language and the study of language

7/27/2019 Language and the Study of Language

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1L A N G U A G E A N D T H E S T U D Y

O F L A N G U A G E i . What is language?

Language is a conventional system of habitual vocal behaviour bywhich members of a community communicate with one another.It has the following characteristics:( i ) Language is voluntary behaviour. A cough or a sneeze is nota word; laughing or crying is not talking. You cannot say a cough,but you can say Ahem! You cannot say a sneeze, bu t you can sneerHm! Similarly, when you say Ha-ha! you are not laughing andwhen you say Alas! you are not sighing.

(2) Language is a set of habits. Like o ther hab its, they are easilyformed in early life and difficult to change later. That is whychildren learn their own language and foreign languages moreeasily than adults. Much of the difficulty in learning foreignlanguages com es from the failure to realize that one is to be engagedin changing one's habits.(3) Language as a form of communication (in the widest sense)

is entirely a rbitra ry in its relation to what is com municated. Beforethe establishment of a convention, any word could mean anything.Why does it sound funny when Humpty Dumpty makes impenetrability mean ' we've had enough of that subject, and it would bejust as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life'? Alicethinks that it is too much for one word to say. But another andperhaps more important reason is that the word already meanssomething else.

Monolingual persons take language so much for granted thatthey often forget its arbitrary nature and cannot distinguishwords from things. Thus, primitive peoples often believed thatputting a curse on somebody's name could actually harm hisperson. Persons unused to foreign languages tend to find something perverse in the way foreigners talk. Even Oliver Goldsmith


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L A N G U A G E A N D T H E S TU D Y O F L A N G U A G Ecould not get over the perversity of the French, who would call acabbage shoe instead of calling a cabbage cabbage. T h e story is toldof an English woman who always wondered why the French callwater de I'eau, the Italians call it del'acqua, and the Germanscall it das Wasser. "Only we English people," she said, "call itproperly 'water' . We not only c//it 'water' , but itwwater!" Thisspirit of "it is water" shows how closely words and things areidentified by the speakers, even though the relation is actuallyarbitrary.

Now this story is entirely wrong. It was not an English womanwho said these things, but a German woman. I heard the storyfrom Professor H. C. G. von Jagemann, when I took his introductory course in linguistics at Harvard University. T h e p unch line inthe story, as he told the story in English, wa s: "W e Germ ans callit 'Wasser'. We not only call it 'Wasser', but it is Wasser." I wasinnocent enough at the time to wonder why the professor had nottold the story in German and made it sound more plausible, butrealized only later that the ridiculousness of the statement inEnglish was the very point he was trying to make.

(4) Language is a convention, a tradition, a social institution,that has grown through the common living of a large number ofpeople who carry on the tradition. Like other human institutions,languages change or become extinct and we have this very day instances of languages which are represented by only one or twospeakers, whose words are worth more than their weight in gold tolinguists, and whose demise would mean the demise of thelanguage. But by and large, most languages, even the most outlandish out-of-the-way languages of the world, are spoken byhundreds of thousands or millions of speakers.(5) Like other social institutions, language is conservative andresists change. But it changes much more rapidly than the speciesof plants and animals. While biological evolution is reckoned inthousands and m illions of years, change in language is reckoned incenturies or decades and is often noticeable in one person's lifetime. Within the same community, the children will rhyme rootwith put and their parents cannot make them rhyme it with shoot.A language is kept the same by the intercommunication among itsspeakers. Separate them by social class, occupation, political divi-

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1. W H A T IS L A N G U A G E ?sion, geographical d is tance or by t ime in h is tory , and you havedialects and languages .

(6) La ng ua ge is l inear. I t is on e-dim ensio nal . U nl ike p olyp hon icmusic , you have to say one th ing at a t ime or even one sound at at i m e . I t i s t rue that cer ta in express ive e lements such as in tonat ionand voice qual i ty are present s imul taneously wi th the spokenwords , bu t they are more l ike accompaniments to a Schuber tmelody than independent voices in a Bach fugue. This l inear i ty oflanguage has impor tan t consequences on grammar and s ty le , as weshall see later.

