipline in
Britain. He was known for his ideas on phonology and the study of meaning. He equally
contributed greatly in stamping in the role of paralinguistic features like stress and intonation
in determining meaning.

30
(3) The theory he propounded.
Firth most prominent theory is theory of the ‘Context of Situation’ which is based chiefly on the
notion that meaning cannot be separated from context. Equally, it may be important to note that
Systemic Functional linguistics as a theory was initiated by Firth. His student and a member of
the London School of Linguistics, Michael Halliday simply elaborated and developed it.
Equally, his ideas on phonology have been seen by many as his greatest contribution to
linguistics. Ideas in his frame of prosodic analysis or London school phonology were published
by Firth’s co-workers. (His colleagues from School of Oriental and African studies). “Sounds
and Prosodies” was his first publication in phonology.
According to the Oxford Dictionaries Language Matters, `Prosodic Analysis is
concerned with the analysis of language based on its pattern of stress and intonation in different
contexts. In systemic grammar, Prosodic Analysis is regarded as an essential foundation for the
Analysis of syntax and meaning’’. For example, you derive meaning from the tone or stress in an
utterance. Whether a plea or command.

(4)Firth’s Precursors.
Firth was influenced by a number of people who came into his life at different intervals. In 1928,
Firth took up part-time studies in the London School of Economics. There he met Bronislaw
Malinowsky who was working on language from an Anthropological perspective. His
Anthropological views on language greatly influenced Firth’s view of language. His stance that
linguistic meaning can only be derived from the context in which it exists is largely
anthropological. To him, meaning does not exist in general but exists only in a given culture
which created it. As such, he asserts that we can only talk of meaning in context.
Another influence on Firth’s theorizing was Ferdinand De Saussure. Firth rejected the
distinction between ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ as De Saussure did. He believed that
language could never be an autonomous entity and was not to be studied as a mental system.
Rather, he saw language as a set of events which speakers uttered; away of doing things; a mode
of action. As utterances occurred in real-life contexts, Firth argued that their meaning derived
just as much from the string of sounds uttered. This integrationist idea which mixes language
with the objects physically present during a conversation to ascertain the meaning involved is
known as ‘Firth’s Contextual Theory of Meaning’ or his theory of the ‘ Context of Situation’. It
should be noted that the phrase above was borrowed from Bronislaw Malinowsky.
In another stretch, Firth was also influenced by the experimental phonetician, Daniel Jones at the
University College of London. However, Firth regarded Jones’ ideas as theoretically barren and
intellectually insular (limited only to a given locality). As such, he greatly departed from Jones’
views.

(5)What Firth stood for and what he stood against

Firth was specialized in Linguistic Semantics and Prosodic Phonology. He insisted on the study
of both sound and meaning in context. To him, language could not be studied as an isolated
mental system but as a response to the context of particular situations. Firth strongly believed
that inasmuch as the ‘business of linguistics is to describe languages; this should not be done in
separation from the living voice of man in action.
Many of his precursors viewed language as a system of abstract linguistic forms. These forms
can either be those which have meaning or those which do not have this meaning. These forms
are of different types like phonemes and other distinctive features on the one hand and
morphemes, lexemes and sentences on the other hand. These forms constitute a network of rules
called the grammar of a language.

31
Firth formulated his objections to the doctrinal nexus outlined above with special reference to De
Saussure’s ‘langue’ and ‘parole’. Firth observed that this view on language could be described
as ‘Durkheimian Structuralism’; whereby a language is treated as a set of social facts on a
different plane from the phenomena observable as the individual language user’s linguistic
behavior on particular occasions. These social facts constitute a silent system of signs existing
apart from and over and above the individual as ‘sujet parlant’ and it is this system of signs (the
Langue) that the Saussurean Structuralists take up as the object of study rather than the speech
events brought about by particular ‘sujet parlants’ on particular occasions of speech.
In contrast, Firth takes linguistics to be primarily concerned with the speech events themselves.
These speech events are in themselves ‘concrete’ whereas De Sausserean ‘langue’ is a system of
differential values, not of concrete and differential terms. Actual people do not talk such a
language and since Firth is interested in actual people and their linguistic behaviors, his
treatment of language assumes that it is ‘a form of human living rather than merely a set of
arbitrary signs and symbols.

( 7 )The effect of his thinking on linguistic theorizing and the understanding of the nature
of language
A generation of Linguists arose around Firth. They helped spread linguistics to newly
founded departments in Britain, with an identifiable Firthian approach. With several ideas from
Firth, MAK Halliday founded systemic Functional Linguistics which is now widely pursued in
the world. Halliday’s ideas were originally neo- Firthian, with his general approach of
considering the function of Language in context.
Firth was the originator of the London School. In fact, his teaching in the University of London
for 20 years made him to influence a group of linguists who became known as “the London
School” of Linguistics. One of the most prominent members of this school was Michael Halliday
who was Professor of General Linguistics from 1965 to 1987 in the University of London. He
built on Firth’s Systemic Linguistics and published elaborately on it.
Other prominent followers of Firth include:
 T.F Mitchel who worked elaborately on Arabic and Chinese
 Frank R. Palmer who worked on Ethiopian Languages, including Tigre

(8) Critiques on his Works

Firth’s work was criticized in that; his ideas did not connect in two areas. Firth’s ideas on
the study of meaning and context being central in linguistics were unusual at a time when
contemporaries such as Bloomfield were positively excluding meaning from linguistic study.
He had published about 40 items but had never set out all his ideas in a clear and coherent
manner. Firth’s works were not influential outside Britain, even though he was well aware of
developments in Linguistics in Europe and America.
Some described Firth as autocratic and impolite. He was said to have controlled what
most of the members of the London school could publish and suppressed linguistic ideas which
he disapproved of, for example, the phonology done at the University College London.

32
 References
Chapman S. & Routledge, P.(eds)2005. Key thinkers in linguistics and the philosophy of
Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Léon J. 2007. “Meaning by collocation. The Firthian filiation of Corpus
Linguistics” Proceedings of ICHOLS X, 10th International Conference on the
History of Language Sciences, (D. Kibbee ed.), John Benjamins Publishing
Company: 404-415CNRS, Université Paris 7

Mitchell, T. F. 1975. Principles of Firthian Linguistics. London: Longman. ISBN 0582524555

Oxford Dictionaries Language Matters

33
LEONARD BLOOMFIELD

Presented by
MIMBOE EBODE MANUELLA LAUREL 10N020
NKONG CYNTIA
TONYE TONYE MEMOIRE 10M203

I-BIOGRAPHY
Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist born in Chicago, Illinois on April 1st1887. His
parents, Sigmund and Carola Bloomfield were Jewish and immigrated to the United States of
America from Austria-Hungary. Their original family name was Blumenfeld, a name which they
changed when they arrived in the USA. His uncle, Maurice Bloomfield, was a prominent
linguist, a professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Linguistics at Johns Hopkins University. He is
believed to have inspired Bloomfield in his research.
Bloomfield attended the Harvard College from1903 to 1906 and graduated with a degree. With
this, he started teaching at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, taking courses in German and
Germanic philology as well as in other Indo-European Languages. In 1908, Bloomfield moved to
the University of Chicago where he took courses in German and Indo-European philology with
Frances A. Wood and Karl Darling Buck. In 1909, he graduated from that university with a
doctoral dissertation in Germanic historical linguistics. He did further studies at the University of
Leipzig, the University of Gottingen in 1913 and 1914. This propelled him from the rank of
instructor to that of Assistant professor in the University of Illinois. From 1921 to 1927, he was a
professor in German and Linguistics at the University of Ohio. In 1925, he worked as assistant
Ethnologist in the Canadian Department of Mines. From 1927 to 1940, he was a Professor of
Germanic Philology at the University of Chicago and from 1940 to 1949, a sterling professor of
linguistics at the Yale University. He died on April 18th1949: he was 62.

II- WHAT THEORY DID HE PROPOUND?

Bloomfield is one of the most prominent figures in American Structuralism. He was strongly
against what was not “directly observable in language” for linguistic analysis. He worked
specifically in morphology and syntax and was strictly against the study of semantics and
mentalism, theory propounded by E. Sapir.
Thus, Bloomfield’s structural linguistics consists in analyzing language from its formal features;
that is, from what is directly observable. In his main work entitled Language, he proposes three
main orientations to the study of language:
 The comparative-historical
 The philological –empirical
 The descriptive prescriptive
However, he is believed to have focused more on descriptive linguistics. Bloomfield considered
language as having a similar behaviour to that of natural sciences given that according to him
they should be studied with a focus on mechanical aspects. Therefore, he excludes semantics and
the use of the mind or psychology to explicate the functioning of language. He claims that
language is visible and observable as human behaviour. He is equally credited for introducing
behaviourism in language as he views the sign as the response of an intermediate stimulus(S-R).
For example, a verbal expression and the comprehension of a request finish with the delivery of
the book. In other words, when requesting something with the use of language, especially a verb,
this request has as response the element/thing requested.
III- MAJOR WRITINGS

34
Bloomfield published extensively in the domain of linguistics. He is especially credited for his
writings in structural linguistics. In this vein, his major works include:
 An Introduction to the Study of Language, published in 1914.
This book summarizes his main ideas about the nature of language. In this book, he emphasizes
the importance of spoken language, then written language and finally the observation of
language. He equally discusses language change.
 Tatalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis published in 1917. This book is known as one
of the best which describes Tatalog. It is even described as “ the best treatment of any
Austronesian language.
 “Language” This seminal paper published in 1933 extensively describes Panini. It
introduces concepts like linguistic form, free form, exocentric endocentric( to describe
compound words
 Eastern Ojibwa: grammatical sketch, texts and word list is one of his latest books
published posthumously in 1958 and 1962. In this book he comes up with concepts like
“morphological zero” which is a morpheme that has no overt realization.
IV-Who are his precursors?
The major precursors of Leonard Bloomfield are Franz Boas and Edward SAPIR.
Franz Boas was an anthropologist who demonstrated that differences in human behaviour are not
primarily the result of biological dispositions but mostly the result of the cultural differences that
arise from social learning. He therefore brought in the view that culture is the central concept for
describing differences in human behaviours. He talked about cultural relativism and claimed that
no culture is more valuable than another nor superior to the other. He also discussed diffusion
and said that in-depth investigation is necessary in order to come out with a theory.
Edward SAPIR was one of the students of Franz Boas and the only trained linguist along
them. He considered language as a cultural phenomenon. According to him there is a strong
affinity between language culture and thought. He goes further to state that language influences
thought. He also emphasized on personality and culture and criticized those who didn’t
distinguish collective and individual levels of analysis. In the same vein, he studied the
relationship between society and the individual and came out with the idea that society
influences the individual.
V-What did he stand for and what did he stand against?
It is worth mentioning that Bloomfield together with his students created the American
Structural Linguistics school of thought.
He stood against mentalism and rejected the existence of all mentalist constructs and the
idea that the structure of language is the reflection of the structure of the thought. For him,
language was to be studied from what is observable. He therefore used the corpus-based
approach. Language for him was the central element of linguistic studies. He was influenced by
Wundt’s Psychology of Language but later on used behaviourism.
He stood for the view that we could determine any linguistic structure by applying
analytic procedure beginning with the smallest units of sound and meaning which are
morphemes (Bloomfield, 1926:130). Bloomfield explained how to identify morphemes then,
phonemes that are the smallest units and larger units like words, phrases and sentences.
Bloomfield used behaviourism as his framework to analyse morphology and syntax. He applied
the behaviouristic approach study of semantics: meaning is simply the relationship between a
stimulus and a verbal response.
He therefore introduced the notions of:
- utterances that are produced by Acts of speech: “An act of speech is an utterance”
(1926:154)

35
 - Speech community: “a group of people who interact by means of speech (1933: 42). The
totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community is the language of that
speech community (1926: 155).

