Professional Documents
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Eng 420 Lecture1
Eng 420 Lecture1
•Syntactic Structures
•Review of Skinner: ‘Verbal
Behavior’ (1959)
Universal Grammar
difference between surface structure and
deep structure in language
Grammar
• Three sub-systems
• Representational
• Phonology (sounds), graphic, gestural
• Lexical
• morphology; words and morphemes
• (Syn)tactic = syntax
Language as communication
• Language as Text.
• The Interaction of People
• The Interpretation of Texts
• What do you communicate? Ideas? Emotions?
Intentions?
• How do you communicate?
• Messages:
• The interpretation of messages
• The construction of messages
Language as thing
Sociolinguistics is an attempt to
find correlations between
linguistic structure and social
structure
Sociolinguists
“whatever it is, is about asking
important questions concerning
the relationship of language to
society” (Wardhaugh 11)
This is not reassuring
• Even our textbook seems unable to give us
a straightforward, agreed upon definition of
sociolinguistics.
• Let’s try the discussion questions on page
12 of Wardhaugh. Get into groups of 4 or 5
and take 15 minutes to go over questions 1
and 2.
Methodological principles
Wardhaugh p. 18
1. Cumulative
2. Uniformation
3. Convergence
4. Subordinate shift
5. Style shifting
6. Attention
7. Vernacular
8. Formality
More Discussion
• There is a connection between questions 1
and 4 on p. 19 of Wardhaugh. What can we
say about historical vs synchronic
linguistics, about written vs spoken
language?
Squishy
• I told you sociolinguistics is squishy. Can
you all remind me what we learn about our
topic of study from chapter 1 of Wardhaugh
and this pitiful powerpoint? What is most
important? 3 things? 5 things? 10 things?
• What will you remember in 10 years about
it?
Irrelevant but interesting
L. Ron Hubbard
• All men are your slaves," he once
wrote in a diary entry unearthed
during a 1984 lawsuit. He
reportedly once claimed to have
written a manuscript that contained
such brutal truths that anyone who
read it went insane or committed
suicide.