This document provides an overview of several social science disciplines, including linguistics, political science, psychology, and sociology. It discusses the key branches and concepts within each discipline. For linguistics, it describes the main branches of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It also provides examples to illustrate concepts within these branches. The document similarly outlines the focuses and examples for political science, psychology, and sociology. It notes influential early thinkers in each field like Ferdinand de Saussure for linguistics, John Locke for political science, Wilhelm Wundt for psychology, and Auguste Comte for sociology.

1. DISCIPLINES
WITHIN THE
SOCIAL
SCIENCES
Prepared by: Ms. Mary Joy Adelfa P. Dailo, LPT

2. LINGUISTICS

3. LINGUISTICS
• Linguistics studies the nature of language
through an examination of the formal
properties of natural language, grammar,
and the process of language acquisition.
• came from Latin word lingua (language)

4. BRANCHES:
• Phonetics
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics

5. Phonetics
• The study of speech sounds
• It includes understanding how sounds are made
using the mouth, nose, teeth and tongue, and also
understanding how the ear hears those sounds and
can tell them apart.

6. Example

7. Phonology
• makes use of the phonetics in order to see how
sounds or signs are arranged in a system for each
language
• In phonology, it matters whether sounds are
contrastive or not, that is, whether substituting
one sound for another gives a different, or
"contrastive," meaning.
• Phonemes – smallest unit of sound in a word

8. Example
• In English, [r] and [l] are two different sounds -
and the words "road" and "load" differ
according to which of these sounds is used. But
in some languages, [r] and [l] are variations of
the same sound. They could never make a
meaning difference in words that differ by only
that sound.

9. Example
Helps
Crabs
Sits
Looks
Words
Gloves

10. Morphology
• It looks at how individual words are formed from
smaller chunks of meaningful units called
morphemes.
• Morphology interacts in important ways with
both phonology (bringing sounds together can
cause them to change) and syntax, which needs
to pay attention to the form of a word when it
combines it with other words.
• Morpheme – the smallest unit of a word with
meaning

11. Example
Untied
Bathroom
Yes

12. Syntax
• Syntax is the study of how phrases, clauses and
sentences are constructed and combined in
particular languages.
• The rules that govern the structure of the
sentences of the language involve both the order
of words, and the form of words in their various
possible positions.

13. Example
• Languages where the direct object generally
follows the verb have a lot of things in
common, in contrast to the things in common
held by languages in which the direct object
generally precedes the verb.
subject + verb + direct object
• Ex. I enjoy school.
The dog loves her owner.

14. Semantics
• The study of meaning
• It focuses on the relation between words,
phrases and other bits of language and on
how these words and phrases connect to
the world.
• It may be a denotation or the connotation
of the word.

15. Example
Child
Iron fist
Friend
House
home

16. Pragmatics
• The study of language context.
• Involves the study of how speakers of a language
use the language to communicate and accomplish
what they want.
• Pragmatics looks more at the relationship
between speaker and listener which allows
assumptions to be made about the intended
message.

17. Example
When someone is asked;
"Do you want some coffee?" Does the reply
"Coffee will keep me awake" mean yes or no?

18. Example
“Oh, please.”

19. • Throughout most of history, linguistics has
been considered a province of philosophy
and rhetoric. It is led by the sophists of
classical Greece who have given young,
wealthy Greek men an education in the art
of public speaking, which in turn they can
use to vie for public positions.
• The conventional date of linguistics proper
is 1786 when the regular sound
correspondences were found across the
many languages of Europe, India’s
Sanskrit, and Persia.

20. • Led to the discovery of a parent
language called Proto Indo-European
contributed by Friedrich von Schlegel,
Franz Bopp, and Rasmus Christian
Rask
• Scholarly works includes Researches
into the early inhabitants of Spain by
the help of the Basque language
(1821) by Wilhelm von Humboldt and
Cours de linguistique generale (1916)
by Ferdinand de Saussure.

21. How are you going to
apply the concepts of
linguistics in
identifying the causes
of miscommunication?

22. ---

23. POLITICAL SCIENCE

24. Political Science
• The systematic study of politics, power, and government.
• Greek: politea – “a person who participates in polis
(taking part in decision-making which normally takes
place in the agora, or market place, where new laws are
passed or disseminated under the scrutiny of the entire
community)

25. • Politics – the process of using power in the
government.
• Power – the means for the government to
rule the people.
• Government – the authority or the
bureaucracy that provides the system of
rule over its territory and for its people.