VI- Effects on linguistic theorizing and on the understanding of the nature of language.
Bloomfield led the development of structural linguistics. He was one of the founding fathers of
The Linguistic Society of America. His contributions to linguistics are both theoretical and
methodological.
To begin with the theoretical contributions, he worked extensively on the description of
languages which by then where given less attention. His book entitled Language published in
1933 made great contributions to indo-European Historical Linguistics and the description of
Austronesian languages and languages of the Algonquian family. His earliest work was in
historical Germanic studies and Indo-European and Germanic phonology and morphology. He
emphasized the neo grammarian principle of regular sound change as the foundational concept of
Historical Linguistics. He selected indo European examples and that supported his key neo
grammarian hypothesis and emphasized a series of steps essential to the success of comparative
works in his books an Introduction To Language (1914) and Seminal Language (1933).
His indo European work had two broad implications. Firstly, he clearly stated the
theoretical basis for indo European linguistics and he established the study of indo European
language family within general linguistics. In An Introduction to the Study of Language, he laid
down basic ideas about the nature of language following basic Boasian lines. He focused on
spoken language as prime and written as secondary.
To continue, we observe that Bloomfield undertook to study language from a pure
scientific premise, by observing them and coming up with conclusions. Hence, he emphasized
the observation of language as a present day reality to speakers rather than from an external,
historical point of view. He drew generalizations about human languages from observing them.
He adhered to behaviourism and investigation of formal procedures for analyzing linguistic data.
In Language he incorporated such bahaviourist ideas in the chapter entitled “Language Use And
Meaning” . The major concern at this point was the conflict between mentalism and
bahaviourism.
Furthermore, Bloomfield’s approach to linguistics was characterized by emphasis on the
scientific basis of linguistics. He began systemizing axioms or postulates for linguistics as a
science in “A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language” (Language 2, 153-164 1926) where
he sought to place linguistics at a scientific footing as firm as those of natural sciences. Thus he
developed in his field work methodologies in linguistic data collection and analysis pioneered by
Boas. His Methodology constituted descriptive analysis which marked the shift from philology
as analysis was now based on observable data.

VII- What criticism did he receive?

No human endeavour is said to be perfect. Thus Bloomfield’s ideas and claims in the
domain of linguistics provoked reactions from other scholars who did not share these.
The major criticism of Bloomfield’s structural linguistics came with the rise of generative
grammar in 1960’s. His theories on morphology and syntax were carried over to generative
grammar. His influence on structural linguistics declined in the 1960’s as the theory of
generative grammar developed by Noam Chomsky came to predominate studies in linguistics.

36
REFERENCES
Bloomfield, L. (1914): An Introduction to the Study of Language.
Bloomfield, L. (1958): Eastern Ojibwa: grammatical sketch, texts and word list. Michigan:
University of Michigan Press.
Langendeon, Terence Department of Linguistics,University of Arizona. MIT Encyclopedia of
Cognitive Science, ed. By Robert a. Wilson and frank c. keil. MIT Press, 1998, pp.90-91.

37
Braj E. KACHRU
PRESENT BY:
SIGEH LEONARD LENJO(MATRCULE:03G336) and
DELPHINE ESI TATA(MATRICULE:04A057)
CONTENT
BIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................................................................38
HISTORICAL CONTEXT .......................................................................................................39
SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONTEXT ............................................................................................39
KACHRU’S CONCENTRIC CYCLE .....................................................................................40
CRITICAL OPINIONS ............................................................................................................41
Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................42
References .............................................................................................................................43

BIOGRAPHY
Braj Kachru (born 1932 in Srinagar, Kashmir, India) is Jubilee Professor Emeritus of
Linguistics, faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. He coined the term World Englishes and has also published studies on Kashmiri.
His father, Pandit Damodar Das Kachru was an educator. His mother, Sati, died when he was
five years old. Braj's father was also known as Lala Sahab and was a friend of Kashmiri poet and
writer Zinda Kaul masterji. Lala saheb and his educator and teacher colleagues had discussions
on politics, literature and philosophy at his house. During their visits, Braj had the opportunity to
interact with masterji and his father's other teacher colleagues.
His wife is fellow linguist Yamuna Kachru. Their son, Shamit Kachru, is a string theorist
and professor at Stanford University.
Kachru has initiated, shaped and defined the field of World Englishes. He has researched
in the fields of World Englishes and Kashmiri language and has published several books and
research papers related to the field
Writer and educationist
At the University of Illinois, Braj headed the Department of Linguistics (1968–79),
directed the Division of English as an International Language (1985–91), and was director of the
Center for Advanced Study (June 1996 – January 2000). At the Linguistic Institute of the
Linguistic Society of America, he was appointed director in 1978. He was president of American
Association of Applied Linguistics (1984). He was named Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and
Sciences at Illinois in 1992. In 1998, he became the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Visiting
Professor at Hong Kong University. He went on to become the president of the International
Association for World Englishes (1997–99), and eventually the Honorary Fellow of the Central
Institute of English and Foreign Languages, (now English and Foreign Languages University) in
Hyderabad, India, in 2001
Kachru has authored and edited over 25 books and more than 100 research papers,
reviews and review articles. He has been on the editorial board of journals such as Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural development, International Journal of the Sociology of
Languages, Asian and Linguistics and the Human Sciences.[4] Along with authoring the prize-
winning The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions and Models of Non-Native Englishes,
Kachru is also the associate editor for Contributor to the Cambridge History of the English
Language and the acclaimed The Oxford Companion to the English Language.

38
 His major works
1- The second Diaspora of English (1992)
2- New English (1994)
3- The speaking tree: a medium of plural canons (1995)
4- Tran cultural creativity in world Englishes and literary canons (1995)
5- World Englishes (1996)
6- The paradigms of margindity (1996)
7- English as lingua franca (1996)
8- World Englishes 2000: resources for research and teaching (1997)
9- World Englishes and culture wars (2001)
10- Asian Englishes beyond the canon (2005)
11- The handbook of world Englishes (ed) braj and Yamunakachra, Cecil, L Nelson UK :
blackwell publishing LTD

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The spread of English is closely related to the expansion of the British Empire (English
Language 1). In the Nineteenth Century and in the early Twentieth Century, Britain became one
of the world’s leading trading and industrial nations and one of the world’s biggest colonial and
military powers (Dürmüller 16). Consequently, British settlers, soldiers, merchants, and
administrators carried their language to every continent (English Language 1).
In the middle of the Seventeenth Century, Britain completely conquered Ireland and
became its first colony in Europe. The British Empire then took control of India and Malaysia,
Australia and New Zealand, North America and the Caribbean, and other large areas in the
African continent. The British Empire also controlled strategic ports and islands in almost every
corner of the world from Malta, Cyprus, and Gibraltar to Singapore, Hong Kong, and the
Mediterranean (English Language 2).
The British Empire’s continuing expansion in Asia, Africa, and the Oceania helped
spread English beyond the original English-speaking colonies. Even though the United States
colonized Guam, Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, and across the North American continent,
Britain had already colonized about one quarter of the world by 1918 (English as an International
Language 8).
In the second half of the Twentieth Century, American related factors encouraged the
spread of English: the military and the economic powers of the United States, the affiliation of
the world with much American culture and civilization, the concentration of scientific and
technological advances in American universities and corporations, and the development of
information superhighway and of new communication technologies like telegraphy, the
Internet,and wireless telephony (Dürmüller17).

SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONTEXT
According to Kachru, there are two types of linguistic communities: the norm-providing
varieties with English as a native and a second language and the norm-dependent varieties with
English as a foreign language or an international language (Kachru 9, Yoneaka 69).
In “Englishes in Asia,” kachru enumerated five criteria to define what makes an English
variety: (1) words and phrases are coined to express key features of the social and physical
environment; (2) standard and recognizable pattern of pronunciation is handed down from one
generation to another generation; (3) literatures were written without apology in the native
variety; (4) the variety is peculiar because of the history of the language in the speech
community; and (5) dictionaries, style guides, and reference materials are published to show
people in the speech community what is right and what is wrong (70).

39
 The first two criteria are sufficient to define English as foreign language varieties, while
the latter three differentiate English as a second language from English as a foreign language,
providing their independence to create their own norms and standards. Kachru called English as
a second language as “functionally native” for the expression of national identity and for
communication across cultural and sociolinguistic boundaries (Yoneaka 71).
As regards to the definition that English as a second language is “functionally native,”
Kachru said that the “distinction that has been drawn conventionally between native speakers
and non-native speakers is becoming blurred and increasingly difficult to operationalize” (qtd. in
Yoneaka 90). In addition, Yoneaka said that world Englishes reject the traditional dichotomy of
native and non-native varieties and replaces it with pluricentric and multicultural English in a
spirit of equality and shared communicative responsibility (90).
This shift to terminology, i.e., from English to Englishes or new Englishes or world
Englishes, has been full of conflicts. In Kachru’s words, “this terminological feud is not
innocent; it is loaded with ideologies, economic interests, and strategies of power” (qtd. in Singh
20). This was so, Amarjit Singh explained, because language has always been a fundamental
position of struggle for social, cultural, political, and economic control (21).

KACHRU’S CONCENTRIC CYCLE: VARIATIONS OF NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE

ENGLISH
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), about five to seven million people
out of the world’s 500 million population spoke English. Today, there are more non-native
speakers than native speakers, and English has become a linguistic apparatus, a global medium
with local messages and identities. It is also widely spoken by less than two billion people
worldwide (Hohenthal 1, Are Immigration Preferences for English Speakers Racist? 1).
English has deeply penetrated in 60 countries and this resulted to native and non-native
varieties. The development of new varieties, also called “new Englishes” or “world Englishes,”
is connected with historical, sociolinguistic, and political and educational contexts. New
Englishes have their own context of usage and function, and they have also affected “old
Englishes” or native varieties of English (Hohenthal 3).
In his seminal papers and miscellaneous writings, Braj Kachru discussed the spread of
English around the world in terms of three concentric circles: the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle,
and the Expanding Circle. Annika Hohenthal explained that the concentric circles represent
different ways where English has been acquired and is currently used (The Spread of English
Around the World 1). Judy Yoneaka pointed out that the concentric circles fight for equal
recognition of all English varieties no matter how they are classified and no matter where they
are found in the world (4). In Kachru’s words, “the concepts of the three concentric circles helps
us in understanding the pluralism and the institutionalization of English across cultures and
languages” (7).
According to Kachru, the inner circle refers to traditional historical and sociolinguistic
origins of English where it is used as a first or native language—Britain, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and the United States—with about 400 million speakers, almost 70 percent of which are
from the United State.
On the other hand, the outer circle includes countries colonized by Britain and the United
States where English is spoken as a second language and plays an important historical and
governmental role in multilingual settings like India, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Zambia,
Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Bangladesh, South Africa, the Philippines,
among other countries in the world, with more than 400 million speakers.
Not colonized by Britain and the United States, countries in the Expanding Circle did not
institutionalize English as an official language but recognized the importance of English as a