(7) Every language consists of a surpris ingly small inventory ofdis t inct ive sou nd s , cal led phonemes. The human ear can d i s t ingu ishthousands of different qual i t ies of sounds, but out of these possibledis t inc t ions , only a very smal l nu m be r fro m a dozen to less tha n100are made use of in any one language. Speakers of Engl ish donot not ice the d i fference between the aspira ted p in pie, which ispronounced with a puff of a i r , and the unaspirated p in spy, although they can hear the difference if their at tent ion is cal led to i t .But in other languages, they are as different as p an d b, and areof ten so t ranscr ibed . The Engl i sh word pie sounds l ike the wordfor ' to d is pa tc h ' in Ch inese, whi le the py part of spy sounds l ikethe Chinese word for ' to bow' .

(8) Language is sys temat ic and unsystemat ic , regular and i r regular . Because of the re la t ive pauci ty in the number of const i tuent e lements in any given language, what e lements there are wi l lnatural ly occur and recur in regular and sys temat ic pat terns . Butbecause of the social nature of language, such pat terns are neversimple and perfect . Rules have exceptions, laws have subsidiarylaws, and bo th the theoret ical linguis t and th e pract ical teache r andlearner have to g ive due regard to both those aspects .

(9) La ng ua ge is learned, not in b or n ; i t i s ha nd ed on , no t inher i ted . Every chi ld has to learn the mother tongue from scratch .An Engl ish baby has no in i t ia l advantage in learning Engl ish overa Bantu baby . Given the same env i ronment , a ch i ld o f any count ryor race learns the language of i ts speaking community as easi ly andas well as a child of any other origin.

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LA NG UA GE AN D THE STUDY OF LA NG UA GE

2. Linguistics: the study of languageThe study of language is now called linguistics. But consciousconcern with language is as old as history or older. Prehistoricpeople were no doubt aware of the different ways in which othertribes talked and tried to imitate them in order to communicatewith them. Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle werevery much concerned with the use of language. Mencius even gavepractical advice as to how and how not to learn other dialects. Thepeople of ancient India, to whom the correct reading of the Vedawas of great importance, had terms for many of the processes oflinguistic change, some of which, such as dvandva for certain compounds, sandhi for influence of one sound on the next, are used byWestern scholars today. Since the study of historical and literarytexts have much to do with the examination of words and theirchanges in different historical languages, there grew u p the disc ipline of comparative philology in which the prim ary interest is in thetexts themselves, but from which much of the general principlesof language had to be and were considered. That is why for a timethe general study of language was called philology.

Linguistics as a separate subject is comparatively new. In mostuniversities in the United States a department of linguistics consists mostly of an interdisciplinary committee formed of membersof the departments of English, Classics, romance languages,German, etc., and members of other departments who happen totake an interest in or have made contributions to the theory oflanguage from an overall point of view. It is only in recent yearsthat there have been departments of linguistics operating on independent budgets, with full-time members on the staff. Candidates for a P h .D . in linguistics are often advised to keep an eye onsome special related field, literature, history, area studies, so thatthey can find openings for jobs other than in linguistics as such.All this is of course no new story. At the time I was concentratingon physics, people could not understand what one could do withphysics except teach. In the 1910s there was such a profession as achemist (in the American sense), but not as a physicist. TheEncyclopaedia Britannica, which was then in its 9th edition, hadno article "Physics"; it had only "Natural Philosophy". It is

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3. D I C H O T O M I E S I N L I N G U I S T I C Stherefore not at al l surpris ing that there is s t i l l no general ly unders tood term for a person who special izes in the theory of languageand languages . Because a l inguis t i s usual ly unders tood as a polyg lo t o f the Thomas Cook gu ide type , one member o f th i s unnamedscholarly class proposed that a special is t in l inguist ics should becalled a " l i ng u i s t i c i an " , by analogy wi th "m ath em at i c i an " , andannounced that hencefor th he would cal l h imself and everyoneelse in the profess ion a " l inguis t ic ian" , but the term did not takeand w e now hav e to pu t u p w i th the am bigu i ty o f the wo rd linguist.However, ambiguit ies , as we shal l see later , can usual ly be resolvedwhen we know the context of use . Thus , one who special izes inl inguist ics is s t i l l a l inguist , who may or may not be a pract icall inguis t and is of ten p ro ud of no t being one . T h is i s qu i te an alogousto the case of the mathemat ic ian who is proud of being poor a tf igures . The great l inguis t Antoine Mei l le t used to a t t ract s tudentsfrom al l countries of the world to hear his lectures, in which hecited copious examples from al l languages of the world. Butwhether i t was Sanskr i t or Greek, German or Engl ish , they al lcame out wi th a perfect French accent . And why not so long as hegot his points across?

