Language as a social phenomenon. Language and linguistics
Language and thinking
Language and thinking are two inextricably linked types of social activity, differing from each other in their essence and specific characteristics.
Thinking– (the ability to reflect reality in the form of concepts, judgments, conclusions and the very process of reflecting life in these forms). The highest form of active reflection of objective reality, targeted, mediated and generalized knowledge of essential connections and relationships of objects and phenomena. It is carried out in various forms and structures (concepts, categories, theories), in which the cognitive and socio-historical experience of mankind is fixed and generalized. Distinguish verbal And nonverbal thinking.
Verbal thinking is based on categories such as concept, judgment, inference. These categories are distinguished by a high level of abstraction. A concept is a generalized reflection in the human mind of essential aspects, characteristics of objects and phenomena of reality. A proposition is a thought that can be judged true or false. These categories are associated with linguistic units: a concept with a word, a judgment with a sentence. However, one should not think about the identity of categories of thinking and units of language.
Nonverbal thinking is not associated with linguistic expression. This type of thinking is present in both people and animals; thinking manifests itself in the form of visual and sensory images that arise in the process of perceiving reality. Visual and sensory images are formed on the basis of sensations received by our sensory organs.
Thinking processes manifest themselves in three main types, acting in complex interaction:
1) practically effective ( the mental task is solved directly in the process of activity. Practical thinking is both historically and ontogenetically the earliest type of human thinking)
2) visually figurative(the content of the mental task is based on figurative material, allows a person to reflect objective reality in a more multifaceted and diverse way)
3) verbal-logical (z The problem here is solved in verbal form. Using the verbal form, a person operates with the most abstract concepts. Thanks to this type of thinking, a person is able to solve mental problems in the most general way)
The instrument of thinking is language, as well as other systems of signs (both abstract, for example, mathematical, and concrete figurative, for example, the language of art).
Language- this is a sign activity (in its original form, sound) that provides the material registration of thoughts and the exchange of information between members of society. Thinking, with the exception of its practically effective form, has a mental, ideal nature, while language is a physical, material phenomenon in its primary nature.
Clarification of the degree and specific nature of the connection between language and language has been one of the central problems of theoretical linguistics and philosophy of language from the very beginning of their development. There are deep differences in the solution to this problem - from direct identification Ya and M. (F. E. D. Schleiermacher, I. G. Gaman) or their excessive convergence with exaggeration of the role of language (W. von Humboldt, L. Lévy-Bruhl, behaviorism, neo-Humboldtianism, neopositivism) before denying a direct connection between them(F.E. Beneke) or, more often, ignoring thinking in the methodology of linguistic research (linguistic formalism, descriptivism).
Humboldt: Thinking does not simply depend on language in general... to a certain extent
the extent to which it is determined by each individual language.” He didn't deny
universality of human thinking, but believed that ideas
a person's understanding of the world depends on the language in which he thinks. Humboldt was the first to see that language cannot be reduced to either logical thinking or copying the world, and put forward many arguments in favor of a new point of view. The world, as Humboldt noted, is divided differently in different languages.
Dialectical materialism considers the relationship between Ya and Ma as a dialectical unity. Language is the immediate material support of thinking only in its verbal-logical form. As a process of communication between members of society, language activity only in a small part of cases (for example, when thinking out loud in anticipation of the perception of listeners) coincides with the process of thinking, usually when language acts precisely as “the immediate reality of thought” ( K. Marx ), as a rule, an already formed thought is expressed (including as a result of practical-effective or visual-figurative thinking).
That. language and thinking form a unity, since without thinking there can be no language and thinking without language is impossible. Language and thinking arose historically simultaneously in the process of human labor development.
Language as a social phenomenon
Language differs from all social phenomena in a number of significant ways.
1 . Language, consciousness and the social nature of work are initially interconnected and form the foundation of human uniqueness in the biological species Homo sapiens.
2. The presence of language is a necessary condition for the existence of society throughout the history of mankind. Any social phenomenon in its existence is limited in chronological terms: it is not originally in human society and is not eternal. Unlike non-primary and/or transitory phenomena of social life, language is primordial and will exist as long as society exists.
3. The presence of language is a necessary condition for material and spiritual existence in all spheres of social space. Any social phenomenon in its distribution is limited to a certain “place”, its own space. Language is global, omnipresent.. Being the most important and basic means of communication, language is inseparable from all and any manifestations of human social existence.
4. Language is dependent and independent of society. The globality of language gives rise to its supra-group and supra-class character. However, the supra-class nature of a language does not mean that it is non-social. Society may be divided into classes, but it remains a society, that is, a certain unity, a community of people. The national language is socially heterogeneous. Its social structure, i.e., the composition and significance of the social variants of the language (professional speech, jargons, vernacular, caste languages, etc.), as well as the types of communicative situations in a given society are determined by the social structure of the society. However, social dialects of a language do not become special languages.
5. Language is a phenomenon of the spiritual culture of humanity, one of the forms of social consciousness (along with everyday consciousness, morality and law, religious consciousness and art, ideology, politics, science). The uniqueness of language as a form of social consciousness lies in the fact that, firstly, language is a prerequisite for social consciousness; secondly, language is a semantic foundation and a universal shell of various forms of social consciousness. In its content, the semantic system of language is closest to ordinary consciousness. Through language, a specifically human form of transmission of social experience is carried out.
6. Language does not relate to ideological or ideological forms of social consciousness (unlike law, morality, politics, philosophical, religious, artistic, everyday consciousness).
7. Language preserves the unity of the people in their history despite class barriers and social cataclysms.
8. The development of language, to a greater extent than the development of law, ideology or art, is independent of the social history of society, although ultimately it is conditioned and directed precisely by social history. It is important, however, to characterize the extent of this independence. The connection between the history of language and the history of society is obvious: there are features of language and linguistic situations that correspond to certain stages of ethnic and social history. Thus, we can talk about the uniqueness of languages or linguistic situations in primitive societies, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times. The linguistic consequences of such social upheavals as revolutions and civil wars are also quite obvious. However, at its core, the language remains the same, unified, which ensures the ethnic and cultural continuity of society throughout its history.