40
 Expanding
foreign language. These countries includes Israel, Japan, China, Egypt, Korea, Nepal, Russia,
Taiwan, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Western
Circle eg Europe, Caribbean countries, Cameroon,
and the South African continent with more than one billion speakers china
Hohenthal explained that the term “new Englishes” is used for “diaspora varieties” that
have evolved from the Outer Circle. InOuter historical and sociolinguistic sense, these varieties,
although not relatively new, are called “new Englishes” because it is only recently that they were
linguistically, and literature wise, recognized
Circle and
eg. institutionalized, although they have a long
history of acculturation in historical, sociolinguistic, and political and educational contexts
different from the Englishes of the InnerJapan Circle.
Inner India

Circle eg.
Etc. USA , UK
Australia Nigeria
New zeland, Etc

Kenya Pakistan

Egypt Malaysia Russia

Korea
Indonesia

The three ‘circles‘ of English

CRITICAL OPINIONS

ENGLISH AND MULTICULTURALISM

From the essay “World Englishes and culture wars by Braj Yamuna”, the present
diffusion and constructs of and attitudes toward English in the world today are compared to the
legendary “speaking tree” which awakens in the minds of its beholders “both fear and
celebration, aversion and esteem and indeed agony ad ecstasy”. Those who see the cannon of
English Literature of Englishes as relatively fixed, a starting point with distance measured from
it fo far-fling reduplications of the pattern, according to Kachru, are those who view the spread
of English with “fear and aversion” while those who see it from the world Englishes paradigm
react to the same data with attitudes of “celebration and esteem”. While English say Kachru, is in
one sense-cross-culturally-international, that is a term that Kachru avoids, since there is an
English that is uniform in its forms and functions from place to place, from culture. Drawing on
the metaphor of Caliban, who was taught speech for the convenience of his master so that they
could communication with one another but who rejected any allegiance to that speech in no
uncertain terms, Kachru writes that

41
 The medium of English is shared by all of its users in the three cycles, but that “the
‘mantras’, the messages and discourses represent multiple identities and contexts and visions. It
is in this variousness that English finds its being in the present.

WORLD ENGLISHES AND INTELLIGIBILITY

Alatis and Strachle (1997) cited a USIA estimate of 700 million users of native ad non
native English, and also refer to English as being the most commonly used language at
international conferences. They also cite a British council number of two billion users of English
with some awareness of the language. Numbers cited and calculated by Kachru (2005:4-5)
indicate that English in India and China alone number 533 million, a population of users larger
than the total number of English speakers of the USA, the UK and Canada. Whoever, figure are
accepted, it is certain that the users of English in the ouler and expanding circles out number
those in the Inner circle. With such spread, a frequently voiced concern is the possibility that
speakers of different varieties of English will soon become unintelligible to one another.
Bansal 1969 is an early attempt to address this concern; by cautioning that un important
forms of English should be excluded from consideration for use as an educational model, and
mutual intelligibility should be attained by adopting Standard English Grammar and lexis, and
keeping the number of phonological units…close to those of the educated accents (Bansal,
1969:13).
As the English language becomes widespread, meeting other cultures, local dialects, and
languages, it becomes a natural phenomenon that the problem of intelligibility is going to
happen, and has already happened earlier as English had gone international. pundits of world
Englishes argue that it is unnecessary for every user of English to be intelligible to every other
user of English. Adhering that speech and writing English needs to be intelligible to those with
whom we wish to communicate in English. For example they may be people in India who
frequently speak English among themselves but which might not be intelligible to English
speaking Nigerians or Cameroonians.

WORLD ENGLISHES AND GENDER IDENTITIES

Tamara M. Valentine; The author of this essay adopts a socially realist perspective
which has accepted a gendered approach taking into consideration not only the multilingual
contexts but the experiential and attitudinal differences between women and men as language
users in the English diasporic context. Within this theoretical and methodological backdrop,
Valentine analyses the implications of the sociolinguistics of world Englishes and gender; gender
and power, and contextualizing gender.
Valentine ads up that, both the study of world Englishes and the study of language and
gender have challenged. The limits of the traditional approaches, the western static, monolithic
models, and monolingual standards and norms. Their histories are similar in that they both arose
from a shift from the existing traditional theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical models to
one that accepted to on that accepted linguistic pluralism and multilingual creativity; from
viewing gender and language as unchanging, homogeneous, and absolute to a more dynamic
discussion on function, context, and social person. Both seek a new direction consistent with an
approach that takes into account expanding and connecting boundaries to include the
construction of multiple identities and diverse roles and functions, replacing dichotomies of “us”
and them, “native” and “non native”, “women” and “men”, and dominance and difference
Valentine ends, with dimensions of pluralism and expansion of the canon.

Bibliography

42
  The alchemy of English: the spread, functions, and models of non-native Englishes,
University of Illinois Press, 1990 ISBN 0-252-06172-1
 World Englishes: critical concepts in linguistics, Volume 4, Publisher: Taylor & Francis,
2006, ISBN 0-415-31509-3
References
"Illinois Linguistics". linguistics.illinois.edu. Retrieved 6 june 2015.
"Braj B Kachru: A Biographical Sketch". onlinelibrary.wiley.com. Retrieved 6 june 2015.
"Kachru.com: Braj Kachru and Yamuna Kachru". Kachru.com.
"Braj Kachru: Emiratus Professor of Linguistics". CAS (Centre of Advanced Studies,
Illinois). Retrieved 6 june 2015.
"Writers and Columnists: Braj B Kachru". ikashmir.net. Retrieved 6 june 2015.
Bhatt (2001). "World Englishes". Annual Review of Anthropology (Annual Reviews) 30 (1):
527–550. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.527. JSTOR 3069227. edit

43
Work done by
Bondo Christebel Ndum 10K947
Yemene Diffo Stephanie 10A607
Topic
Research on Noam Chomsky.
LMA5
Prof. Sala Bonaventure

Background of the Study

Noam Chomsky is an eminent linguist and a radical political philosopher of international
reputation. He was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA). Sometimes
described as the “father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic
philosophy. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
where he is currently professor emeritus, and authored over one hundred (100) books. He has
been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the “world’s top public intellectual”
in a 2005 poll. He founded generative linguistics, which in and of itself was a revolution in his
field and beyond. He also became known to the general public, both at home and abroad by
being a committed intellectual with clear inclination for what he referred to early as “ anarcho-
syndicalism”. He is credited to be creator and co-author of the Chomsky hierarchy, the Universal
Grammar theory, the Chomsky-schutzenberger enumeration theorem and the Chomsky-
schutzenberger representation theorem. He also played a major role in the decline of behaviorism
and was especially critical of the works of B.F Skinner. He was the eight most cited scholar
overall within the Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar between 1980
and 1992.
What are his major works?
Some of Chomsky’s works include:
Syntactic Structures (1957)
Aspects of Theory of Syntax (1965)
Cartesian Linguistics (1966).
Language and Mind (1968)
The Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory ( 1975).
What theory did he propound?
In strictly academic terms, Noam Chomsky is best known as the theoretician who came
up with the theory of transformational Generative Grammar which revolutionized cognitive and
linguistics sciences in the middle of the twentieth century. Chomsky originally theorized that
children were born with a hardwired language acquisition device (LAD) in the brains. He later
expanded this idea into that of the Universal Grammar, a set of innate principles and adjustable
parameters that are common to all human languages. The child exploits its LAD to make sense
of the utterances heard around it, deriving from this “primary linguistic data”.
According to Chomsky’s Theory of Universal grammar, it is no coincidence that the
majority of human languages follow similar rules and patterns when it comes to grammar. He
believed that, while differences exist between languages, the fact that they all share core
common grammatical traits were not just a chance occurrence. This theory focuses to answer
three basic questions about human languages. They are:
 What constitutes knowledge of language?
 How knowledge of language is acquired?
 How knowledge of language is put to use?.
Knowledge of language stands in Universal Grammar for the subconscious mental representation
of language which underlies all language use.

44
Who were his precursors?
Under the guidance of teachers such as the Russian Linguist and literary theorist Roman
Jakobson and one of his former mentor, Nelson Goodman, Chomsky did research for several
years at the Harvard University of grammatical construction of Hebrew. In 1965, he presented a
doctoral thesis on syntactic structures entitled “Transformational Analysis that pave the way for
his revolutionary concept of transformational grammar.

What did he stand for?

Noam Avram Chomsky stands for the generative grammar theory. He suggested that it is
the role of the linguist to create a small set of rules that can correctly generate all the
combinations of words possible to form all the grammatical sentences of a language. He did that
using an algorithm to predict all grammatically correct sentences. In particular contrast with
behaviorism, Chomskyan revolutionary theory rests on the demonstrated assumption that many
of the properties of language are in fact innate as well as the universality of its deep structures.
Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any
human language. He claims that certain linguistic structures which children use so accurately
must be already imprinted on the child’s mind. Chomsky believes that every child has a
‘language acquisition device’ or LAD which encodes the major principles of a language and its
grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children have then only to learn new vocabulary
and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences. Chomsky points out that a
child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone because the language spoken
around them is highly irregular – adult’s speech is often broken up and even sometimes
ungrammatical. Chomsky’s theory applies to all languages as they all contain nouns, verbs,
consonants and vowels and children appear to be ‘hard-wired’ to acquire the grammar. Every
language is extremely complex, often with subtle distinctions which even native speakers are
unaware of. However, all children, regardless of their intellectual ability, become fluent in their
native language within five or six years.
Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory
 Children learning to speak never make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs
and objects in the wrong order.
 If an adult deliberately said a grammatically incorrect sentence, the child would notice.
 Children often say things that are ungrammatical such as ‘mama ball’,
 which they cannot have learnt passively.
 Mistakes such as ‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’ show they are not learning through imitation
alone.
 Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’, which is grammatical
although it doesn’t make sense, to prove his theory: he said it shows that sentences can be
grammatical without having any meaning, that we can tell the difference between a
grammatical and an ungrammatical sentence without ever having heard the sentence before,
and that we can produce and understand brand new sentences that no one has ever said before.
Chomsky propounded the principles and parameters theory on the basis of his Universal
Grammar theory: that is what all languages have in common. The principles and parameters
model brings out the similarities between languages and shows that the acquisition of all
languages follows a particular pattern. Regarding similarities, the theory “offers the postulate
that there are universal principles of grammar that are, without exception, invariant across
languages. The content and operation of these principles ensure the similarity of all natural
languages”. (Webelhuth, 1992:8). Relating to the differences, the theory postulates that “
principles of Universal Grammar are supported by a set of parameters or options provided
Universal Grammar along a certain dimension from which individual grammars may select,

45
possibly subject to relate conditions of accessibility and markedness”(ibid:_8). In other words,
despite the fact that there are general principles that are invariant across all languages, there are
certain properties of language that are language-specific. This is what explains the
variation between different languages. There therefore exist certain parameters under which
languages vary. According to Haegeman (1991: 14), the mastery of these language-specific
properties requires very little learning, just as is the case with the universal principles. This is
because “for those principles that are parametrized, the available options are given by UG.
Attaining linguistic knowledge consists in fixing the parameters
What did he stand against?

