ENG101

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

On Philosophy

 NATURE

 MEANING

 CLASSIFICATION

 DISCIPLINES

Nature of Philosophy

 Philosophical disputes are not caused by a lack of factual information. (They are

disputes about meaning, value, or interpretation.)

 Philosophical problems are seldom solved by an appeal to facts. (Philosophical disputes

arise due to considerations that are not purely factual, and so are rarely solved by
learning "the facts." Furthermore, factual evidence itself is often ambiguous. We learn
from three sources: observation, reasoning, and authority. Philosophical problems
therefore are only solved by reasoning and authority. )

 Philosophy is often more concerned with method than with theoretical content. (If no

factual appeal can resolve the philosophical problem, then we can only know our
answers to philosophical problems are correct by making sure that we have the best
reasoning we can get. Philosophy is more the development then of a skill rather than
the acquisition of a body of knowledge.)

 One of philosophy's chief goals is clarification. (Philosophers push for rigorous thinking
in the pursuit of clarity-to "see" problems (in the sense of "understand") better, to root
out poor assumptions or ways of looking at the world, to make our wording clear and
explicit.)

 Philosophy is concerned with the critical reflection on justification and evidence. (The
height of reasoning is argument, and philosophical success depends crucially on good
argument--there is no other way to adjudicate different contentions.)

 Philosophical inquiry centers on the quest for truth about crucial issues that are
perennially discussed by thoughtful persons. ("Crucial" means fundamental or
foundational; and applicable to more than one field of inquiry.)
  Philosophical analysis and explanation involves appeals to systems of principles.
(Philosophers accept some basic set of principles in terms of which they attempt to
resolve philosophical problems. Often much of the resolutions involve articulating and
clarifying those principles.)

Meaning of Philosophy

 Etymology. Philos - sophia. Lover of - wisdom.

 Rational critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the conduct of life, the
generalization of life and the justification of belief .

Four more appropriate definitions of philosophy's purpose:

• Philosophy is (or at least should be) the development of broad conceptual

frameworks that serve to discard false beliefs and unify fragmented beliefs in art,
science, religion and society. - This is the "traditional view" of philosophy; assumes
the existence of objective philosophical truths distinct from those of common
sense and science, whose discovery is the purpose of philosophy.

• Philosophy is, or at least should be, limited to the analysis and clarification of
language. - "analytic" view prominent among anglo-American philosophers

• Philosophy is, or ought to be, the description of the human condition, to wake us
up and sharpen our perception of existence.  - This is the existentialist view of
philosophy.

• Philosophy is or ought to be the systematic and rigorous search for the truth
about certain non-empirical but enduring questions, emphasizing clearly stated
arguments and analysis of key terms. - less sectarian

Classification of Philosophy

 Philosophy of Mind - addresses not only the possible relations of the mental to the
physical (for instance, to brain processes), but the many concepts having an essential
mental element: belief, desire, emotion, feeling, sensation, passion, will, personality,
and others

 Philosophy of Religion - to understand the concept of God, including special attributes

such as being all-knowing, being all-powerful, and being wholly good

 Philosophy of Science - clarifies both the quest for scientific knowledge and the results
yielded by that quest
 Philosophy of Art - concerns the nature of art, including both the performing arts and
painting, sculpture, and literature

 Philosophy of Language - treats a broad spectrum of questions about language: the

nature of meaning, the relations between words and things, the various theories of
language learning, and the distinction between literal and figurative uses of language

Disciplines of Philosophy

 Logic - section of Philosophy that involves the various methods of reasoning. It is

concerned to provide sound methods for distinguishing good from bad reasoning. It
helps us assess how well our premises support our conclusions, to see what we are
committed to accepting when we take a view, and to avoid adopting beliefs for which
we lack adequate reasons

 Ethics - the study which seeks to find the correct course of man’s actions. Ethics helps
us to assort our values and pursue them when necessary.

 Metaphysics - the section of Philosophy that deals with the basic essence of the central
principles that run this universe. It mainly deals with the answer to the question, “what
is reality”. Metaphysics teaches us the quintessential facets of being.

 Epistemology - concerns the nature and scope of knowledge. It originated from the
basic desire of being able to differentiate between acceptable knowledge and
unacceptable knowledge.

On Language

 Meaning

 History, Major Stages of Development of Language

 Nature and Characteristics

 Dialectology

 Speech Community

 Dialectal Differences

 Social Aspects of Language

 Language Change
 Language in Communication

 Pidgins and Creoles

Meaning of Language

 Language is a system for communicating.