The uniqueness of language as a social phenomenon is essentially rooted in its two features: Firstly, V universality of language as a means of communication and secondly, that language is a medium, not the content or purpose of communication; the semantic shell of social consciousness, but not the content of consciousness itself. The same language can be a means of expressing polar ideologies, contradictory philosophical concepts, and countless versions of worldly wisdom.
So, language acts as a universal means of communication between people. It preserves the unity of the people in the historical change of generations and social formations, despite social barriers, thereby uniting the people in time, in geographical and social space.
Language performs the following social functions in society:
- communicative / informative(transmission and receipt of messages in the form of linguistic / verbal statements carried out in acts of interpersonal and mass communication, exchange of information between people as participants in acts of linguistic communication),
-cognitive / cognitive(processing and storage of knowledge in the memory of the individual and society, the formation of a conceptual and linguistic picture of the world),
-interpretive / interpretative(discovering the deep meaning of perceived linguistic utterances/texts)
-regulatory / sociative / interactive(linguistic interaction of communicants with the goal of exchanging communicative roles, asserting their communicative leadership, influencing each other, organizing a successful exchange of information due to compliance with communicative postulates and principles),
-contacting / phatic(establishing and maintaining communicative interaction),
-emotionally expressive(expression of one’s emotions, feelings, moods, psychological attitudes, attitudes towards communication partners and the subject of communication), aesthetic (creation of works of art),
-magical/"spellcasting"(use in religious ritual, in the practice of spellcasters, psychics, etc.),
-ethnocultural(unification into a single whole of representatives of a given ethnic group as speakers of the same language as their native language),
-metalingual / metaspeech(transmission of messages about the facts of the language itself and speech acts in it).
Lecture No. 2
I. Social essence of language.
II. The difference between language and other social phenomena.
III. Functions of the language.
IV. Language and speech.
V. Language and thinking.
I. The question of the essence of language has several mutually exclusive solutions in the history of linguistics:
1. language is a biological, natural phenomenon that does not depend on humans. This point of view was expressed, for example, by the German linguist A. Schleicher.
Recognizing language as a natural (biological) phenomenon, it should be considered on a par with such human abilities as eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. and consider it inherited, inherent in human nature itself. However, this contradicts the facts. Language is acquired by a child under the influence of speakers.
2. language is a mental phenomenon that arises as a result of the action of the individual spirit - human or divine.
A similar opinion was expressed by the German linguist W. Humboldt.
This statement is hardly true. In this case
humanity would have a huge variety of individual languages.
3. language is a social phenomenon that arises and develops only in a collective. This position was substantiated by the Swiss linguist F. de Saussure. Indeed, language arises only in a collective due to the need for people to communicate with each other.
Different understandings of the essence of language gave rise to different approaches to its definition: language is thinking expressed by sounds(A. Schleicher); language is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the combination of meaning and acoustic image(F. de Saussure); language is the most important means of human communication(V.I. Lenin); language is a system of articulate sound signs that spontaneously arises in human society and develops, serving for the purposes of communication and capable of expressing the entire body of knowledge and ideas about the world(N.D.Arutyunova).
Each of these definitions emphasizes different points: the relationship of language to thinking, the structural organization of language, the most important functions, etc., which once again demonstrates the complexity of language as a system that works in unity and interaction with consciousness and thinking.
II. From the point of view of the science of society, language has no analogues. It is not only unique, but in a number of significant ways it differs from all social phenomena:
1. language, consciousness and social nature of work activity
form the foundation of human identity.
2. the presence of language is a necessary condition for the existence of society throughout the history of mankind. Any other social phenomenon in its existence is limited in chronological terms: it is not originally in human society and is not eternal. So, for example, the family did not always exist, there was not always private property, the state, money, etc. Language originally will exist as long as society exists.
3. the presence of language is a necessary condition for material and spiritual existence in all spheres of social space. Any social phenomenon in its distribution is limited to a certain space, for example, science does not include art, and art does not include production, etc. Language is used in all spheres; it is inseparable from all manifestations of human existence.
4. language is dependent and independent of society. On the one hand, the social division of society is reflected in language, i.e. the national language is socially heterogeneous. But, on the other hand, social dialects of a language do not become special languages. Language preserves the unity of a people in its history.
5. The uniqueness of language as a form of social consciousness is that through language a specifically human form of transmission of social experience is carried out.
6. language does not relate to ideological or ideological forms of social consciousness, in contrast to law, morality, politics, religion and other types of consciousness.
III. Being a social phenomenon, language has the properties of social purpose, i.e. certain functions.
The most important functions of the language are the functions communicative And cognitive.
Communicative ( lat. communicatio"communication" ) function– the purpose of language to serve as the main means of human communication. The derivatives of this function are the following:
contact-making (phatic) function– the function of attracting the attention of the interlocutor and ensuring successful, effective communication;
appellative(lat. appellatio"appeal, appeal" )function – function of calling, incitement to action;
conative(lat. conatus"tension, effort") function – function of assessing the communication situation and focusing on the interlocutor;
voluntary(lat . volens"willing") function – influence function associated with the will of the speaker;
epistemic(ancient Greek) episteme"knowledge") or cumulative (lat. cumulare"accumulate") function - the function of storing and transmitting knowledge about reality, cultural traditions, history of the people, national identity.
Cognitive(lat. cognoscere"to know") or epistemological(Greek gnoseos"cognition") function– the function of being a means of obtaining new knowledge about reality and consolidating the results of knowledge in language, the function of thinking. This function of language connects it with human mental activity; the structure and dynamics of thought are materialized in units of language.
Derivatives of this function:
axiological(Greek axios"valuable") function – the function of forming an assessment of objects in the surrounding world and expressing them in speech;
nominative(lat. nominatio"naming") function – function of naming objects of the surrounding world;
predicative(lat. praedicatio"utterance") function – function of correlating information with reality, etc.
In addition to the main functions of language, they sometimes distinguish emotional or expressive function - purpose of being a means of expressing human feelings and emotions; poetic function - the function of creating an artistic image using language; metalinguistic function - function of being a means of exploring and describing language in terms of the language itself.
IV. Extremely important for the development of linguistics was the distinction between the concepts of “language - speech - speech activity”. As the history of linguistics shows, these concepts were often not distinguished. W. Humboldt also spoke about the need to differentiate them: Language as a set of its products differs from individual acts of speech activity.(Humboldt von W. On the differences in the structure of human languages and its influence on the spiritual development of mankind // W. von Humboldt. Selected works on linguistics. M., 1984, pp. 68-69).