Chomsky would direct the theoretical attack that made him famous against both
behaviorism ( B. F. Skinner), which had been the most prominent theory of the mind in analytic
philosophy for the first half of the 20th century, and against structural linguistics( Ferdinand de
Saussure),which would become extremely influential to the second half of the 20th century
continental philosophy. While behaviorism had become incredibly popular by seeking to
understand behavior and language as a function of environmental histories, on the other hand
structural linguistics examined language not in terms of its use but focused instead on its
universal underlying system independent of empirical, contingent features of language, looking
at how its elements relate to another today (synchronically) rather than over time
(diachronically).
In further contrast to behaviorism, while Chomsky recognized that structural linguistics
was useful for the analysis of finite and thus collectable number of units of language(phonology,
morphology), he nevertheless attacked structural linguistics and said in 1972:“Impoverished and
thoroughly inadequate conception of language.” Chomsky‘s key argument on structural
linguistics is to show its inadequacy. In explaining complex and ambiguous sentences, he
demonstrated such analysis was insufficient for syntax, which is what Chomsky’s original
research was focusing on, arguing that since an endless number of sentences can be uttered, it
makes the collection of all of them impossible.
The basis to Chomsky’s linguistic theory is that the principles underlying the structure of
language are biologically determined by the human mind and hence genetically transmitted. He
therefore argues that all humans have the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of
socio-cultural differences. In this light, he opposes the radical behaviorist psychology of B.F
Skinner, instead arguing that human language is unlike modes of communication used by any
other animal species. Chomsky has argued that linguistic structures are at least partly innate, and
that they reflect a “Universal Grammar” that underlies and account for all human grammatical
system (generally known as mentalism). Chomsky based his argument on observations about
human language acquisition.
Who are the critics who stood against this theory?
Critics of Chomsky’s theory say that although it is clear that children don’t learn
language through imitation alone, this does not prove that they must have an LAD – language
learning could merely be through general learning and understanding abilities and interactions
with other people.
Hymes was particularly critical of Chomsky’s idea of linguistic competence and his
failure to account for linguistic variation. Locating language within an a priori mental grammar
does not account for or even acknowledge the enormous role of the socially-contextualized ways
we use language in determining the shape of utterances. We do more than construct
grammatically possible linguistic utterances, and, as Hymes frequently noted, ungrammatical
utterances may be socially appropriate, just as grammatical utterances can be socially
inappropriate (Hymes, 1972b, 1989).

46
 Hymes objected to Chomsky’s definition of linguistic competence in the strongest terms,
saying that ‘a child from whom any and all the grammatical sentences of a language might come
with equal likelihood would be a social monster. Within the social matrix in which it acquires a
system of grammar, a child acquires also a system of its use’ (Hymes, 1974: 75). The system of
use children acquire within a social matrix of language is ‘communicative competence’, Hymes’
alternative to Chomsky’s ‘linguistic competence’. While, for Chomskyans, humans are born with
the capacity for acquiring linguistic competence, communicative competence is learned and thus
can be more or less complete or flexible. This shift in understanding competence reflects Hymes’
concern for disadvantaged children who do
Chomsky’s ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of language acquisition in
children, though many researchers in the area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello
argue very strongly against Chomsky’s theories, and instead advocate emergentist or
connectionist theories, explaining with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain
that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and
learned.

References.

Fonkwa, M.J. (2013). Aspects of Francophone Cameroon English Inflectional Morphology: The
Case of the –s Inflection. In International Journal of English Language Education.
Vol1, No 1, PP 49-67.
Hymes, D. H. (1972) 'Models of the interaction of language and social life', in J. J. Gumperz and
D. Hymes (eds) Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston. pp. 35-71.
Hymes, D. H. (1974) Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadephia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lemetyinen, H.(2012). Language Acquisition from
www.simplypschology.org/language.html
Webelhuth, G. (1992). Principle and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Links
www.egs.edu/library/noam-chomsky.html.
www.newfoundations.com/Gallery/Chomsky.html.
www.simplypschology.org/language.html
www.biography.com/people/noam-chomsky.37616.
www.egs.edu/library/noam-chomsky/biography.

47
Work done by
Bondo Christebel Ndum 10K947
Yemene Diffo Stephanie 10A607
Topic
Research on Avram Noam Chomsky.
LMA5
Prof. Sala Bonaventure

Background of the Study

Noam Chomsky is an eminent linguist and a radical political philosopher of international
reputation. He was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA). Sometimes
described as the “father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic
philosophy. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
where he is currently professor emeritus, and authored over one hundred (100) books. He has
been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the “world’s top public intellectual”
in a 2005 poll. He founded generative linguistics, which in and of itself was a revolution in his
field and beyond. He also became known to the general public, both at home and abroad by
being a committed intellectual with clear inclination for what he referred to early as “ anarcho-
syndicalism”. He is credited to be creator and co-author of the Chomsky hierarchy, the Universal
Grammar theory, the Chomsky-schutzenberger enumeration theorem and the Chomsky-
schutzenberger representation theorem. He also played a major role in the decline of behaviorism
and was especially critical of the works of B.F Skinner. He was the eight most cited scholar
overall within the Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar between 1980
and 1992.
What are his major works?
Some of Chomsky’s works include:
Syntactic Structures (1957)
Aspects of Theory of Syntax (1965)
Cartesian Linguistics (1966).
Language and Mind (1968)
The Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory ( 1975).
What theory did he propound?
In strictly academic terms, Noam Chomsky is best known as the theoretician who came
up with the theory of transformational Generative Grammar which revolutionized cognitive and
linguistics sciences in the middle of the twentieth century. Chomsky originally theorized that
children were born with a hardwired language acquisition device (LAD) in the brains. He later
expanded this idea into that of the Universal Grammar, a set of innate principles and adjustable
parameters that are common to all human languages. The child exploits its LAD to make sense
of the utterances heard around it, deriving from this “primary linguistic data”.
According to Chomsky’s Theory of Universal grammar, it is no coincidence that the
majority of human languages follow similar rules and patterns when it comes to grammar. He
believed that, while differences exist between languages, the fact that they all share core
common grammatical traits were not just a chance occurrence. This theory focuses to answer
three basic questions about human languages. They are:
 What constitutes knowledge of language?
 How knowledge of language is acquired?
 How knowledge of language is put to use?.
Knowledge of language stands in Universal Grammar for the subconscious mental representation
of language which underlies all language use.

48
Who were his precursors?
Under the guidance of teachers such as the Russian Linguist and literary theorist Roman
Jakobson and one of his former mentor, Nelson Goodman, Chomsky did research for several
years at the Harvard University of grammatical construction of Hebrew. In 1965, he presented a
doctoral thesis on syntactic structures entitled “Transformational Analysis that pave the way for
his revolutionary concept of transformational grammar.

What did he stand for?

Noam Avram Chomsky stands for the generative grammar theory. He suggested that it is
the role of the linguist to create a small set of rules that can correctly generate all the
combinations of words possible to form all the grammatical sentences of a language. He did that
using an algorithm to predict all grammatically correct sentences. In particular contrast with
behaviorism, Chomskyan revolutionary theory rests on the demonstrated assumption that many
of the properties of language are in fact innate as well as the universality of its deep structures.
Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any
human language. He claims that certain linguistic structures which children use so accurately
must be already imprinted on the child’s mind. Chomsky believes that every child has a
‘language acquisition device’ or LAD which encodes the major principles of a language and its
grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children have then only to learn new vocabulary
and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences. Chomsky points out that a
child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone because the language spoken
around them is highly irregular – adult’s speech is often broken up and even sometimes
ungrammatical. Chomsky’s theory applies to all languages as they all contain nouns, verbs,
consonants and vowels and children appear to be ‘hard-wired’ to acquire the grammar. Every
language is extremely complex, often with subtle distinctions which even native speakers are
unaware of. However, all children, regardless of their intellectual ability, become fluent in their
native language within five or six years.
Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory
 Children learning to speak never make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs
and objects in the wrong order.
 If an adult deliberately said a grammatically incorrect sentence, the child would notice.
 Children often say things that are ungrammatical such as ‘mama ball’,
 which they cannot have learnt passively.
 Mistakes such as ‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’ show they are not learning through imitation
alone.
 Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’, which is grammatical
although it doesn’t make sense, to prove his theory: he said it shows that sentences can be
grammatical without having any meaning, that we can tell the difference between a
grammatical and an ungrammatical sentence without ever having heard the sentence before,
and that we can produce and understand brand new sentences that no one has ever said before.
Chomsky propounded the principles and parameters theory on the basis of his Universal
Grammar theory: that is what all languages have in common. The principles and parameters
model brings out the similarities between languages and shows that the acquisition of all
languages follows a particular pattern. Regarding similarities, the theory “offers the postulate
that there are universal principles of grammar that are, without exception, invariant across
languages. The content and operation of these principles ensure the similarity of all natural
languages”. (Webelhuth, 1992:8). Relating to the differences, the theory postulates that “
principles of Universal Grammar are supported by a set of parameters or options provided
Universal Grammar along a certain dimension from which individual grammars may select,

49
possibly subject to relate conditions of accessibility and markedness”(ibid:_8). In other words,
despite the fact that there are general principles that are invariant across all languages, there are
certain properties of language that are language-specific. This is what explains the
variation between different languages. There therefore exist certain parameters under which
languages vary. According to Haegeman (1991: 14), the mastery of these language-specific
properties requires very little learning, just as is the case with the universal principles. This is
because “for those principles that are parametrized, the available options are given by UG.
Attaining linguistic knowledge consists in fixing the parameters
What did he stand against?

Chomsky would direct the theoretical attack that made him famous against both
behaviorism ( B. F. Skinner), which had been the most prominent theory of the mind in analytic
philosophy for the first half of the 20th century, and against structural linguistics( Ferdinand de
Saussure),which would become extremely influential to the second half of the 20th century
continental philosophy. While behaviorism had become incredibly popular by seeking to
understand behavior and language as a function of environmental histories, on the other hand
structural linguistics examined language not in terms of its use but focused instead on its
universal underlying system independent of empirical, contingent features of language, looking
at how its elements relate to another today (synchronically) rather than over time
(diachronically).
In further contrast to behaviorism, while Chomsky recognized that structural linguistics
was useful for the analysis of finite and thus collectable number of units of language(phonology,
morphology), he nevertheless attacked structural linguistics and said in 1972:“Impoverished and
thoroughly inadequate conception of language.” Chomsky‘s key argument on structural
linguistics is to show its inadequacy. In explaining complex and ambiguous sentences, he
demonstrated such analysis was insufficient for syntax, which is what Chomsky’s original
research was focusing on, arguing that since an endless number of sentences can be uttered, it
makes the collection of all of them impossible.
The basis to Chomsky’s linguistic theory is that the principles underlying the structure of
language are biologically determined by the human mind and hence genetically transmitted. He
therefore argues that all humans have the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of
socio-cultural differences. In this light, he opposes the radical behaviorist psychology of B.F
Skinner, instead arguing that human language is unlike modes of communication used by any
other animal species. Chomsky has argued that linguistic structures are at least partly innate, and
that they reflect a “Universal Grammar” that underlies and account for all human grammatical
system (generally known as mentalism). Chomsky based his argument on observations about
human language acquisition.
Who are the critics who stood against this theory?
Critics of Chomsky’s theory say that although it is clear that children don’t learn
language through imitation alone, this does not prove that they must have an LAD – language
learning could merely be through general learning and understanding abilities and interactions
with other people.
Hymes was particularly critical of Chomsky’s idea of linguistic competence and his
failure to account for linguistic variation. Locating language within an a priori mental grammar
does not account for or even acknowledge the enormous role of the socially-contextualized ways
we use language in determining the shape of utterances. We do more than construct
grammatically possible linguistic utterances, and, as Hymes frequently noted, ungrammatical
utterances may be socially appropriate, just as grammatical utterances can be socially
inappropriate (Hymes, 1972b, 1989).