3 . Dichotomies in linguistics1. Synchronic and diachronic. Synchronic l inguis t ics i s the s tudyof a language at a given t ime, while diachronic l inguist ics is thes tu dy of a langu age th ro ug h different p er iod s in h is tory . T h edifference is som et im es spoken of as tha t betw een descr ip t ive an dhis torical l inguis t ics . T h es e term s seem to lack logic an d sym m etry ,s ince there is no reason why one cannot descr ibe h is tor ical changeor why the s tudy of a par t icular per iod in the pas t cannot be bothsynchronic and his tor ical . The explanat ion for such asymmetr icalusage l i es in the spec ia l c i rcumstance tha t much of the t echn iqueof analysis and descript ion of languages, especial ly in America, wasdeveloped in connect ion wi th the s tudy of languages which haveno his tor ical records . I t was only in comparat ively recent t imesthat l inguis ts have appl ied the technique of synchronic descr ip t ionto par t icular per iods , such as the phonemic analys is of ancientChinese, or to the h is tory of languages wi thout a h is tory , such as

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L A N G U A G E A N D T H E S TU D Y O F L A N G U A G Ethe recons t ruc t ion of ances t ra l fo rms of the Amer ican Ind ianlanguages .

2. Descriptive and prescriptive. In another sense the descr ip t ivei s con t ras ted wi th the p rescr ip t ive , o r the normat ive . L inguis t icste l ls w ha t langu age is , w ha t langua ges there are , and ho w they hav ecome to be the way they are. I t does not tel l what is r ight or what iswrong. Linguis ts have been accused of saying that whatever is i sr ight , w here as a ll they are t ry in g to say is tha t wha tever is i s . T r u e ,they are not saying what one would l ike to have them say. Theirreply is th at tha t i s th e jo b of th e ed uc ato rs . Sinc e in pract ice m an yif not most l inguists are also engaged in educat ional work, i t becomes a ques t ion of whether one is act ing as Lord Chief Jus t ice orLord High Admira l , s ince Pooh-Bah ac t s in bo th capac i t i es . Thusthe same person , as educa tor , can te l l you , "Leave your l anguagea lo n e !" whi le as a l inguis t he can descr ibe object ively " Lin gu is t icsand your language" . We shal l come back at greater length to th ispe renn ia l p rob lem.3 . Pure and applied. When we know wha t i s , we a re be t t e r p re pared to th ink about what i s r ight and wrong. That i s one aspect ofappl ied l inguis t ics . Foreign language s tudy is a lso a very importantfield of ap plied l inguis t ics . E ve ryb od y is famil iar w ith th e im po rtance of phonet ics to foreign language s tudy. Recent ly a good dealof a t tent ion has been given to what we cal led contras t ive s tudies ,in which aspects of the learner ' s language are compared with corresponding aspects of the language to be learned. In the techniqueof t ranslat ion, one can gain much profi t from the applicat ion ofgeneral l inguis t ic pr inciples . Even in the young f ie ld of machinet rans lat ion, progress can be made no fas ter than progress in ourcontrol of l inguist ics in general and the l inguist ics of the languagesinvolved. To come back to our o ld subject , what i s phi lo logy butthe applicat ion of l inguist ics to actual texts?

4 . Continuous and discrete. I t i s obvious that everything inlanguage has degrees . Vowels and tones form cont inuous spec-t r u m s . Even wi th consonants you are o f ten no t sure whether youp r o n o u n c e Habana w i t h a M i k e v or a u-like b. Lexicographers a reforever be ing haunted by shades o f meaning . In d rawing the mapof Chinese d ia lects , I have been changing my mind every tenyears or so as to whether there are e ight , n ine, or ten groups .