The theoretical justification for this position was given by F. de Saussure and L.V. Shcherba.
A Swiss linguist wrote about it this way: In our opinion, the concept of language does not coincide with the concept of speech activity in general; language is only a certain part – indeed, the most important part – of speech activity. It is a social product, a set of necessary conventions adopted by the team to ensure the implementation and functioning of the ability for speech activity that exists in every native speaker...(F. de Saussure. Works on linguistics // Course of general linguistics. M., 1977, p. 47).
According to Saussure, in their existence these phenomena are interconnected, but not reducible to each other.
L.V. Shcherba proposed to distinguish three aspects of language: speech activity (i.e. the process of speaking and understanding), the language system (i.e. the grammar of the language and its dictionary) and linguistic material (i.e. the totality of everything spoken and understood in the act of communication) .
Language and speech, forming a single phenomenon of human language, are not identical to each other. Language is a system of signs used by humans to communicate, store and transmit information. Speech- specific speaking, occurring over time and expressed in audio or written form. Speech is the embodiment, the realization of language.
Language and speech each have their own characteristics:
1. language is a means of communication, speech is the type of communication produced by this means;
2. the language is abstract, formal; speech is material, it concretizes everything that is in language;
3. language is stable, passive and static, while speech is active and dynamic, characterized by high variability;
4. language is the property of society, it reflects the “picture of the world of the people speaking it,” while speech is individual;
5. language has a level organization, speech – linear;
6. language is independent of the situation and setting of communication, while speech is contextually and situationally determined.
7. speech develops in time and space, it is determined by the goals and objectives of speaking and the participants in communication; language is abstracted from these parameters.
Concepts language And speech are related as general and particular: the general (language) is expressed in the particular (speech), while the particular is the form of existence of the general.
Speech activity – a type of human activity that is the sum of the acts of speaking and understanding. It - in the form of speech actions - serves all types of activities, being part of work, play and cognitive activities.
V. The problem of language and thinking is one of the most complex and controversial in the theory of linguistics. In different periods of the history of the science of language, it was solved differently: representatives of some directions (for example, logical) identified these concepts; supporters of others (psychological) tried to resolve this issue on a hierarchical plane, justifying the primacy of either thinking in relation to language, or language in relation to thinking; representatives of structuralism believed that the structure of language determines the structure of thinking and the way of knowing the external world.
A scientific solution to the question of the relationship between language and thinking gives reflection theory, according to which thinking is the highest form of active reflection of objective reality, carried out in various forms and structures (concepts, categories, theories), in which the cognitive and socio-historical experience of mankind is fixed and generalized.
This theory considers language and thinking in a dialectical unity: the tool of thinking is language, as well as other sign systems.
Attitude "language - thinking" studies cognitive linguistics. Cognitive scientists consider a single mental-lingual complex as a self-organizing information system that functions on the basis of the human brain. This system provides perception, understanding, evaluation, storage, transformation, generation and transmission of information. Thinking within the framework of this system is a process of thought generation that constantly occurs in the brain, based on the processing and transformation of information received through various channels. In order for thinking to take place, it must have certain tools that would ensure the division of the flow of impulses coming to the brain from the senses. Language acts as such a tool. The main function of language in relation to thinking is to separate information, i.e. in the form of subject images and meanings.
When studying the thought processes of speech formation, relationships are established between logical and linguistic categories in speech: “concept (representation) – word, phraseological unit”; “judgment (inference) - proposal.”
Concepts how a form of abstract thinking is realized in speech through words and phrases (phraseologisms), and such forms of thought as judgments and inferences have as their material shell various types of sentences of human speech.
Nominative units of language (words and phrases) are not just a way of materializing ideas and concepts, but reflect specific, standardized forms of knowledge about objects and phenomena of the objective world, accumulated as a result of social practice. These types of knowledge are called concepts. Concepts are the smallest units of information based on objective images of the surrounding world.
The centuries-old process of formalizing and expressing thoughts through language also determined the development in the grammatical structure of languages of a number of formal categories, partially correlated with logical categories (categories of thinking). For example, the formal categories of a noun, adjective, numeral correspond to the semantic categories of an object or phenomenon, process, quality, quantity.
Thus, language as a sign system is the material support of thinking; it materializes thoughts and ensures the exchange of information. Thinking reflects reality, and language expresses it. The connection between these phenomena allows language to carry out communicative and cognitive functions: language not only conveys messages about objects and phenomena of the external world, but also organizes knowledge about the world in a certain way, dividing and consolidating it in consciousness.
Language arises, develops and exists as a collective property. Its main purpose is to ensure communication between members of a social group, as well as the functioning of the collective memory of this community.
Society- this is not just a set of human individuals, but a system of diverse relationships between people belonging to certain social, professional, gender and age, ethnic, ethnographic, religious groups, to that ethno-sociocultural environment where each individual occupies his specific place and due to This acts as a bearer of a certain social status, social functions and roles as an individual. An individual as a member of society can be identified on the basis of a large number of relationships that connect him with other individuals.
Language performs the following social functions in society:
1) communicative / informative (transmission and receipt of messages in the form of linguistic / verbal statements carried out in acts of interpersonal and mass communication, exchange of information between people as participants in acts of linguistic communication);
2) cognitive / cognitive (processing and storage of knowledge in the memory of the individual and society, the formation of a conceptual and linguistic picture of the world),
3) interpretive / interpretive (discovering the deep meaning of perceived linguistic statements / texts);
4) regulatory / sociative / interactive (linguistic interaction of communicants with the goal of exchanging communicative roles, asserting their communicative leadership, influencing each other, organizing a successful exchange of information due to compliance with communicative postulates and principles);
5) contact-establishing / phatic (establishing and maintaining communicative interaction);
6) emotional-expressive (expression of one’s emotions, feelings, moods, psychological attitudes, attitude towards communication partners and the subject of communication);
7) aesthetic (creation of works of art);
8) magical / “spellcasting” (use in religious ritual, in the practice of spellcasters, psychics, etc.);
9) ethnocultural (unification into a single whole of representatives of a given ethnic group as speakers of the same language as their native language);
10) metalinguistic / metaspeech (transmission of messages about the facts of the language itself and speech acts in it).