50
 Hymes objected to Chomsky’s definition of linguistic competence in the strongest terms,
saying that ‘a child from whom any and all the grammatical sentences of a language might come
with equal likelihood would be a social monster. Within the social matrix in which it acquires a
system of grammar, a child acquires also a system of its use’ (Hymes, 1974: 75). The system of
use children acquire within a social matrix of language is ‘communicative competence’, Hymes’
alternative to Chomsky’s ‘linguistic competence’. While, for Chomskyans, humans are born with
the capacity for acquiring linguistic competence, communicative competence is learned and thus
can be more or less complete or flexible. This shift in understanding competence reflects Hymes’
concern for disadvantaged children who do
Chomsky’s ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of language acquisition in
children, though many researchers in the area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello
argue very strongly against Chomsky’s theories, and instead advocate emergentist or
connectionist theories, explaining with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain
that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and
learned.

References.

Fonkwa, M.J. (2013). Aspects of Francophone Cameroon English Inflectional Morphology: The
Case of the –s Inflection. In International Journal of English Language Education.
Vol1, No 1, PP 49-67.
Hymes, D. H. (1972) 'Models of the interaction of language and social life', in J. J. Gumperz and
D. Hymes (eds) Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston. pp. 35-71.
Hymes, D. H. (1974) Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadephia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lemetyinen, H.(2012). Language Acquisition from
www.simplypschology.org/language.html
Webelhuth, G. (1992). Principle and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Links
www.egs.edu/library/noam-chomsky.html.
www.newfoundations.com/Gallery/Chomsky.html.
www.simplypschology.org/language.html
www.biography.com/people/noam-chomsky.37616.
www.egs.edu/library/noam-chomsky/biography.

51
A Presentation by:
MULUH LINDA AKUMSIRI 06K402
TANGONG GLADYS SAME 96K524
Uriel Weinreich
He was born on the 23rd of May 1926 in Vilnius and died on the 9th of April 1967 in New York.
He grew up at a time when Germany was invaded by Poland in 1939. He was an American
Linguist, Doctor of Philosophy and graduated from the Columbia University in 1948.
His major works
Weinreich was the author of a monograph on the mixing of language and dialects – Languages
In Contact 1953.
He was also one of the founders of the American Linguistic Journals Word and Linguistics
Today. His other works include:
- On the Semantics Structure of Language
- Explorations in Semantic Theory
- Is a Structural Dialectology Possible? 1954
He is one of the leading figures in Yiddish studies demonstrated in his world-famous College
Yiddish (1949), a text book on language and culture still used by students to this day. Here he
gained inspiration from his father who was a renowned linguist specialist in Yiddish Language.
He is also the founder of the project Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry.
The theory he propounded
Weinreich is the founder of a “systematized theory of Language Contact”. He wrote extensively
on semantics.
His precursor: Weinreich’s precursor was Nikolai Trubetzkoy.

What he stood for

The violent and unpredictable nature of war is a powerful agent of change, both in terms of the
survivors, lives and how they perceive the world. One effect of war is that it causes people to
move from one place to the other and when they migrate, they come in contact with people of
different backgrounds and languages. It is from this backdrop that Weinreich came up with the
theory of “Language Contact” and this also inspired him to write his book Languages in Contact.
The effect of the 2nd World War on scholars was that it made them to be aware of the dangers of
relying too heavily on theories and methods thought up in classrooms. So Weinreich stood
against this given the fact that when different languages come in contact, the setting is
multicultural.
In the field of Language contact, the reliance on theory-based methodologies entailed the
generally accepted view that the results of contact between two or more languages could be
predicted based on the internal structures of those languages. However, the publication of
Weinreich’s Languages in Contact helped to establish a new approach to the subject that now
combines linguistic analysis with descriptions of the specific communities where multiple
languages are spoken.
Weinreich came up with the phenomenon of Language Interference. His interest was in the way
languages influence each other when they come in contact. Here influence is from the stronger to
the weaker language. The stronger language is the prestige language, which is considered refined
and spoken by the upper class.
His great contribution was to posit a psychological or psycholinguistic explanation for language
interference. He suggested that any speaker of two languages will tend to identify sounds, words,
structure and meanings in one language with corresponding elements in the other language. This
means speakers of two or more languages are engaged in a process of making “Interlingual

52
Identification”. For example, the word ‘Correspondent’ in English is spelled and almost
pronounced the same as the French ‘Correspondent’, so much so that when an English speaker
hears or sees it, he can easily understand the meaning of the word.
Interlingual Identification replaces two distinct forms or meanings from the two languages with a
single form or meaning which does not service for both. These are called “Compound
Bilinguals” in Weinreich’s terms. Compound Bilinguals are a combination of two or more
languages.
For the foreign language learner, the usual direction of the influence will be from the mother
tongue to the foreign language. At the phonological level, this will produce typical foreign
pronunciations. For example, a Lamnso speaker learning the English language tends to replace
the English sound /əu/ with the sound /u/ in words like coat /kəut/ for /kut/.
Weinreich, inspired by Trubetzkoy also came up with the idea of a Diasystem which deals with
the synthesis of linguistic geography (language and environment) and descriptive linguistics
(describing the functions of language) by applying the structuralism concept of grammar to the
description of regular correspondences between different varieties. This means the use of the
English grammar to describe the grammar of other languages.
The Diasystem would be consistent with the individual grammars of all member dialects. Just as
the phones present within an individual variety are grouped together into abstract phonemes, the
phonemes present within a group of varieties could be grouped together into even more abstract
diaphonemes. Weinreich exemplified the diasystem approach by a formulaic arrangement of
phonemes correspondences in three dialects of Yiddish, focusing on the vowels but arguing that
the principle could work for other aspects of language.
Criticisms to Weinreich Diasystem
Weinreich was his first critic. He recognizes the fact that phonemic merges and split with
dissimilar results across dialects would pose a difficult challenge for the construction of a
diasystem. He cautioned on positing a diasystem when the work of creating all the member
systems (the work of phonemicization) was yet incomplete.
Again, following the lead of Trubetzkoy (1931), he noted that the differences in phonological
inventory and etymological distribution might prove problematic in the construction of
diasystems.
Pulgram (1964) argues that multiple dialects could not be described by a common grammar, at
least not under structuralism theory. This means it would be unfeasible to construct a single
grammar for multiple dialects unless their differences were very minor or if it incorporated only
a small number of dialects. This means each dialect has its own grammar.
The most salient criticism of these broad diasystems was the issue of how cognitively real they
are. That is, whether speakers actually have competence in using or understanding the
grammatical nuances of multiple varieties. In certain sociolinguistic circumstances, speakers’
linguistic repertoire contains multiple varieties.
Contact Linguistics
Uriel Weinreich known today as a 20th century linguist and as being the pivot in the study of
language contact played a vital role in the birth of modern contact linguistics published in a
university of Pennsylvania Student Magazine 1987.
Weinreich’s interest in language contact developed naturally out of his poli-glot upbringing.
Grew speaking Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew and a young age he was familiar with Russian,,
German and latter English when he got to America and many other European languages. This
gave him a background to Bi and multilingualism and the prevailing belief in the evils of
bilingualism. This was later developed into a paper.
In this paper, Uriel argues that any proper study of language contact had to take into
consideration not only linguistically internal facts, but also descriptions for the communities in

53
which two or more languages were spoken. He demonstrated in Language in Contact (1953:83-
110) that the linguistic outcomes of language contact, or “interference’, are in large part
conditioned by sociocultural variables, including extent and degree of bilingualism: length of
contact; geographical and demographic distribution; social factors such as religion, race, gender
and social functions like education, government, media, literature, political, ideological factors
including those of prestige and the “Language Loyalty”.
He successfully demonstrated that the linguistic outcomes of contact between two or more
languages can not be deducted from a comparison of their structures alone but could be
understood only within the full context of their speaker’s life, social behavior and interactions. In
order word, one has to always take into consideration” the social life of language (sannkoft
1990).Uriel used the example of Lexical and grammatical interference in the speech of a
bilingual six years old child. The child had English as his first language while the parents speak
only French at home. The child had spent three months in France during three visits there. The
data used were collected in the child’s home by his parents during the period when he was six
years and three months to seven years and two months of age. The grammatical and the lexical
interference shown to occur in both languages .English influence French in the word order and
stress while French influence English in the category of gender. The child those not, however,
show any evidence of phonological interference in either language. Hence, the child has not
evolved a lexicon or grammatical structures compounded of French and English elements.
Thus, language always developed and changes depending on the social, economic and cultural;
context. This therefore means that, language contact is an event of using two languages
interchangeably by a speaker.
Apart from the language contact, he also promoted what he called the “secular linguistics”. That
is, the imperial quantitative study of living language within its full social, cultural and political
context, as the only way to a better understanding of the mechanisms and causes of language
change. If two or more languages are used interchangeably, by a speaker, language contact
would appear and interference would appear both in written and oral form. This imperial
foundation brought the birth of modern social linguistics especially what is known as the
variation approach to the study of language.
Macro Sociolinguistics
This is especially called the variation approach. A field of study propounded by Uriel but later on
expanded by William Labov who is now known as the founder of macro socio-linguistics and
Fishman founder of Macro socio-linguistics, sociology of language which consist of inter alia of
the analyses of language education ,language planning, bilingualism, multi linguistics, minority
languages and language revival.
With the principles of macro socio-linguistics, Uriel brought about what is known as intellectual
honesty, Vigo and originality.
Contrastive Analyses Hypothesis
This is one of the hypotheses of Uriel that is of interest to linguists who are engaged in language
teaching and in writing language teaching materials. This contrastive analyses hypothesis also
raises many difficulties in practice. It questions the value of teachers and curriculum workers and
the result of such analyses. CAH is divided into two versions; the strong and the weak version.
The strong version is quite unrealistic and impracticable, even though it is the one on which
those who write contrastive analyses usually claim to base their work. Lado in Prefects to
Linguistic Across Cultures (1957) writes, ”the plan of the book rest on the assumption that we
can predict and describe the pattern that will cause difficulties in learning and those that will not
cause difficulties by systematically comparing the language of culture to be learned with the
native language and the culture of the student”(pvii). Friers says, in Learning English as a
Foreign Language (1945): the most efficient materials are those that are base on a scientific