 It is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication,

particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of
such a system.

 The system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to
each other

 Any one of the systems of human language that are used and understood by a
particular group of people

 Words of a particular kind

 Major Stages of Language Development

 Babbling - All of the sounds found in all languages are encompassed in children's
first babbling. Gradually, babbling becomes more specific with native language
syllables being consistently practiced. Before the end of their first year, children
engage in pseudo-language, babbling that mimics the native language in its
intonation and form.

 Holophrases - The first word evolves to many single words or syllables that stand
for a variety of meaningful sentences or phrases in different situations. Car said
while looking out the window may mean, "Look at the car outside"; car said
while standing next to the toy shelf may mean, "I want my toy car." A vocabulary
of holophrases enables children to communicate with familiar caregivers.
Children use successive holophrases to increase their communicative
power: Car (pause) go to indicate "I want to go for a ride."

 Two-Word Sentences - Two-word sentences appear between eighteen and

twenty months of age and express ideas concerning relationships: "Mommy
sock" (possessor-possession), "Cat sleeping" (actor-action), "Drink milk" (action-
object), and so on. A vocabulary of about 300 words is typical.
  Telegraphic Sentences - The next stage of language are sentences that are short
and simple. Similar to a telegram, they omit function words and endings that
contribute little to meaning: "Where Daddy go?" "Me push truck."

 Joined Sentences - As language development proceeds, children join related

sentences logically and express ideas concerning time and spatial relationships.
They come to understand social expectations for language use and begin to use
adult forms of language. Vocabularies expand rapidly, the ability to use words
increases, and children intuitively acquire many of the rules of language. By age
three children have vocabularies of nearly 1,000 words.

 Overgeneralizations - As children become more sophisticated in their language,

they overgeneralize rules in ways that are inconsistent with common usage; for
example, "I comed home" for "I came home" (sometimes called creative
grammar). Correct forms are temporarily replaced as rules are internalized.

Nature and Characteristics

LANGUAGE is…..

 Learned - acquired through cultural transmission 2) speakers of one language can learn another

 Discrete - language consists of minimal units

 Recombinable - these minimal units can be combined in infinite varieties

 Unconscious/intuitive - structural knowledge of a language is not necessarily conscious or

articulated by its speakers

 Interchangeable - any speaker potentially can create and utter any message

 Reflexive - people can talk about language; language has the ability to refer to itself

 Arbitrary - meaning depends on arbitrary association of meaning with sign or symbol, on

conventions shared by sender and receiver of message

 Redundant - language contains redundant communicative elements (message may be

conveyed or reinforced twice in same utterance)

 Can displace - language can convey imaginary, distant, past, present, future, conjectural,
and/or counterfactual statements (including lies)

 Productive - a speaker can create totally novel statements and a listener can understand them
Dialectology

-scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics

-studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their

associated features

-treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and
synchronic variation

Speech Community

- a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of
language

- comes to share a specific set of norms for language use through living and interacting
together, and speech communities may therefore emerge among all groups that
interact frequently and share certain norms and ideologies

- Early definitions have tended to see speech communities as bounded and localized
groups of people who live together and come to share the same linguistic norms
because they belong to the same local community.

Dialectal Differences

-Dialectal Differentiation is a term that refers to the process by which language changes
over time and space and circumstance. It is also known as language variation or
language diversification.

-In its broadest application, dialectal differentiation provides an explanation for how
new languages or dialects emerge from a common language.

Social Aspects of Language

Language is a social medium, and thus a social skill.

Language is a major component in social events, communication

events, interaction with other people.

Learning language as a social skill heightens memory and competency.

 Languages are used by social groups (families, clans, tribes, societies) to manage their
relationships and cultural roles, obligations and interrelationships.

Language Change

Types of Language Change

 Lexical Changes

 Phonological and Phonetic Change

 Spelling Changes

 Semantic Changes

 Syntactic Changes

Language and Communication

- explores the role of words, grammatical constructions and texts, and their influence on
people’s ideas, social relations, actions and exchanges of information. explores the role
of words, grammatical constructions and texts, and their influence on people’s ideas,
social relations, actions and exchanges of information.

- enables you to deepen your knowledge of everything from how language interacts
with culture and media to how language changes over time and how language enhances
cognitive abilities

Pidgins and Creoles

-A pidgin is a simplified, makeshift language that develops to fulfill the communication

needs of people who have no language in common but who need to occasionally
interact for commercial and other reasons.

-A pidgin language becomes the mother tongue of a population. When that happens, it
is called a Creole language.