Language and society is one of the central problems of modern linguistics; this problem is formed on the basis of more specific ones: the social nature of the emergence, development and functioning of language; the nature of his connections with society; social differentiation of language in accordance with the division of society into classes, layers and groups; social differences in the use of language due to the diverse areas of its application; relationships between languages in bi- and multilingual societies; conditions for one of the languages to acquire the functions of a means of interethnic communication; forms of conscious influence of society on language.
The problems of society's influence on language began to be considered by ancient philosophers. However, we can talk about the formation of sociolinguistics as a science starting from the 19th century. The first purely sociolinguistic study is considered to be P. Lafargue’s book “Language and Revolution” (“French language before and after the revolution”, 1894), in which the social variants of the French language (“aristocratic Versailles” and “bourgeois Paris”) of the late 18th - beginning of the 19th century were explained by the social and political reasons that caused the French Revolution of 1789. The French literary language of that time intensively reflected the changes taking place in society not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar.
At the end XIX - early XX centuries in France, the French school of social linguistics is being formed, the most important representative of which is the student and follower of F. de Saussure, a prominent linguist Antoine Meillet(1866–1936). A. Meillet, in his scientific worldview, was primarily a representative of classical comparative studies.
1) Language exists only insofar as there is society, and human societies could not exist without language.” Accordingly, Meillet also classified linguistics itself as a social science, from which it logically followed that one of the tasks of linguistics should be to establish the relationship between the structure of society and the structure of language, on the one hand, and the reflection of changes in the former in the latter, on the other.
2) “Reconstruction does not restore the language as it was in life; no reconstruction can represent the “common language” as it was in living speech. Schleicher's reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language using the historically attested languages of this family was a brilliant innovation; but composing the text in this reconstructed proto-language was a grave mistake. Comparison provides a system of comparisons on the basis of which the history of a language family can be constructed; however, this comparison does not give us a real language with all its inherent means of expression.”
Domestic linguistics, starting with M.V. Lomonosov, represented by its best representatives, has always considered language as a social phenomenon, inextricably linked with society. The defining thesis was the close connection between the history of language and the history of society.
F.I. Buslaev understood language not only as an expression of “folk mentality,” but also of the entire way of life, morals, and traditions of the people. The tradition of studying language in connection with the history of the people, outlined by F. I. Buslaev, was further developed by A. A. Potebney, A. A. Shakhmatov and others. Thanks to this approach, the foundations of modern science - linguoculturology - were laid. A deeper study of the social nature of language in our linguistics is associated with the name of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay. He pointed to the social nature of individual speech acts, but also in a very original form put forward the idea of social differentiation of language.
Interest in sociolinguistic issues in Russian linguistics especially intensified in the post-revolutionary years - in the first third of the 20th century. Specific material showed those changes in vocabulary that are caused by major social phenomena, changes that are reflected in various classes of society. In principle, the question of the reasons and conditions for the formation of national languages was resolved, the problem of studying the language of the city with its various social varieties that distinguished it from local dialects and the literary language was posed.
As a result, the main problems of Russian sociolinguistics were formulated:
1) study of the nature of language as a social phenomenon;
2) the role and place of language in social development;
3) development of methods for sociolinguistic research;
4) clarification of the role of social factors in language development;
5) study of social differential language;
6) research into problems of development of social functions of language;
7) gender problems.
The development of language is influenced by both internal (determined by the language system) and external (in particular, social) factors. Social factors, as a rule, influence language not directly, but indirectly (social changes are most directly reflected only in vocabulary); they can speed up or slow down the course of linguistic evolution, but cannot change its direction (E. D. Polivanov).
Forms of social influence on language:
1) Social differentiation of language due to the social heterogeneity of society. Such is the differentiation of many modern developed national languages into territorial and social dialects, the identification of the literary language as the socially and functionally most significant linguistic formation, the existence in some societies of “male” and “female” variants of the language, etc.
2) The use of linguistic means is determined by the social characteristics of native speakers (age, level of education, profession, etc.), the social roles of the participants in communication, and the communication situation. Since the areas of language use are diverse and specific (cf. science, media, everyday life), functional styles are developed in the language - evidence of the dependence of language on the needs of society.
3) Linguistic life of multilingual societies. The relationship between society and the languages functioning in it, the relationship between different languages, the processes associated with the promotion of one of the languages to the role of the state language, the means of interethnic communication, and the acquisition of the status of international languages by some languages are studied.
4) Language policy is the conscious, purposeful influence of society and its institutions on the functioning of language in various spheres of its application. Recently, the sphere of language policy has come to include a set of political and administrative measures aimed at giving language development the desired direction.
Speech activity, i.e. the process of speaking and understanding, has two sides: individual mental and objective social. Speech activity is a communicative act. It is complex in nature, since it includes not only the relationship between the interlocutors, but also their perception of the situation of speech, language and transmitted information.
The social conditioning of the speech act and speech activity is manifested in the following:
1) Speech activity and speech act presuppose the presence of typical speech situations and cultural contexts that are common to all speakers or a group of speakers. The structure of a speech act presupposes not an individual speaker, but a typical speaker. An indispensable component of the speech act and speech activity of the speaker is the real language and the general structure of the content of information; they are social, since they belong to society. In linguistics, this problem took shape in the theory of speech genres.
2) The social nature of the speech act and speech ability consists in the social conditioning of the activity of the speaker’s speech activity. People do not speak in order to reproduce or demonstrate their speech abilities, as, for example, parrots do, but in order to convey extralinguistic information. People use language to express their thoughts, feelings, expressions of will, and this socially determined information affects the listener (or reader).
3) Speakers cannot be indifferent to the form of expression of their thoughts and feelings, to the preservation and change of linguistic norms.
Speech activity is an integral part of the social activity of a person and the whole society, for which language serves as a tool of development.Language is a necessary condition for the emergence of an ethnic community. A nationality is formed primarily as a linguistic group, so the names of the people and the language coincide. The ethnographic nature of the language is associated with the so-called sense of native language, since for all peoples the language is closely correlated with national identity.
Each nation has its own associations of imaginative thinking that constitute national specificity. And it is always based on the native language.
The relationship between language and ethnicity determined the emergence of ethnolinguistics.