26. BRANCHES:
• Public Administration
• Political Economy
• Comparative Politics

27. Public Administration
• Examines how the government functions and how
decisions and policies are made.

28. Political Economy
• Evaluates the interplay between economics, and law and
its implications to the various institutions within society.

29. Comparative Government
• Compares domestic politics and governance systems
across different sovereign states.

30. Books
• Politics by Aristotle
– pioneer in the field of political inquiry.
- delves on the topic of government and the leaders
behind it, i.e., kings and statesmen.
- talks about the concept of justice and slavery
- The book makes the connection between the
happiness and virtue of the political community to
the people’s participation in politics.
- his analysis on the causes of revolution and what
prevents it have been a source of inspiration to other
political thinkers like John Locke and John Stuart
Mill.

31. Books
• Two Treatises of Government (1689) by John Locke
- discusses the concept of representative government and
the people’s right to revolution
• Considerations on Representative Government (1861) by
John Stuart Mill

32. • Political Science as an academic discipline
separate from history was only established
after the Second World War in American
and European universities.
• In Central and Eastern Europe, it was only
after the decline of the Socialist regime in
the 1990s and only under the newly
installed democratic regimes.

34. ---

35. PSYCHOLOGY

36. PSYCHOLOGY
• The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
• It includes the physical state and mental state and how
this all relates to the environment of the individual.
• Psychology finds application in addressing issues like
suicide and criminal behavior.
• Greek words:
psyche - “soul or spirit”
logos - “study”

37. BRANCHES:
• Clinical Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Experimental Psychology

38. Clinical Psychology
• Assesses and finds treatment for people with
psychological disorder.

39. Developmental Psychology
• Studies the intellectual, social, emotional, and moral
development across a lifespan. The focus maybe
narrowed down to a specific period in life like early
childhood or pre-adolescent.

40. Experimental Psychology
• Studies the most basic concepts of psychology like
cognition, perception, memory and learning but mostly
conducted on animals instead of humans.

41. Wilhelm Wundt
• The Father of Modern Psychology
• Credited for being the first in the
movement to make psychology a
science.
• Conducted the first true
experimental laboratory in
psychology
• Grundzuge der physiologischen
Psychologie (The Principles of
Physiological Psychology, 1873)

42. Contributions
William
James
• Studied the concept of Functionalism,
which analyses the function or
purpose of behavior and not simply a
description.
• Functionalism studies how specific
behavior help adapt to environment.
• Principles of Psychology (1890)
Sigmund
Freud
• Known for his Psycholoanalytic
Personality Theory, which divides the
personality into id, ego, and superego.
• Wrote the theory on the Psychosexual
Stages of Develpoment.

43. What does a “good
mental health” mean?

44. ---

45. SOCIOLOGY

46. Sociology
• The systematic study of human social life,
groups, and society.
• Studies how people relate to each other and how
they work as a whole in the larger society.
• Latin: socius – “friend” or “companion”
Greek: logos – “study”

47. • “We begin to think sociologically when we
realize how the general categories into
which we fall shape our particular life
experiences” (Macionis 2006, p.2)
• Social rules of behavior, societal
expectations, and norms guide an
individual’s actions, thoughts, and feelings.

48. • Sociology was born as a result of powerful
and complex economic and social forces.
• The industrial revolution created massive
changes not just in the field of technology
and in the way goods are manufactured,
but also in the work and living pattern of
the people.

49. Auguste Comte
• Father of Modern Sociology
• Coined the term Sociology in 1838 to
encapsulate the ideal of improving
society by understanding how it
operates.
• The Courses on Positive Philosophy
(1830-1842, six volumes, translated and
condensed by Harriet Martineau as the
Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte)
• Sytem of Positive Polity, or Treatise on
Sociology, Instituting the Religion of
Humanity, (1851-1854, four volumes)

51. QUIZ
1. History comes from the Greek word historia which means ________.
2. What branch of history is concerned with the making of policies?
3. What branch of history studies about historians and how they develop
history?
4. What do you call the historical sources that are narrated based on the
experience of others?
5. What social science discipline studies the chronological record of
events?
6. What branch of history looks at the lived experience of the past?
7. What do you call the historical sources that are narrated by someone
who has a firsthand information of the event?
8. What is regarded as the writing system of the people in
Mesopotamia?
9. What branch of history studies the patterns of production and the
industry?
10. Who is the Father of history?

52. Answer key
1. Inquiry
2. Political History
3. Intellectual History
4. Secondary Sources
5. History
6. Social History
7. Primary Sources
8. Cuneiform
9. Economic History
10. Herodotus