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4. W H E R E , W H E N , A N D H O W D O E S L A N G U A G E E X I S T ?On the other hand, i t i s equal ly c lear that everything in language

must be one th ing or another . A vowel in Lat in is e i ther long orshort , a noun in Engl ish is e i ther s ingular or p lural . We have seenth at every langua ge has a smal l inve ntory of a few doze n p ho ne m es .Look up any word in a d ic t ionary and you wil l f ind the cont inuumof meaning nea t ly b roken up in to separa te meanings i , 2 , 3 a, 3 b ,e tc . Thus, in language there seems to be no di fference of degree,only difference of kind.

T h is app are n t con t rad ic t ion i s found no t on ly in l anguage an dthe study of language, but in pract ical ly al l f ields of inquiry. Out ofthe apparen t ly con t inuous mass o f mater ia l under s tudy , theinquirer has to set up clear and dist inct categories , abstract ions ifyou l ike , under which to bes t sys temat ize h is mater ia l . But i t i s notan ent i re ly arbi t rary and subject ive mat ter . I f you overs impl i fy ,the theory wil l not f i t the facts and has to be revised and refined.T h is is ho w any field of in qu iry pr ogr esse s, and th e field of lang uag eis no except ion.

4. Where, when, and how does language exist?Since languag e is som ethin g that is spoken , i t shou ld exist as sou ndwaves in the a i r where and when one speaks . But in these days ofadvanced communicat ions technology, what one says here is a lsoheard elsewhere, and what one says now is a lso heard la ter . Andalong the way where speech is being t ransmit ted in space or dur ingthe per iod when speech is being preserved in t ime, there is nolanguage as we ordinar i ly unders tand i t , but ins tead only pat ternsof mat ter or energy, be they elect romagnet ic waves , wiggles in agroove, unevenness in the magnet izat ion of a powder on a p las t icr ibbon, or anything else . Such pat terns , to be sure , have a h ighdegree of f idel i ty to the pat tern of the original sound waves. Butone would hardly cal l them speech. An album of records cal led "ACo m ple t e Co urse in t he Fr enc h La n gu ag e" is no t t he F ren chlanguage .

Apart f rom these technological extens ions of language which weshall go in to in greater de tai l in cha pte r 11 , actual speech ha salways seemed too fleet ing an event to be the vehicle of existenceof a l anguage . Thus , bo th in the popular mind and among the more

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L A N G U A G E A N D T H E S TU D Y O F L A N G U A G Eli terate , a language is regarded as bet ter represented in the texts inwhich i t i s wr i t t en , the g rammars tha t descr ibe i t s s t ruc ture , andthe d ict ionar ies that gather together the whole inventory of arbi t ra ry i t em s w hich en ter in to it s s t ruc ture . Th e re i s m ore ex isten tia lsat isfact ion in something that you can take in the hand or s tore onth e shelf. This does not mean, however , that anyone is naiveen ou gh to say tha t a language is a book . Books an d insc r ip t ion s m aybe preserved centur ies or mil lenniums af ter the language is dead.F or a langua ge to exis t , the re have to be speake rs . Since th e speakerof a language cannot say everything in a language at once but a tmost only one thing at a t ime even if he were to talk al l the t ime,the great body of the language spoken must exis t in some otherform than ac tua l speech . Moreover , s ince there were l anguageslong before the invent ion of wri t ing, le t a lone phonographic record ing, language s m us t have exis ted in the perso n of thei r speakersin o ther words , the i r voca l hab i t s , in the p roduct ion of soundsand, on the par t of the hearers of a language, thei r habi ts of responding in specif ic ways to the sounds produced by other speakers .This means that a language exis ts pr imari ly in the brain of i t sspeaker as a set of habits and disposit ions. I t is then possible to say,even in the case of a rare language of only a few speakers , that alanguage is s t i l l a l iving one even when no person is actual ly speaking i t a t the moment .