54
description of the language to be learned compared with a parallel description of the native
language of the learner (P.9). Valdman in Trends in language teachings(1956) talks of the
strong version of the contrastive analyses as “…the change that has to take place in the
language behavior of a foreign language student can be equated with difficulties between the
structures of the student native language and the culture and that of the target language and the
culture. So the task of the anthropologists, the linguists, the sociologists, is to identify these
differences. While the Weak Version: the weak version is suspect in some linguistic circles.
It should be noted that Uriel Weinreich laid the foundation not only for language in contact but
also for the contemporary socio-linguistic studies of language in contact which would be pursuit
much more vigorously as a part of socio-linguistics.
He was the mentor of Marvin Herzog and William Labov. His work with Labov on linguistic
variation helped to lay the foundation s for the field of Sociolinguistics.
Remembering Weinreich many years later, Labov recalled “the perfect academic” who was
“passionately interested in the ideas of others, brimming over with intellectual honesty, vigor and
originality”. He was to feel forever indebted to his teacher. “I don’t know how many of my ideas
I bought to linguistics and how many I got from Weinreich.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Weinreich, Uriel; Labov, William; Herzog, Marvin (1968). "Empirical Foundations for a Theory
of Language Change". In Lehmann, Winfred P.; Malkiel, Yakov. Directions for
Historical Linguistics: A Symposium. University of Texas Press. pp. 97–195.
Trubetzkoy, Nikolai (1931). "Phonologie et Géographie Linguistique". Travaux du Cercle
Linguistique de Prague 4: 228–234
Trudgill, Peter (1974). The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge studies in
linguistics13. Cambridge University Press.
Trudgill, Peter (1983). On Dialect: Social and Geographical Perspectives. New York: New
York University Press
Weinreich, Uriel (1954). "Is a Structural Dialectology Possible?" Word 10: 388–400.
Wells, John Christopher (1970). "Local Accents in England and Wales". Journal of Linguistics 6
(2): 231–252, doi: 10.1017/S0022226700002632

INTERNET SOURCES
http://www.academia.edu/1972011/Zuckermann Ghilad 2012.introduction to the Joshua
A.Fishman Comprehensive bibliography INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF
LANGUAGE IJSL 213 149-152
http://www.colorado.edu/Ling/CRIL/volume 19 issue 1/paper NILEP.pdf%3fg%3Dsociocultural
http://www.linguistlist.org/issue/26-1159.htm
http://booksndjournals.brillon.com/content/journals/10.1163

Name ACHA Walter ABO

Reg. number 13S251

Course code & title Eng521 : Modernism and Postmodernism

Course Instructor Prof. Bonaventure SALA
Level Master II
Date Saturday, 6th June, 2015

55
Task
Pofiling Davd Graddol

Introduction
This paper seeks to profile the famous British linguist, researcher and writer, David Graddol. The
exploration here will pertain to his biography; major works; his precursor(s) and his
contributions (theory propounded) to the study of Linguistics.
Biography of David Graddol
According to Wikipedia (2009), Graddol is as stated hitherto, a British linguist, born in 1953, in
the United Kingdom. He is a scholar and alumnus of the University of York (UK), from where
he graduated with a B.A. in Language and Linguistics in 1975; and later Sociology in 1983
(Alumni Office 1998).
Moreover, David Graddol is a writer, broadcaster, lecturer and policy consultant on discourses
related to global English and its status in the postmodern context. He is currently serving as the
Managing Director of The English Company (UK), before which he was joint editor of the
Cambridge University Press (CUP) journal, English Today. At moment, Graddol is equally on
the roll of editorial members of other journals that address issues related to language problems
and language planning and visual communication, inter alia.
On the professional lane, Graddol was lecturer at the UK Open University for twenty-five (25)
years. In addition, he has also been British Council Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Associate
Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Besides, he again, served as consultant on a great
many global English ELT projects in China, India and Latin America, since the dawn of the
1990s (Wikipedia ibid).
Research Interest and Major Works
David Graddol’s research interest has sprouted and flourished in the linguistic fields of
Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, History of Linguistics, and most especially, Applied
Linguistics (principally the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language or Foreign
Language). In the fields above, he always sought to give a postmodern critique to the study of
English as it globalises and shifts away from the centrality of its native speakers to other regions
where it is taught, learnt and spoken either as a Second Language (SL / L2) or Foreign Language
(FL).
Furthermore, Graddol first leaped into public eye or gained prominence as a budding linguist and
researcher in 1997; following the publication of his seminal work, The Future of English (1997)
by the British Council. This book postulates the findings of Graddol in which he points to the
changing and shifting standards of English in the postmodern era. He thus, predicts an eventually
remarkable decline in the number of native speakers of English. This numerical decline in the
native speakers of English is very resonant in another widely solicited publication, The Decline
of the Native Speaker (1999). As stated before now, this decline emanates from the spread and
use of English as a Second Language (in the former British colonies) or as a Foreign Language
(which is an educational policy aimed at globalising business and education). In this postmodern
critique of English in the phase of globalization, this article reveals that as English spans further
away, it norms (rules) will also vary from the standard English spoken by the native speakers, to
accommodate some socio-cultural patterns of the foreign speaker(s).
Moreover, in The Future of English (1999), Graddol, in essence, brings to light a new (and again
postmodernist) agenda for appraising the growing importance and changes in norms and status of
English as it spans to distant communities. Graddol (1999) therefore reveals that the 21st Century
will witness a change in the fortunes of English, as its ever swelling number of speakers and/or

56
learners as Foreign Language will in effect, trigger more need or demand for English teachers,
dictionaries and grammar books.
In another publication, English Next (2006), David Graddol further reiterates the changing role
of English around the world, and how these new roles affect teaching methods. Other major
publications by David Graddol include Changing English (2007); Redesigning English (2007)
and Profiling English in China: The Pearl River Delta (2013). Nevertheless, he is also co-author
of other publications on the changing role and status of English in postmodernity.
Graddol’s Contributions to the Study of Linguistics
To start with, David Graddol proposes the Postmodern Model as an approach to understand the
evolving and expansionist trends of English. In this postmodern model, he thus, seeks to appraise
the fragmentation of English as it proliferates and assumes new roles in different settings.
Postmodernity, to Graddol (2007), is both an economic and social condition; economic as it is
capitalistic (sold or taught as SL or FL and used as a language for business). Also, Graddol
considers postmodernity as social because it is a rational and expedient way to resist the
dogmatic rules of standard British English, by assigning new roles and status to English.
In the postmodern study of English, Graddol debunks the theoretical linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure and Noam Chomsky, his contemporaries. David Graddol’s Postmodern Model, so to
say, questions structuralism. He holds that as the native speakers of English lose grip of the
language, as it gains new grounds, the changing roles and status ascribed to English are also
accompanied by changes in the rules and words of English. English in its postmodernity evolves
and therefore, embraces some socio-cultural aspects of the new speaker or community. Graddol
(2007; 2013) challenges the native-speaker-notion of Standard English and grammatical
competence, as postmodernity dwells on communicative competence. Graddol (2013) thus,
instantiates this by comparing the English variety spoken in China and India to that spoken in the
Scandinavian, which are all different in form and content (lexis). In an interview granted
Guardian Weekly (2011), Graddol posits that competence (linguistic) is futile in the postmodern
era. The postmodern model endows lexis with polysemy, thus refuting the ‘signifier’ and
‘signified’ of Saussure, where words have rigid meanings.
Again, in appraising language from a postmodern point of view, Graddol (1993a) questions
Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that describes language acquisition as an innate
exercise that starts with the acquisition of the grammar (rules) of the language. So, he claims that
the structure (grammar) of a language alone cannot transmit meaning, unless the language
interacts with a particular social context. This considers the function of the language in that
context; whether for education, business or global communication. To crystalise Graddol (2013),
the structure (grammar) of English evolves as the language spreads away from its native
speakers. He concretises this claim by proffering the differences between the Englishes spoken in
the former British colonies of India and China (precisely in the Pearl River Delta region). These
different structures vis-à-vis the varied purposes (as Foreign Language or Second Language) of
English in these regions also warrant or prescribe different teaching methods unique to the two
postmodern contexts.
Cognizant of the changing character of English as it spreads further away from the community of
its native speakers, Graddol (2013), again, concludes that English in the postmodern has gained
different status and role; it is either taught and learnt for education/professionalisation, business
or employment purposes. In the Postmodern model, Graddol, therefore, advocates for different
teaching methods for the different functions and status of English in its phase of modernity.
Unlike before, English is now taught for specific purposes, as already stated above.
In addition, Graddol’s postmodern view of English subscribes to other language change theories;
like M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). In analyzing English as
undergoing changes, Graddol ascribes different functions or roles to English, as a means to

57
satisfy diverse and varied needs of the speakers (users) within a specific socio-cultural context.
These new functions (education, business, or global communication) and status (as FL or SL)
that have become of postmodern English, so to speak, prepare and broaden the emergence and
recognition of the new Englishes; a postmodern breed of English that evolves and embraces the
socio-cultural patterns and peculiarities of the new communities.
Nevertheless, firmly pinned on the argument that English evolves to endorse normative or
structural changes as it spans further away from its native speakers, in effect, expose Graddol to
robust criticisms. Borsley D. in his article, A Postmodern Critique of Linguistics, attacks Graddol
for considering language (English) as a loose system or organism that has rules that are flexible;
relative or subjective in different regions. Borsley, therefore, impugns Graddol for infringing,
adulterating and finally, unstandardising British English.
Conclusion
To conclude, David Graddol, in his postmodern review of language, posits that English is rather
gaining new fortunes as new roles (functions and purposes) and status (either as a Foreign or
Second Language) are assigned to it. These varied functions and purposes of English in
postmodernity, in all, call for the use of diverse and varied teaching methods that satisfy the
needs of the global or international speaker(s) or user(s).

References
Graddol, D. (1993a), ‘Three models of language description’, in Graddol and Boyd-Barrett
(eds.), 1-21.
------------ (1997). The future of English? A Guide to Forecasting the Popularity of the
English Language in the 21st Century. London: British Council.
------------- (1999). ‘The Decline of the Native Speaker.’ In Graddol, David/Meinhof, Ulrike
(eds.). English in a Changing World. AILA Review 13, 57-68.
-------------- (2006). English Next. London: British Council.
------------- (2013). Profiling English in China: The Pearl River Delta. Cambridge:
Cambridge English Language Assignment
Http: //www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/story/0,,1464372,00.html Spoken everywhere but at
what cost? The Guardian. 20 April 2005
Http: //www. Wikipedia.org/ personal data/ html davidgraddol, December 2009. Retrieved on
6th June 2015.

58
Group 11
AMBE MODEST NUEL CHE – 10K289
FUH SUH EMMANUEL – 10H460
KUNYONGA MUTIA CLAUDIA – 04H787
TOPIC: M.A.K HALLIDAY
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Micheal Alexander Kirkwood Halliday was born on April 13th, 1925. He is an Australian born in
Britain. Halliday developed the Systemic Functional Linguistic Model of language. This model
describes language as a semiotic system; that is, language is not a system of signs but a source of
meaning. He defines linguistics as the study of how people exchange meaning through language.
Micheal Halliday tried to look at Language from every possible viewpoint, and was given the
name ‘a generalist’.
Halliday was influenced by J.R Firth, his British teacher. He received the status of Professor
Emeritus in the University of Sydney and Macquarie University with his seminar lecture “New
Ways of Meaning : the contribution to Linguistics”.
Halliday’s major works include: An Introduction to functional Grammar, Language in
Society, Categories of the theories of Language. “Temporal Categories in Chinese Verbs”.
“Grammatical Categories in modern Chinese”. “Some Aspects of Systemic Description and
Comparison”. “Linguistics and Machine Translation”. The Tones of English.
Halliday propounded Systemic Functional Language (SFL) theory, in which he explained
how language works as “needed to be grounded in a functional analysis, since language had
evolved in the processes of carrying out certain artificial functions because human beings
interacted with their… eco-social environments”.
Halliday’s precursors were Buhler and Malinowski from whose books he drew his
functions of language and “metafunctions” as it later became part of his linguistic theory. He
equally followed Hjelmslev and Firth (the bedrock of auto-segmental phonology) in
distinguishing theoretical from descriptive categories in linguistics.
WHAT HE STOOD FOR
His conception of grammar or “lexicogrammar” (a term he coined to argue that lexis and
grammar are part of the same phenomenon), is based on a more general theory of language as a
social semiotic resource or a “meaning potential”. He also argues that theoretical categories and
their inter- relations contain an abstract model of language.
Halliday also proposed the notion of a rank scale in categorical unit (the units of grammar
formed a hierarchy, that is from the largest to the smallest) which he proposed as a sentence,
clause, group/phrase, word and morpheme. He defined structure as “likeness between events in
successivity” and as “an arrangement of elements ordered in places.
He postulated that a major clause must display some structure: that is it must either be
“middle” or “effective”.
Effective leads to the further choice of “operative”, which is known as active while
middle is known as receptive otherwise known as active.
WHAT HE STOOD AGAINST
He stood against the structural-syntactic approach to the study of language. Though his SFL
accounts for the syntactic structure of language, it places its function as central in preference to
more structural approaches, which place the elements of language and their combinations as
central. To him, it is more important to know what language does and how it does it.

