Exercise 1.1 Make a list of word classes 1 as you know them.

Do not worry about being

‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about the terms. Now analyze the sentence ‘CSI criminologists, in
order to uncover clues not visible to the eye, use specialized tools, such as luminal, a
liquid that reacts with the hemoglobin in blood to illuminate previously invisible blood
stains,’ assigning each of the words to a word class.
Content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
Function words: articles, prepositions, polarity
Sentence analysis:
Nouns: CSI, criminologists, clues, eye, tools, luminal, liquid, hemoglobin, blood, (blood)
stains
Verb: uncover, use, reacts, illuminate
Adjective: visible, specialized, invisible
Adverb: previously
Polarity: not
Article: the, a
Prepositions: to, with, in, to

Exercise 1.2 Make a list of utterances which you have heard or have used yourself which
you consider bad usage, or incorrect language. Can you identify why you consider them
incorrect?
We frequently use “data” as if it were a singular noun as a habit while a singular form
does exist (datum) – Ex: Have you taken a look at this data?
In conversational American English, “ain’t” can be used to mean am not, are not, is not
or even has not and have not – It is incorrect because it is too ambiguous in meaning and
without the proper context there is no way to know what it actually means.

Exercise 1.3 Analyze the following texts in terms of field, mode and tenor. Explain your
choices.
1. Keep out!
2. Whatcha doin’? Wanna get a burger or somethin’?
3. I am writing to enquire about the position in sales advertised in the Saturday August 12
edition of The Times .
4. Shadows covered wide areas of European life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The vigorous expansion into bordering areas that had marked European history since the
eleventh century came to an end. The Christian West fought to halt the expansion of the
Muslim Turks. Plague, famine, and recurrent wars decimated populations and snuffed out
their former prosperity. The papacy and feudal government struggled against mounting
institutional chaos. Powerful mystical and heretical movements and new critical currents
in Scholasticism rocked the established religious and philosophical equilibrium of the
thirteenth century.

No Field Mode Tenor

.
1 A warning (keep out indicates Written (on signs) or Could be the authority trying
imminent danger or somewhere spoken (as a direct to warn people of incoming
you are not supposed to enter) and sudden utterance) danger or security warning
people not to enter
2 An invitation (to go have a Spoken (conversation Between friends or relatives
meal, a burger) between friends)
3 Asking for more detail (about a Written (as a letter) Between a job-seeker and a
job opening advertised in a potential employer
newspaper)
4 A retelling (of what life was Written (in a book) Between the writer and their
like in 14th and 15th century audience
Europe)

Exercise 1.4 Attribute each of the following phrases to either Ferdinand de Sausurre,
Noam Chomsky, or Michael Halliday. What motivates your response? What does the
quote tell you about their perspective on the study and analysis of language?
1. ‘If we could embrace the sum of word-images stored in the minds of all individuals, we
could identify the social bond that constitutes language. It is a storehouse filled by the
members of a given community through their active use of speaking, a grammatical
system that has a potential existence in each brain, or, specifically, in the brains of a
group of individuals. For language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only
within a collectivity.’ – Saussure’s (as it referred to language as a collective social
product) – he believes that language is not determined by the arbitrary thoughts of any
single person but exists within the collective knowledge of a society.
2. ‘It seems clear that we must regard linguistic competence – knowledge of a language –
as an abstract system underlying behavior, a system constituted by rules that interact to
determine the form and intrinsic meaning of a potentially infinite number of sentences.’ –
Chomsky’s (as it referred to linguistic competence) – he believes that to understand
linguistics is to understand the underlying thought processes of language processing
rather than just the “product” of the language (written spoken words)
3. ‘Every text – that is, everything that is said or written – unfolds in some context of use;
furthermore, it is the uses of language that, over tens of thousands of generations, have
shaped the system. Language has evolved to satisfy human needs; and the way it is
organized is functional with respect to these needs.’ – Halliday’s (as it refers to the
importance of context) – Halliday believes that language is born from necessity and
evolves according to the needs of those who use it.
4. ‘Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer, in a
completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is
unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations,
distractions, shifts of attention and interest, errors (random or characteristic) in applying
his knowledge of the language in actual performance.’ – Chomsky’s (as it refers to the
“ideal” language that is not affected by human factors, or in other words, replicable by
machines) – he believes that there exists a perfect system of linguistic rules and calls for
the creation of a language that is “precise and explicit” (Chapter 1 page 9).
5. ‘Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results
solely from the simultaneous presence of the others … [for example]. To determine what
a five-franc piece is worth one most know: (1) that it can be exchanged for a fixed
quantity of a different thing, e.g. bread; and (2) that it can be compared with a similar
value of the same system, e.g. a one-franc piece, or with coins of another system (a
dollar, etc.). In the same way a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an
idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word. Its
value is therefore not fixed so long as one simply states that it can be ‘exchanged’ for a
given concept.’ – Saussure’s (as it refers to the relationship between a word and the
factors that determine its meaning) – he believes that the relationship between a word
(signifier) and what it means (signified) is arbitrary and can be changed so long as the
change is acknowledged.
6. ‘Spoken and written language, then, tend to display different KINDS of complexity;
each of them is more complex in its own way. Written language tends to be lexically
dense but grammatically simple; spoken language tends to be grammatically intricate but
lexically sparse’ … ‘The value of having some explicit knowledge of the grammar of
written language is that you can use this knowledge, not only to analyze the texts, but as
a critical resource for asking questions about them.’ – Halliday (as it mostly refers to the
differences in modes of language) – he believes that there is a natural degree of
complexity or value in any form of language instead of the commonly held
misconception that written language is how language is supposed to be.