So, at the risk of being subjected to harsh criticism for excessive typology, let's say that these characteristics are distributed among modern races as follows.
3. question language
Language as a social phenomenon
Language arises, develops and exists as a collective property. Its main purpose is to serve the needs of human society and, above all, to ensure communication between members of a large or small social group, as well as the functioning of the collective memory of this community.
The concept of society is one of the most difficult to define. Society is not just a set of human individuals, but a system of diverse relationships between people belonging to certain social, professional, gender and age, ethnic, ethnographic, religious groups, to that ethno-sociocultural environment where each individual occupies his specific place and in Because of this, he acts as a bearer of a certain social status, social functions and roles as an individual. An individual as a member of society can be identified on the basis of a large number of relationships that connect him with other individuals. The peculiarities of an individual's linguistic behavior and his behavior in general turn out to be largely determined by transpersonal factors.
The problem of the relationship between language and society includes many aspects, including those that are included in the groups of problems:
Social essence of language: Functions of language in society. The main directions of the social evolution of languages. The history of the language and the history of the people speaking it.
Variation of language in society: Functional variants (forms of existence) of language (literary language and its book-written and oral-spoken forms, vernacular). Language and territorial differentiation of society (territorial dialects). Language and social differentiation of society (social dialects). Language and social roles of speakers.
Interaction of languages in a multi-ethnic society: Languages and ethnic groups. Language situations. National language policy. Language contacts. Multilingualism in a sociological aspect. Language and ethnic identity.
Language and culture: Language as a product of culture and as an instrument of culture. Cultural stratification of society and language. Interaction of ethnocultures and intercultural communication.
These problems are studied by sociolinguistics (social linguistics), which arose at the intersection of linguistics and sociology, as well as cultural and linguistic anthropology, ethnolinguistics, ethnography of speech, stylistics, rhetoric, pragmatics, theory of linguistic communication, theory of mass communication, theory of intercultural communication, etc. . Let us dwell for now on the subject of sociolinguistics.
Language performs the following social functions in society:
Communicative / informative (transmission and receipt of messages in the form of linguistic / verbal statements carried out in acts of interpersonal and mass communication, exchange of information between people as participants in acts of linguistic communication),
cognitive / cognitive (processing and storage of knowledge in the memory of the individual and society, the formation of a conceptual and linguistic picture of the world),
interpretative / interpretive (revealing the deep meaning of perceived linguistic statements / texts),
regulatory / sociative / interactive (linguistic interaction of communicants with the goal of exchanging communicative roles, asserting their communicative leadership, influencing each other, organizing a successful exchange of information due to compliance with communicative postulates and principles),
contact-establishing / phatic (establishing and maintaining communicative interaction),
emotional-expressive (expression of one’s emotions, feelings, moods, psychological attitudes, attitude towards communication partners and the subject of communication), aesthetic (creation of works of art),
magical / “spellcasting” (use in religious ritual, in the practice of spellcasters, psychics, etc.),
ethnocultural (unification into a single whole of representatives of a given ethnic group as speakers of the same language as their native language),
metalinguistic / metaspeech (transmission of messages about the facts of the language itself and speech acts in it).
The history of each language is closely connected with the history of the people who are its speakers. There are significant functional differences between the language of a tribe, the language of a people, and the language of a nation. Language plays an extremely important role in the consolidation of related (and not only related) tribes into a nationality and in the formation of a nation.
The same ethnic group can use two or more languages at the same time. Thus, many peoples of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages used both their spoken languages and Latin. In Babylonia, along with Akkadian (Babylonian-Assyrian), the Sumerian language was used for a long time.
On the contrary, the same language can simultaneously serve several ethnic groups. Thus, Spanish is used in Spain, as well as (often simultaneously with other languages) in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, The Republic of Cuba, the Philippines, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, etc.
An ethnic group may lose its language and switch to another language. This happened, for example, in Gaul due to the Romanization of the Celts. The same thing happened with the ethnic groups living in the territory of what is now Spain and Portugal, Romania and Moldova.
Describing the relationship between different language variants or different languages used in one social group, we speak of a linguistic situation. Having uttered the expression “language situation,” we turned to the field of sociolinguistics. To begin with, briefly, about what sociolinguistics is as a science and what it studies.
4.language structure
As an instrument of communication, language must be organized as a whole, have a certain structure and form the unity of its elements as a certain system. Since our concepts and ideas about an object are not at all correlated with the world of real things, but are only a reflection of them, then what are words? It is absolutely clear that words as certain sound complexes do not “reflect” reality, as concepts do. Why do we still learn that “house” is “house” and “cat” is “cat”? We find the answer to this in the theory of sign.
A sign is a member of a specific sign system. First of all, it must be said that not every unit can be a sign. Because to implement it you need to have:
1. Denoting(what we see, hear, feel, etc.)
2. Designated(content that is hidden behind the external form)
3. Conditional connection between them(not natural, not natural).
Based on this, it is clear that speech sounds are not signs, but certain combinations make it possible for the appearance of morphemes, words, and significant units of language. Letters are typically included in two sign systems: alphabetic and graphic. The ability of signs to perform different functions is based on the fact that the signs within a given sign system (alphabet, sound structure of a language) themselves differ either in general or through some particular, separate diacritics. This can be illustrated in letters. Let's say, O and X differ in general, having nothing in common, and the letters Ш and Ш have everything in common, except for one diacritic.
Among scientists there is no common understanding of the sign in language, and many explain this concept in different ways. F.F. Fortunatov often used this term and noted that language represents a set of signs mainly for thought and for expressing thought in speech. There are also signs in language to express feelings. The Danish scientist L. Hjelmslev wrote that language, in its purpose, is primarily a sign system. Given an unlimited number of signs, this is achieved by the fact that all signs are built from non-signs, the number of which is limited.
Words as names of things and phenomena have nothing to do with these things and phenomena. If such a connection existed, then the language could not have the following groups of words:
1. synonyms (words that sound different, but call the same thing) strike - strike, plant - factory;
2. homonyms (words that sound the same, but have different meanings) onion– weapons and plants, key– a spring and a tool for unlocking the lock;
3. It would also be impossible to transfer values: tail– part of the animal’s body and line;
4. Finally, it would be impossible to have different-sounding words to denote the same phenomenon in different languages, for example, the Russian word “eagle” is goal. Adelaar( A delar), German Adler ( A dler), English Eagle (eagle), fr. Aigle.