59
So he stood against any linguistic study which left the user and the context out as he says “for a
linguist to describe language without accounting for text is sterile; to describe text without
relating it to language is vacuous” (Halliday 1985: 10).

HALLIDAY’S CONTRIBUTION TO LINGUISTIC THEORIZING

Halliday introduced the notion of grammatical metaphor which was an innovative contribution
that identified and described the fact that scientific and academic registers , in writing and in
speaking, are functionally oriented to accomplishing objectification and abstraction of their
content. Grammatical metaphor condenses information by expressing experiences and events in
an incongruent form or manner as contrasted with more customary congruent form that prevails
in everyday language.
In his grammatical metaphor, Halliday distinguished three types of meaning viz experiential
meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning.
Halliday also introduced the genre analysis of discourse. In it, he distinguished the context of
culture and the context of situation, which both fall under the social context. He also introduces
notion like the mode, field and tenor which help in understanding and analyzing discourse.
Halliday also introduced the notion of register. To understand a text, Halliday thinks the context:
register and genre must be taken into consideration. The context can be sub-divided into the
mode, the field and the tenor, and language into textual, ideational and interpersonal.
Most importantly, Halliday introduced SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics). This functional
model asserts that meanings are drawn through linguistic choices drawn from “network of
systems or interrelated sets of options for making meaning”.(Pilar, 2013:250). The major claims
of SFL include: language is functional, its function is to make meanings, these meanings are
influenced by the social and cultural context in which they are exchanged, and the process of
using language is a semiotic process, a process of making meaning by choosing. This explains
why Halliday’s SFL is called the functional-semantic approach to language.
CRITICS AND/FOLLOWERS OF HALLIDAY
Linguists like s. Eggins and d. Slade have adopted and expounded on SFL trying to give a better
explanation to the theory as can be seen in this attempt by S. Eggins in her book An Introduction
to Systemic Functional Linguistics (2004). In this book, she describes SFL as “social semiotics”
and goes further to enumerate the four major claims of the theory which are: language is
functional, its function is to make meanings, these meanings are influenced by the social and
cultural context in which they are exchanged, and the process of using language is a semiotic
process, a process of making meaning by choosing.
In the above text, we have look into the life of Michael Halliday. We looked at his biography,
the works he has written, the theories he propounded and the criticisms directed towards his
theories.

REFERENCES
S. Eggins & D. Slade. (1997). Analyzing Casual Conversation. London: Cassell.
Pilar, R.A.(2013). The Use of SFL Genre Theory for the Analysis Of Students’ Writing Skills in
ESP. UNED
Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia

60
ASONG GUILLIAN LEKE
09F031
LMA 5
ENG 521 : MONERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM
PROF SALA

PAISLEY LIVINGSON

Paisley Livingston developed a broad and balanced perspective on perennial disputes between
intentionalists and anti-intentionalists in philosophical aesthetics and critical theory. He surveyed
and assessed a wide range of rival assumptions about the nature of intentions and the status of
intentionalist psychology. With detailed reference to examples from diverse media, art forms,
and traditions, he demonstrated that insights into the multiple functions of intentions have
important implications for our understanding of artistic creation and authorship, the ontology of
art, conceptions of texts, works, and versions, basic issues pertaining to the nature of fiction and
fictional truth, and the theory of art interpretation and appreciation. According to him the artists’
intentions play a very important role in his works of arts or aesthetics.
He partitioned intentionalism into two; the extreme intentionalism and the anti-intentionalism. In
the former intentionalism or called an extreme version, intentionalism holds that a work's
meanings and its maker's intentions are logically equivalent. An extreme version of anti-
intentionalism also has its advocates, who confront the intentionalist with the following
dilemma: either the artist's intentions are successfully realized in the text or structure produced
by the artist, in which case the interpreter need not refer to them; or, the artist's intentions are not
successfully realized, in which case reference to them is insufficient to justify a related claim
about the work's meanings.
Meanwhile the anti-intentionalists arguments are that- including the dilemma just mentioned - is
that if a work has determinate meanings and value, they must be immanent in the artistic text or
structure. This sort of empiricism in aesthetics is vulnerable to some powerful criticisms. Not all
of the artistically or aesthetically relevant features of a work of art are intrinsic properties of the
text; some are relational and can only be known when the text or structure is cognized correctly
in the context of its creation. In making this point, a number of philosophers, such as Arthur
Danto, David Davies, Jerrold Levinson, and Gregory Currie, have evoked versions of Jorge Luis
Borges's fictional example of Pierre Menard: tokens of the same text-type, created in different
contexts, manifest different, artistically relevant relational features; to know which features are
those of one work as opposed to another work, one must interpret the text in its context of
creation. Once attention has been drawn to the constitutive status of a work's relational
properties, cogent responses to the anti-intentionalist dilemma can be formulated. The
intentionalist can argue that some successfully realized intentions are not simply redundant with
regard to the text's intrinsic features. An example is the intention that a certain meaning be
unstated in the text yet implicitly expressed by the work. Even when the intentions are
successfully realized, such relations are not immanent in the final artistic structure or text and
cannot be simply read off from the latter. Intentionalists also contend that whenever our goal is
to evaluate a work as a certain kind of achievement, the artist's intentions, including
unsuccessfully executed ones, are always relevant, because part of what we want to do is take
note of the manner and extent of the artist's realization of the relevant aims. Although it is not the
case that success at realizing...

61
TEBID RUTH ANNE
09I399
ENG 5
PROF.SALA

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
BIOGRAPHY
Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure was a swizz linguist and semiotician born in Geneva,
Switzerland on the 26th of November 1857 and died February 22,1913 at the age of 55 in
Vufflens-le-chateau, vaud, Switzerland. His Father was Henri Louis Frederic de Saussure,a
mineralogist, entomologist, and taxonomist. Saussure showed signs of considerable talent and
intellectual ability as early as the age of fourteen. After a year of studying latin, greek and
Sanskrit, and taking a variety of courses at the university of Geneva , he commenced graduate
work at the university of Leipzig in 1876.
Two years later at 21, Saussure published a book entitled Memoire sur le systeme primitive
des voyelles dans les langues (Dissertation on the primitive vowel system in indo-european
languages]. Saussure attempted at various times in the 1880s and 1890s to write a book on
general linguistic matters. His lectures about important principles of language description in
Geneva between 1907 and 1911 were collected and published by his pupils posthumously in the
famous cours de linguistique generale in 1916. Some of his manuscripts ,including an unfinished
essay discovered in 1996, were published in writings in general linguistics.

His main interest of studies was linguistics and his notable ideas was semiology , langue and
parole, synchronic analysis, arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. His ideas laid a foundation for
many significant developments both in linguistics and semiology in the 20th century. He is
widely considered one of the fathers of 20th linguistics and can be credited with being the first
person to treat linguistics as an actual science.
Saussure was influenced by writers such as Pierce, Durkheim, Leiskein, Oldenberg and
Bharthari. He also influenced writers such as Barthes ,levi-strauss, Lacan ,Althusser, Foucault,
Derrida ,Bloomfield, Jacobson and so many others.
WHAT THEORY DID HE PROPOUND?
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure propounded the sign theory of language which was
published as class notes by his students posthumously in his book cours de linguistique (course
in general linguistics) in the year 1916. According to him ,language is nothing but a sign system
of signs. By the sign we mean something that stands for an idea or concept .For example red
colour is an indicator of danger. The colour red can be called a signifier as it signifies a concept.
Also , the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, that is, there is no real
understandable relationship between the sign and what it signifies.
Also, structuralism in Europe developed in the early 1900s, in the structural linguistics of
Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague , Moscow and Copenhagen schools of
linguists.
PRECURSORS OF SAUSSURE’S THEORY
Saussure was not the first to propose a science of signs. The American Charles Pierce (1839-
1914) independently developed semiology within the context of pragmatism.
Saussure had philology as a precursor to his theory. Philology is the diachronic study of
language ,that is ,the study of language from a historical perspective. That is, it is a combination
of literary criticism, history, and linguistics.

62
WHAT SAUSSURE STOOD FOR
De Saussure argued for a distinction between langue and parole (language as actually used in
daily life). He argued that the “sign” was composed of both a signified (an abstract concept or
idea ) and a “signifier”, the perceived sound /visual image. That is, language is comprised of
signs and the sign is composed of two elements ,the signifier ,which is shape of the word or its
sound and the signified which is the idea or concept which the signifier expresses. He focused
primarily on the spoken rather than the written word. For Saussure, written word is a secondary
sign system which signifies sound rather than the concept itself.
Saussure’s other major claim about the sign is that it is arbitrary .This because different
language have different words to describe the same objects or concepts ,there is no intrinsic
reason why a specific sign is used to express a given signifier .For example the word “tree”
bears no similarity to the concept it expresses ,the link between the signifier and the signified is
entirely conventional.
Saussure further notes that different languages divide up the world in different ways. for example
the French words “ boeuf” and “ mouton” describe both an animal and its meat while in
English we have separate words which are ox and beef and sheep and mutton .The perception of
difference between the animal and its meat is absent from the French vocabulary .The French
word mouton may have the same meaning as the English word sheep but does not have the same
value.
Furthermore ,Saussure drew an analogy to chess to explain the concept of langue and parole. He
compared langue to the rules of chess, the norms of playing the game , and compared the moves
that an individual chooses to make , the individuals preferences in playing the game,to the
parole.
Also ,Saussure considered speech as primodial ,that is ,he advocated the primacy of speech. The
latter part of the 19th century, the primacy of speech has been affirmed dogmatically by a number
of eminent linguists. A typical example is Leonard Bloomfield , who simply asserts without
argument “ writing is not language ,but merely a way of recording language by means of visible
marks’(Bloomfield ,1935 ,p.21]. Saussure nevertheless insists that the object of study in
linguistics is not a combination of the written word and the spoken word ,but the spoken word
alone .
GENERAL CRITICISMS
Saussure’s theory has been criticised for confusing words as sound patterns with words as signs
. As Mayar Mazor states “it does not make sense to say that a word can be exchanged with an
idea if as a sign such an idea is point of its makeup”. She goes on to point out that in the
exchange of words ,Saussure views words as signs ,as Mazor calls it “meaning-and-form
combinations” leading to a rejection of real world context. In viewing words as the “coins” of the
language , Saussure sees them as interchangeable with other words or ideas and viewing words
as sound patterns .
By the latter half of the 20th century, many of Saussure’s ideas were under heavy criticism. In
1972 Chomsky described structural linguistics as” an impoverished and thoroughly inadequate
conception of language”. While in 1984, Mitchell Marcus declared that structural linguistics was
“fundamentally in adequate to process the full range of natural language”.
Saussure’s signifier and signified was criticised for neglect of the abstract nouns.