5 . 'Language' as understood in linguisticsIn everyday usage we speak of language in many senses thatl ingu ists disap pro ve of. W e shou ld no t , l ing uists say, speak ofwri t ten language. Wri t ing is a sys tem of v isual s igns wi th whichlanguage is symbol ized. I f language symbol izes ideas , wri t ing isthe symbol of symbols . One should not speak of the language ofmathemat ics or mathemat ical logic . For these d iscipl ines usesymbols which are o f ten no t p ronounceable o r p ronounced wi thgreat difficulty. S om e of th e m are no t in th e form of a l inear s uc ces s ion of e lements in t ime, as every respectable language should be.One should not speak of the language of parrots , bees , or dolphins .A pa r ro t m ay rep ly t o t he ques t ion , " W h a t ' s you r na m e? " by " M ynam e is P o l ly " . On e M yn ah b i rd even answered my ques t ion

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5. ' L A N G U A G E ' A S U N D E R S T O O D IN L I N G U I S T I C S" W h a t ' s y o u r n a m e ? " w i t h " W h a t ' s your n a m e ? " B u t i t c a n n o tlea rn , a s a h u m an ch i ld can , to use the same form and say " W h a t ' sh i s n am e ?" o r "Y o u r nam e is Po l ly " . In a b i r d ' s l anguage everysentence i s an unana lysable voca l response . The language has nos t ruc ture , i t has no words , and does not form a sys tem.This somewhat pa rochia l a t t i tude of l ingui s t s wi th regard tolanguage i s not wi thout i ts sc ient i f ic just i f ica t ion. Taken in thenarrow sense of habi tual and convent ional ized vocal behaviour , asdescr ibed above, i t has been possible to develop a sc ience ofl inguis t ics , wi th i ts re la t ive ly systematic and regular fea tures andno more than i t s fa i r share of except ions and unsolved problemsas co m pa red wi th o ther s tud ies of social ph en om en a . H ow ever ,the moment you make language inc lude the language of mus ic , thelanguage of f lowers, the language of gestures, e tc . , you will f indtha t many of the th ings which a re t rue of human speech a re nott rue of these other kinds of language. In such a s i tua t ion, one orbo th of two th ings m ay ha pp en . W h en th ere is l i tt le in com m onbetween human speech and what i s somet imes ca l led language ,such as the language of animals and f lowers, we can regard the useof the word as merely metaphor ica l and need not take i t ser iouslyenough to inc lude i t in l inguis t ics a t the expense of complica t ingthat subject . But i f in an extended sense some important fea turesof ordinary language are present , p lus other addi t ional fea tures ,then the c la im for the use of the te rm " language" in an ex tendedsense is not to be dismissed. For example, i t is possible to classifyand order the s tudy of ges tures , wi th many theore t i ca l techniquesthat have been found effec t ive for spoken sounds, and by analogywith phonemics (which i s a branch of l inguis t ics) , a system ofkinesics has been se t up wi th symbols and c lass i f ica t ions tha t ares imi lar to , though not as neat and accura te as , those used forspeech sounds . No ta t i ons o f a somewha t ad hoc na ture have longbeen in use for dancing and gymnast ics but the f i rs t a t tempt to se tu p a the ore t ic a l system seem s to have been th at of R. L . Bird-whistell in his Introduction to Kinesics (Louisvi l le , Ky. 1953) .

The s t ronges t con tende r fo r the t e rm " language" i s wr i t i ng .A l tho ug h w r i t ing is l ike records and tapes in be ing a repre senta t io nof speech in a different physical medium, i t differs from these closecopies of sound waves in tha t i ts re la t ion to speech is la rgely arbi -

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LA NG UA GE AN D THE STUDY OF LA NG UA GEt ra ry and has to be l earned and car r ied on by t rad i t ion . Moreover ,s ince the condit ions of talking and l is tening are different from thoseof wri t ing and reading, the changes in one are d i f ferent in mannerand speed f rom those in the o ther . Sounds have changed , bu tpeo ple wr i te today as people ta lked cen tur ies ago . W ri t t e n chara cte rs have been borrowed by one na t ion f rom another , bu t they areof ten d issociated from the spoken words they or ig inal ly represen ted. T h e so-called arabic f igures (or ig inal ly Ind ian ) rep res en ta different set of spoken words in pract ical ly every language in thewor ld . Thus , a sys t em o f wr i t i ng has become someth ing au tonom o u s . Even i f i t has a h igh degree of correspondence to speech, i thas i ts own style, i ts own special kinds of change, and otherfeatures of d ivergence from speech. Haven ' t you not iced that evenwith c lose f r iends and members of the family you never qui te wri tein the same way and on the same topics as when you are ta lk ingwi th them?