Why anyway table, house and so on. not just sound combinations, but words that have meaning and are understandable to everyone who speaks Russian? To clarify this issue, you should also familiarize yourself with the structure of the language.
Under structure one should understand the unity of heterogeneous elements within the whole. The language is characterized by complexity and inconsistency of structure. So, verbal communication process can be presented in two plans: speaking plan And hearing plan. They are completely different from each other, or rather, mirror opposites: where the process of speaking ends is the beginning of the process of listening. What it produces speaking, forms articulatory complex, that which catches and perceives listening, forms acoustic complex. Physically, these processes are not equivalent. However, in the act of speech, these two complexes form a unity; they are two sides of the same object. Saying a word and hearing a word are the same thing from the point of view of language. The identification of what is spoken and what is heard ensures correct perception, without which it is impossible to achieve mutual understanding between speakers. For correct perception, it is necessary that both interlocutors possess the same articulatory-acoustic skills, i.e. skills of the same language. But the act of speech is not limited to perception. The next stage is understanding. It can only be achieved if speakers relate words and meanings in the same way, i.e. speak the same language. Thus, the Russian word “tobacco” in Turkish correlates with the meaning “dish”, “sheet of paper”.
So, language– a complex structure of interconnected heterogeneous elements. The difference in the elements of language structure is qualitative, which is determined by the different functions of these elements.
Nothing else exists or can exist in language.
The elements that make up the language perform the following functions:
1. Sounds perform two functions - perceptual- to be an object of perception and significative- have the ability to distinguish significant elements of language - morphemes, words, sentences: mot, that, lot, cat, bot etc.
2. Morphemes perform semasiological function, i.e. express concepts. They can’t name morphemes, but they have meaning: ( red-) expresses only the concept of a certain color, and can name something only by turning into a word - redness, red, blush.
3. words characteristic nominative function, i.e. words name things and phenomena of reality (nominative). Proper names perform this function in its pure form, while common nouns, for example, combine it with a semasiological function.
4. Offers perform communicative function, i.e. serve for message. Since sentences consist of words, in their constituent parts they have both a nominative and a semasiological function.
The elements of this structure form a unity in the language. Each element of a lower level can be used to create a larger unit: sound - morpheme - word - sentence.
Within each tier of the linguistic structure there is its own system, and the members of a given tier are members of this system.
System- a set of language units interconnected by stable relationships and characterized by interconnectedness and interdependence. Systems of individual tiers of the language structure, interacting with each other, form the overall system of a given language.
There are several ways to classify languages:
· areal, according to cultural and historical areas (place of distribution);
· typological; for example, according to the way they express grammatical meaning, languages are divided into analytical, isolating, synthetic and polysynthetic;
· genetic, by origin and degree of relationship. Languages are grouped into groups; those, in turn, become families. For some families, it has been proposed to unite them into taxa of a higher level - macrofamilies. Language taxonomy deals with the classification of languages based on genetic characteristics.
[edit]Language dynamics in the world
There are about 5 thousand languages on Earth.
There are about 5-6 thousand languages on Earth. With the development of communications, the number of living languages is declining at an average rate of 1 language per two weeks.
The 40 most common languages are spoken by approximately 2/3 of the world's population. The languages most spoken by people are Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese. French is also widely spoken, but the number of those who consider it their native (first) language is relatively small.
In order for a language to be preserved, about 100 thousand of its speakers are required. There are currently just over 400 languages considered endangered.
Languages die along with the last speaker, and therefore danger threatens, first of all, nations that do not use writing.
At the same time, it should be noted that differences in development, as well as the influence of neighbors, lead to changes in the area of language use and its changes. So, for example, Cyril and Methodius, when they created the Slavic alphabet, did not need a translator during their travels, because in the 9th century from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and from the Vltava to the Dnieper, all Slavs spoke the same language (proto-Slavic).
One of the reasons for the death of languages is their uneven distribution among the number of speakers. Thus, 80% of the world's population knows only 80 languages. At the same time, 3.5 thousand languages account for 0.2% of the Earth's inhabitants. The main reason for the process of extinction of languages is considered to be globalization and migration. People leave villages for cities and lose the language of their people.
About half of currently existing languages will fall out of use by the middle of the 21st century. Many languages are disappearing due to the fact that their speakers come into contact with a stronger linguistic environment, so the languages of small nationalities and the languages of peoples without statehood are primarily at risk of extinction. If less than 70% of children learn a language, it is considered endangered. According to UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, approximately 50 languages are currently at risk of extinction in Europe.
[edit]Characteristics of language
Languages are characterized by the degree of preservation and functional limitations.
[edit] Degree of preservation
Main article:Degree of preservation of languages
According to the degree of preservation Levels of endangerment) languages are characterized by a scale of six categories proposed in the UNESCO Red Book of Languages to more clearly determine the danger threatening a particular language:
· Extinct languages ( extinct)
Possibly extinct languages ( extinct)
· On the verge of extinction (almost extinct, nearly extinct)
· Endangered (dying) languages ( seriously endangered)
· Troubled languages ( endangered)
· Unstable languages ( potentially endangered)
· Prosperous languages (non-extinct) ( not endangered)
[edit] Functional limitation
Functionally limited is a language that does not have sufficient or no resources such as:
· stable spelling in a specific writing system;
· reference literature (grammar, dictionaries, works of classics);
· materials of mass distribution (press, audio recordings, films, songs and music);
· technical and educational literature (technical and scientific publications, didactic works, textbooks);
· various media of everyday information (posters, announcements, correspondence, certificates, manuals, etc.);
· other means of transmitting information in language.
6.genetics of languages
There are several thousand languages in the world. The most well-known reference books include only modern (i.e. living and recently extinct) languages. According to the Ethnologist there are 6909 of them, and according to the Register of Linguistics (English) - 4994. Most of them are grouped into families, some languages are considered isolated (that is, they are monolingual families) or remain unclassified.
Family languages is considered to be a genetic linguistic union of approximately the same level of depth as the Indo-European languages, that is, it disintegrated approximately 6-7 thousand years ago. Some families, traditionally so called, turn out to be deeper units (for example, Austronesian languages, Cushitic languages). Below they are called superfamilies.