REFERENCES
Culler,S. (1976). Saussure.Glasgow.fontana/Collins.
Harris,R. (1986). Reading Saussure. london. Duckworth.
De Saussure,f. (1986). Course in general linguistics(3rd ed). (R.Harris,trans.] Chicago.

63
UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE 1 UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE 1
ENG 521, MODERNISM NGWAYI ERNESTINE CHAFI
AND POSTMODERNISM MASTERS 11
COURSE INSTRUCTOR MAT:-99C269
PROF SALA 8th May, 2015

AN EXPOSÉ ON SYDNEY MACDONALD LAMB:

NOTE , OF THE 6 MEMBERS GIVEN THE TASK,
ONLY ONE PERSON DID THE WORK
PLAN OF WORK
 Definition of terms
 Background information
 Lamb’s precursors
 Life and works
 Theory propounded
 Conclusion

1. Definition of terms

 Glossematics: it is a system of linguistic analysis based on the distribution and

interrelationship of glossemes. Glossematics is a theory and system of linguistic
analysis proposed by the Danish scholar Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) and his
collaborators.

 Glossemes is the smallest meaningful units of a language—e.g., a word, a stem, a

grammatical element, a word order, or an intonation.

 Stratificational grammar, is a system of grammatical analysis in which language is

viewed as a network of relationships and linguistic structure is considered to be made
up of several structural layers, or strata).

2. Background information/ Lamb’s biography

Sydney MacDonald Lamb was born on May 4, 1929 in Denver, Colorado. He is an
American linguist and professor at Rice University.
Lamb earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1958 and he had
taught in the same institute from 1956 to 1964, directing the machines, translating projects. In
1964, he began teaching at Yale University before joining the Semionics Associates in Berkeley,
California in 1977.
Lamb did research in North American Indian languages specifically in those
geographically centered aroundCalifornia. His contributions have been wide-ranging, including
those to historical linguistics, computational linguistics, and the theory of linguistic structure. His
work led to innovative designs of content-addressable memory hardware for microcomputers.
In 1977 he joined the staff of Semionics Associates in Berkeley, Calif. In 1981 he was
appointed professor of linguistics and semiotics at Rice University in Houston, where he became
Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Linguistics in 1983 and professor of cognitive sciences in
1996. He was named professor emeritus at Rice in 1998.

64
 Lamb’s dissertation and early publications were studies of North American Indian
languages. His seminal work, Outline of Stratificational Grammar (1966), describes four
necessary levels of sentence analysis: the sememic, the lexemic, the morphemic, and the
phonemic. These levels are hierarchically related, each “realized” by the elements in the level
structurally beneath it. He considerably developed this theory in two later works, Pathways of the
Brain: The Neurocognitive Basis of Language (1999), and (with Jonathan Webster) Language
and Reality (2004).
In 2004, he wrote a book entitle “language and reality”. This book presents
selected writing of Professor Sydney Lamb, including five new works and several others which
have been re-worked for publication
3. Lamb’s Precursors
1. Ferdinand de Sausseur-structuralism
2. Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar..
3. Roger Schank's Conceptual dependency theory, a methodology for representing language
meaning directly within the Artificial Intelligence movement of the 1960s/1970s.
4. Louis Hjelmslev-Glossematics, a theory and systems of Linguistics
4. LAMB’SWORKS AND CONTRIBUTIONS
Lamb's work in linguistics over the past four decades has been concerned with exposing
illusions about language and with finding realities, including neurological realities, behind the
linguistic abstractions that others have dwelt upon. His name is synonymous with certain
landmarks in the development of linguistic theory, including:
1. stratificational grammar,
2. relational network theory and more recently,
3. neurocognitive linguistics.
Although he is a leading figure in linguistic science, many of the papers included here
are far from well-known, some of them having appeared in more obscure venues of publication
and for the most part, unavailable to the wider linguistic community."
Lamb did research in North American Indian languages specifically in those
geographically centered around California.
Lamb’s contributions have been wide-ranging, including those to historical linguistics,
computational linguistics, and the theory of linguistic structure. His work led to innovative
designs of content-addressable memory hardware for microcomputers.
Lamb is the originator of stratificatinal grammar, an outgrowth of glossematic theory
(glossematics theory is based on glossemes:-the smallest meaningful unit of a language). Whose
stratificational grammar is a significant alternative theory to Chomsky’s transformational
grammar. He has specialized in Neurocognitive linguistics and a stratificational approach to
language understanding. stratificational grammar, is a system of grammatical analysis in
which language is viewed as a network of relationships and linguistic structure is considered to
be made up of several structural layers, or strata). Stratificational grammar is derived in part
from glossematics and in part from American structuralism. It was put forward in the United
States as one of the principal alternatives to transformational grammar, ( but it has had much
less impact elsewhere on linguistic theory and practice ) which is a significant alternative theory
to Chomsky'stransformational grammar. Lamb had specialized in Neurocognitive Linguistics
and a stratificational approach to language understanding.
Glossematics is a theory and system of linguistic analysis proposed by the Danish
scholar Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) and his collaborators, who were strongly influenced by the
work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Glossematics has been an important
component of European structuralism but has had relatively little influence in the United States,

65
 except in relation to stratificational grammar, a grammar originated by American linguist Sydney
M. ... (102 of 102 words)
Lamb is best known as the father of the relational network theory of language, which is
also known as "stratificational theory". His early works develop the notion of ‘sememe’ as a
semantic object, analogous to the morpheme or phoneme in linguistics. It was one of the
inspirations of Roger Schank’s conceptual dependency theory, a methodology for representing
language meaning directly within the Artificial intelligence movement of 1960s and 1970s. Near
the turn of the millennium, he began developing the theory further and exploring its possible
relationships to neurological structures and to thinking processes. His early work developed the
notion of "sememe" as a semantic object, analogous to the morpheme or phoneme in linguistics;
it was one of the inspirations of Roger Schank's Conceptual dependency theory, a methodology
for representing language meaning directly within the Artificial Intelligence movement of the
1960s/1970s.
5. Lamb’s major works
In 1999, his book, Pathways of the Brain: The Neurocognitive Basis of Language ,
expressing some of these ideas was published. See also: "Linguistic and Cognitive Networks" in
Cognition: A Multiple View (ed. Paul Garvin) New York: Spartan Books, 1970, pp.195-222.
Reprinted in Makkai and Lockwood, Readings in Stratificational Linguistics (1973), pp. 60-83.
Pathways of the Brain builds a theory to answer such questions. Using a top-down
modeling strategy, it charts relationships among words and other products of the brains linguistic
system to reveal properties of that system. Going beyond earlier linguistics, it sets three
plausibility requirements for a valid neurocognitive theory: operational, developmental, and
neurological: It must show how the linguistic system can operate for speaking and
understanding, how it can be learned by children, and how it is implemented in neural structures.
Unlike theories that leave linguistics isolated from science, it builds a bridge to biology. It is
equally of interest to anthropologists, linguists, neurologists, neuroscience, philosophers,
psychologists, and any thoughtful person interested in language or the brain
In 2004, Lamb published ‘’Language and reality "Language and Reality presents
selected writings of Professor Sydney Lamb, including five new works and several which have been
re-worked for publication here. His work in linguistics over the past four decades has been concerned
with exposing illusions about language and with finding realities, including neurological realities,
behind the linguistic abstractions that others have dwelt upon. His name is synonymous with certain
landmarks in the development of linguistic theory, including stratificational grammar, relational
network theory and more recently, neurocognitive linguistics.
6. His contributions

His contributions have been wide-ranging , including those to historical, linguistics,

computational linguistics, and the theory of linguistic structure. His work led to
innovative designs of content- addressable memory hardware for micro computers.
His early works developed the notion of “Sememe” as a semantic object, analogous to
the morpheme or phoneme in linguistic; it was one of the inspirations of Roger Schank’s
conceptual dependency theory, a meyhoology for representing language meaning directly
within the Artificial Intelligence Movement of the 1960s, and 1970s.

7. Lamb’S Critics
Some of Lamb’s critics say, although he is a leading figure in linguistic science, many of the
papers included here are far from well-known, some of them having appeared in more obscure
venues of publication and for the most part, unavailable to the wider linguistic community."
8. Theory propounded

66
 Stratificational theory or relational network theory
Stratificational Grammar is a structural framework developed by Sydney Lamb in the 1960s
that aims to provide an account of the structure of language, the relationship between meaning
and speech. The framework is called stratificational because one of its chief features is its
treatment of linguistic structure as comprising several structural layers or strata. Its earlier form,
in the late fifties and early sixties, followed the tradition of structural linguistics in treating the
structure as composed of linguistic elements and their relationships. In the mid-sixties, work on
the relationships among linguistic units revealed that when the relationships are fully plotted, the
units actually disappear, so that the entire structure consists of a network of relationships.
In keeping with the idea of stratification, the network as a whole can be considered to
consist of multiple subnetworks, called stratal systems. Operation of the system, for speaking and
understanding, takes the form of activation passing through the network. Multiple pathways are
invariably active in parallel at any time. By the end of the twentieth century, stratification and the
relationship of realization had become widely recognized, and the theory's distinctiveness lay in
its focus on the conception of linguistic structure as a network of relationships. Accordingly, it
increasingly became referred to as relational network theory rather than stratificational theory.
Beginning in 1971 it was also called cognitive linguistics, but when that term became more
widely used for a variety of other theories during the eighties and nineties, the more distinctive
term neurocognitive linguistics began to be used. This latter term is in keeping with the
hypothesis that relational networks are related to neural networks of the brain. This hypothesis
was explored in Lamb (1999).
Related Terms
 neurocognitive linguistics
 relational network theory
Conclusion

By and large Sydney MacDonald Lamb’s life and work had left much print on dust. He is
the originator of stratificatinal grammar, known as father of the relational network
theory of language: also known as stratificational grammar, author of many books
amongst which are Pathways of the Brain, and language and Reality as seen in his
various publications, contributions as analyzed above
References
1. Christie Jr, William M. 1977. A Stratificational View of Linguistic Change. Lake Bluff,
IL: Jupiter Press.
2. Lamb, Sydney M. 1966. Outline of Stratificational Grammar. Washington DC:
Georgetown University Press.
3. Lamb, Sydney M. 1971. "The crooked path of progess in cognitive linguistics".
Georgetown University Monograph Series on Languages and LInguistics 24.99-123.
4. Lamb, Sydney M. 1999. "Pathways of the Brain: The Neurocognitive Basis of
Language". Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
5. Lamb, Sydney M. "Encyclopædia Britannica". Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Retrieved 2010-12-09.
6. Lamb, Sydney. A Grammar of Mono. PhD. Dissertation. Berkeley, 1958.
7. Jump up to: a b c Lamb, Sydney M. "Encyclopædia Britannica". Johannes Gutenberg
University Mainz. Retrieved 2010-12-09.
8. Jump up ^ Lamb, Sydney. A Grammar of Mono. PhD. Dissertation. Berkeley, 1958.
 External links: Language and Brain: Neurocognitive Linguistics

67