2. Ferdinand de Saussure
• he argued that these relationships are, in
contrast, not arbitrary but highly
structured, and that it is these structures
which make up the language we speak.
Saussure claimed that we need to learn a
language before we can entertain fully
developed thoughts.
3. • So our language determines the way our
ideas about the world are structured,
whether or not we express these ideas to
other people. We will see that some later
linguists argued that speakers of different
languages actually perceive the world
around them differently.
4. • The words and forms of expression we
learn determine, but also limit, the ways in
which we can describe the things and
events we see to other people, and also to
ourselves.
5. • the innate properties of the human mind.
We have seen that discussion of what can
be said to be innate in the human mind
dates right back to classical times. The
discussion centres on the question of how
much of our understanding, and indeed
knowledge, is inherited, and how much
must be learnt from our environment.
6. • He argues that language can be said to
consist of a series of ‘signs’ in which two
different entities are united, but that ‘the
linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a
name, but a concept and a sound-image’
• Saussure stresses that both these entities,
and the link between them, exist primarily
in the mind of the speakers of the
language.
7. • The study of language, then, is the study
of one aspect of the human mind: a series
of mental sound images, and the concepts
we have learnt to associate with them.
• Saussure adopts the terms signified for a
concept and signifier for the sound-image
associated with it. These two together
form a sign, the basic linguistic unit.
8. • the relationship between signifier and
signified, the relationship which forms a
sign of the language, as arbitrary.
• There are also a whole series of
relationships between the signs of a
language. since each sign is significant
only in how it relates to and, crucially,
differs from, the other signs in the
language.
9. • Language for Saussure, then, is a mental
structure. But this is only part of his
definition. No account of language is
complete, he argues, without reference to
its function in a society;
10. • Language becomes a means of
communication for the individual when a
sound-image, related within a sign to a
concept, is realised in actual sound. The
sound must then be received by another
speaker of the same language, who is
able to recognise the sound image and
therefore to arrive at the same mental
concept.
11. • His approach was therefore labelled
structuralism,
• Saussure argues that the concepts with
which we are familiar can’t actually exist
independently of, or prior to, our language:
12. Linguistic determinism
• Leonard Bloomfield,Sapir and Whorf
• The theory of linguistic determinism states
that the way in which an individual thinks,
and indeed perceives the world, is
dependent on his or her language; we
learn to see the world in a certain way as
part of the process of learning our
language.
13. • human languages differ in remarkable
ways, in terms of the concepts they
contain and therefore the thoughts they
can be used to express
• Sapir encouraged Whorf to study the
Native American language Hopi
14. • ‘the Hopi language is seen to contain no
words, grammatical forms, constructions
or expressions that refer directly to what
we call “time”
• ‘principle of linguistic relativity’, or
sometimes the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’
• the structure of a language (including the
relationships between its signs) limits the
ways in which its speakers understand
reality as structured.
15. • structure of mind as being, at least in part,
dependent on the structure of language.
16. Bloomfield
• behaviourism
• Behaviourism was both empirical and
materialistic in spirit
• Behaviour could be seen in terms of a
series of responses to observable stimuli.
Certain responses lead to further stimuli
which serve to reinforce the response,
17. • The meaning of water is defined by the
fact that it is characteristically uttered
when someone is thirsty. If an utterance is
suitably reinforced (if the speaker is
handed a glass of water) the speaker will
be likely to produce a phonetically similar
utterance the next time.
18. The Innateness Hypothesis
• based on the claim that there is a
specialised and independent ‘language
faculty’. This is a mental capacity,
common to all human beings, which
allows us to acquire and use language,
and which serves no other purpose
• despite the poverty of the input, children
acquire language rapidly, without much
apparent effort, and in an order and time
scale which is remarkably standard
across all human languages.
19. • It is further claimed that there is little
evidence of differences in order and speed
of acquisition between children of widely
differing intelligence. So children can’t be
using general intelligence and cognitive
capacities to ‘figure out’ the language.
Rather, Chomsky describes the knowledge
of a language as ‘growing’ in the mind in
an appropriate environment, at the
appropriate stage of development.
20. • Any account of language which is based
on innate properties of mind relies on an
assumption of the universality of language.
At its most basic, this universality is
reflected in the fact that all human beings,
regardless of race or geographical
location, have language, a property shared
by no other species