There are approximately 240 language families, over 100 isolates, and over 100 unclassified languages. Families are often united into units of a higher level - macrofamilies (phyla, English phylum), but most of them are scientifically unproven and/or unrecognized by most linguists. Only hypotheses about the existence of the Nostratic and Afrasian macrofamily can be considered reliable.
The most convenient way of ordering such a large number of families is not genetically, but geographically - according to continents or continents, although the boundaries of linguistic families, of course, do not entirely correspond to physical boundaries.
Genetic diversity is not equal among different regions.
1. Eurasia: a total of 21 families, 4 isolates and 12 unclassified languages.
2. Africa and South-West Asia: a total of 28 families, 10 isolates and 10 unclassified languages.
3. Oceania: “Papuan” and Australian languages. A total of 100 families and 32 isolated languages.
4. North America (including Mesoamerica): a total of 42 families, 28 isolates and 6 unclassified languages.
5. South America: according to the latest data, there are 55 families, 43 isolated and 77 unclassified languages.
Extinct languages, families and groups of languages are marked with †. The number of languages is indicated in (curly) brackets.
7.Indo-European
Indo-European languages- the most widespread language family in the world. It is represented on all inhabited continents of the Earth, the number of speakers exceeds 2.5 billion. According to the views of some modern linguists, it is part of the macrofamily of Nostratic languages.
rmin Indo-European languages(English) Indo-European languages) was first introduced by the English explorer Thomas Young in 1813. In German-language literature the term is more often used Indo-Germanic languages(German) indogermanische Sprachen). Sometimes the Indo-European languages were previously called "Aryan", but this term now refers to the subfamily of Indo-European languages that includes the Nuristani branch and the Indo-Iranian languages.
[edit]Origin and history
The languages of the Indo-European family descend from a single Proto-Indo-European language, whose speakers probably lived about 5-6 thousand years ago. There are several hypotheses about the place of origin of the Proto-Indo-European language, in particular, such regions as Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and steppe territories at the junction of Europe and Asia are called. With a high probability, the archaeological culture of the ancient Indo-Europeans (or one of their branches) can be considered the so-called “Yamnaya culture”, the bearers of which in the 3rd millennium BC. e. lived in the east of modern Ukraine and the south of Russia.
In turn, the Proto-Indo-European language, according to the hypothesis of H. Pedersen, developed by V. M. Illich-Svitych and S. A. Starostin, is part of the Nostratic macrofamily of languages, among which it is especially close to the Kartvelian languages, which, like it, have ablaut.
[edit]Composition and classification
The Indo-European family includes Albanian, Armenian, Greek and the Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Iranian, Indian, Anatolian (Hittite-Luvian), Tocharian and Italic language groups. At the same time, the Anatolian, Tocharian and Italic groups (if the Romance ones are not considered Italic) are represented only by dead languages.
8.state
What is the State?
State - this is special form of organization of society that has certain means and methods of using power within society, establishing a certain order of relationships between members of society, installed on certain territories, And involving the entire population in its activities in the established territory. The main means of maintaining the established order is the use of power. The order of relationships between members of society and the use of power is determined by: the constitution, laws and other legal documents of the state, which are part of the formal structure of the state; as well as customs formed within society, regardless of the state, which are the basis for understanding the laws of the state and determine the informal procedure for the application and interpretation of laws.
State goals
In modern developed countries, the main goals of the state are:
· maintaining normal relationships between members of society, which consists in ensuring a certain level of security of people’s lives and property, that is, the security of their personal, scientific, creative and commercial activities;
· implementation and preservation of material and spiritual goals and values common to members of society, such as freedom, morality, justice, medicine, education, roads, ecology.
One of the foundations that can ensure the implementation of the stated goals is democracy, That there is a public choice of persons with power and managers of state authorities. In practice, democracy can only create the appearance that government bodies fully serve society. By skillfully managing public opinion, manipulating society through methods known in “crowd” psychology, one person, or a small group of people with the means to influence the masses, can ensure any convenient outcome of the elections. This type of democracy is especially characteristic of a state with an insufficiently educated and/or politically inactive population.
The term is commonly used in legal, political as well as social contexts.
Compared to a community, which is a simple (unorganized) society, the state contains in itself social class(or classes), whose professional occupation(or which) is the management of general affairs(in a communal structure, each community member is involved in managing them).
In Russian there is often a confusion between the concept of "state" and the political power that manages the general affairs of an organized society (for example: "in this state ..." and "the state insists on more intensive intervention in the economy ...")
A common language is the most important component of the life of any society, a condition for its existence. That is why language acts as public phenomenon. Let us consider the role and functions of language in society, the forms of existence of a common language.
Language detection
In everyday life, people do not think about what language is, what its main features, properties, and functions are. What language is is clear to everyone; these are the words that we pronounce and hear around us. However, giving a theoretical definition of language, revealing and determining its essence turns out to be a very difficult task, and linguists largely disagree when they try to theoretically comprehend the phenomenon of language.
There are many definitions of language, and, as a rule, they emphasize one or another function, and also indicate some properties of the language.
For example, neogrammarians, following an idealistic philosophy that interprets language as a product of the absolute spirit (Hegel) and the psychology of their time, understood language as a means of expressing the individual soul.
K. Vossler interpreted language as creative, aesthetic self-expression of the individual spirit", L. Elmslev - how pure structure of relationships, indifferent to its elements.
The naive materialistic approach was observed in the theory of naturalism, which interpreted language as natural organism, in the concept of American descriptivists, who understand
Language as a social phenomenon 39
Is the tongue like form of human behavior in the struggle for existence and in a number of other concepts.
K. Marx and F. Engels, from the standpoint of historical materialism, considered language as “practical, existing for other people and only thereby existing for myself, real consciousness” and noted that language appears “in the form of moving layers of air, sounds "(Marx K., Engels F. Works. 2nd ed., vol. 3, p. 25). Thus, it was emphasized materiality of language and his role in formation of consciousness person.
V.I. Lenin noted that “language is the most important means of human communication” (Lenin V.I. Pol. sobr. soch., vol. 25, p. 258), emphasizing communicative function language.
Linguistics of the 20th century developed an understanding of language as a system of signs.
Modern science has established that there is no language in the human genetic code. A child is born with the biological prerequisites for mastering a language, but outside the community of speakers he will not learn the language. Only in a society of speaking people is it possible to master a language, which indicates such an important feature of language as its public character.
Anthropological studies and the study of the formation of language in a child show that language did not arise in humans overnight, it was formed gradually and went through a long evolution from the primitive communicative signals of primitive man to the developed modern state, that is, human language developed historically.
Based on the main features of language and its main function, we can define language as a historically established system of material signs in society that perform a communicative function.
Language functions
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Comrade The lack of clarity in the content of the concept of “function” leads to the fact that linguists, speaking about the functions of language, understand by them in some cases completely different things.
In most works, the function of language is understood as the main purpose of language - this is how the communicative function is highlighted as its only function. This idea is developed in their works by domestic linguists and theorists N. I. Zhinkin, R. V. Pazukhin, G. V. Kolshansky, B. A. Serebrennikov and some others.
A number of scientists, along with the communicative one, distinguish the expressive function of expressing thought and consider it to be quite equal to the communicative function of language (A. Chiko-bava, A. A. Reformatsky, V. Z. Panfilov, etc.).
In addition, functions refer to the areas of language use (cf.: function of interethnic communication, function of scientific or everyday communication, etc.), as well as types of use language in private situations of communication (cf. poetic function, emotive function, address function, index function, directive function, magical function, accumulative function, influence function, contact function, etc.).
Understanding a function as the intended purpose of an object used by a subject (subjects), it should be recognized that it is necessary to distinguish:
1) the general functions of language as a social phenomenon, different from other social phenomena;
2) properties of language as a system of signs;
3) private functions that the language performs in con
specific situations of communication between people.
The function of language as a social phenomenon is communicative- the function of transmitting information from subject to subject. The communicative function is inherent in language, from whatever point of view we consider it - both from the point of view of the speaker and from the point of view of the listener. She implemented in any communication situation. This allows us to consider the communicative function as the main function of language as a social phenomenon.
In the future, we will proceed from the fact that the function of language as a social phenomenon is one: communicative
Language as a social phenomenon 41
Naya. In order to perform this function, language was formed as a system of signs that are combined with each other according to certain rules, thanks to which human thought becomes materially expressed and perceived.
The communicative function of language in modern conditions is realized in three forms:
Narrowly targeted communication - direct
communication between people one-on-one, oral or written dialogue;
Widespread communication - directly
communication between one person and a large group of people
(lesson, lecture, meeting, rally):
Mass communication - communication between a person and the world
to a wide audience through newspapers, radio, and television.
Highlighted by a number of scientists expressive the function of language (the function of expressing thought) concerns only the activity of the speaker, and for this reason alone it cannot be equal to communicative. This is a manifestation of the essence of language, one of the main properties of language as a system of signs that performs a communicative function - the ability to express thought, and not a separate function of language. This property is one of the components of the essence of language as a means of communication. The manifestation of the properties of language can also include such “functions” as nominative(naming the language of phenomena of objective and subjective reality), accumulative(language is a means of accumulating knowledge and experience of mankind in verbal, text form), cognitive(cognitive, through language people get acquainted with the results of knowledge of the world by other people, previous generations; this property of language provides the opportunity for people to study in educational institutions).
The same functions that manifest themselves in private situations of verbal communication detail the communicative function and can be considered as its private manifestations, private derivatives. K. Bühler wrote that language is a tool, and it has a main function, although it can be used in other, secondary functions. For example, the main function of a hammer is to hammer nails, but it can be
42_________________________________________________ Topic 2
insert between the jamb and the door so that the door does not close; you can use it to press down a sheet of paper so that the wind does not blow it away; it can be placed under any object so that it stands more level, etc. Similarly, the main function of language is communicative, but language can also be used in non-main functions that arise from the communicative one, which are a specification of the communicative function in certain communicative conditions.
These are, for example, the function emotive(expressions of a person’s feelings and experiences during his speech), directive(aka incentive) - expression of the will, desire of the speaker; poetic(aka aesthetic) - the use of language as a means of creating artistic texts; contact(aka phatic)- establishing and maintaining contact with the interlocutor; in modern media, a kind of phatic monologue speech of TV presenters is developing, which does not contain information, but creates the illusion of communication; deictic(indicative) - indicating something with words like this that, there, then, here, now and so on., magical- the use of language as a tool for fortune telling and fortune telling, suggestive- the use of language as a means of influencing the psyche of another person (suggestion, hypnosis), instrumental- the function of direct speech influence on a person through the use of direct meanings of words, symbolic- speech influence on a person with the indirect meaning of words and phrases, subtext, etc.
The French linguist Emile Benveniste indicated a large set of means for the so-called performative functions. This function is performed by words and expressions, the utterance of which at the same time is the verbal action that they call: I promise, I wish you happiness, I congratulate you on your birthday, I apologize, I give you the name Nikolai, I declare the meeting open.
The number of private language functions can be increased. It is obvious that communication situations can be infinitely varied in purpose, in the speaker’s attitude, in the impact on the interlocutor and for other reasons.
Language as a social phenomenon 43
Speech communication
Speech activity occurring between two or more people is communication.
The study of speech activity involves clarifying the signs, types and types of communication, and understanding the specifics of individual types of speech communication.
When discussing communication problems, we proceed from the concept full communication. Full communication means communication in the full range of its functions and characteristics.
The functions of communication are naturally based on the functions of language, manifest themselves in the process of two-way dialogic exchange of information and equally affect all participants in this process.
Full communication can be defined by listing its main features. It acts as conscious, rationally designed, purposeful information exchange between people, accompanied by the individualization of interlocutors, the establishment of emotional contact between them and feedback.
Let's look at these signs.
Information exchange
This means that in the process of communication, information must be transmitted to each other by all participants in the communication, that is, there must be reciprocity of information - both parties transmit and receive information. A TV, a newspaper, an SOS signal, a traffic light, a telephone answering machine, a computer transmit information to us, but we do not communicate with them. Such situations cannot be considered natural, full-fledged communication: one “speaks out”, and the other acts only as a listener; one shouts at the other, but he is silent; people are together, but do not talk to each other (“he was silent, and I listened”). Communication is necessarily a two-way process.
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