It i s therefore not wi thout jus t i f icat ion to speak of the wri t tenlanguage instead of language writ ten, as l inguists prefer to refer toi t . Wri t ten Engl ish , whether in actual ly wri t ten form, or read aloud,is a d i fferent langu age from sp oken E ngl ish . T h e di fference is evengrea ter in th e case o f Ch inese . U nt i l th e vern acu lar l i t e ra tu re m ov em en t s ta r ted in 1917 by H u Shih (1891-196 2) , everybo dy w ro te ,so far as grammar and vocabulary went , in a language two thousandyears o lder than the one they spoke . Today , when mos t wr i t ing i sdone in the so-cal led vernacular s ty le , the d i fference is much less ,but s t i l l at least as great as that between writ ten and spoken stylesin th e W es ter n languag es . A nd wh y sho uld one no t w ri te d i fferentlyfrom the way one talks? A good teacher should repeat in class thesame point in d i f ferent words , or even in the same words , for theclass to catch. But in writ ing, the reader is free to look back whenever he needs to or to proceed if he does not .

We shal l come back to wider senses of language in general( 56) and t he idea of th e wri t te n langu age in par t icular (cha pter 8) .

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6. L A N G U A G E A N D S P E E C H 6 . Language and speech: type and token

A language is the sys tem of habi ts as embodied in the brains of i t sspeakers . When a speaker of the language makes an ut terance, i t i sthen speech, real ized as an ins tance of a l inguis t ic form. In theterminology of communicat ion theory, a language is a sys tem oftypes, an ut te ran ce o r speech in the lang uage is a token. T h e E n g l i s hlanguage is a type . T h e sen tence Come here! is a t ype . W he n som eone actual ly says "Come here!" , i t i s a token. I f he says i t twice,i t is one type, real ized as two tokens. In the case of wri t ten recordsas exis t ing in inscr ip t ions and books , the extended text or anyw ord or ph ras e in i t i s a token and the oc cur ren ce of the sam e formelsewhere is another token. Since phi lo logy is the examinat ion ofthe form and meaning of actual occurrences of forms in a text , wecan say th at phi lo logy is th e s tudy of tok en s , and l inguis t ics , w hic his co nce rne d only wi th th e general type w her eve r i t occ urs , i s th estudy of types. For psychological or his torical reasons, tokens aresomet imes not typical of the type, which means that actual speechis often less systematic than language as an ideal system. Forexam ple I he ard rece nt ly , f rom a nat ive speaker of Am eric anEng l i sh t he s en t ence : It was an long envelope, where one wou ldexpec t a ins tead of an. The reason was of course that he s tar ted tosay an envelope and then changed h i s mind and added long w i t h o u tbo the r ing to change an to a. While l inguist ics is chiefly concernedwith sys temat ic types , the to ta l s tudy of language wi l l of coursehave to include both tokens and types . As to which is the reallanguage, i t a l l goes back to the argument between Aris to t le andPlato as to whether th ings or ideas are more real , a ques t ion wewil l not go into for our purposes. I t is however of l inguist ic relevance not to oversimplify things for the sake of neat systems. Forfur ther d iscuss ion on th is poin t see 2 1 , p p . 48 -5 0.

7 . Form s of discourse, language and non-languageSince speech is behaviour , i t i s usual ly mixed with o ther behav iour , e i ther concomi tan t ly o r in te rmi t ten t ly . The preoccupat ionon the par t of scholars wi th long, connected discourse of ten makesth e m forget th e fact tha t speech m ixed wi th action is th e n or m al

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L A N G U A G E A N D T H E S T U D Y O F L A N G U A G Eth ing and long , o rgan ized monologues o r d ia logues a re the except ions . Witness the s tyle of dialogues in the early days of the talkingmovie . Because the movie actors had had to be s i lent dur ing thedecades before the invention of the talkies , they fel t that they hadto keep talking al l the t ime, as if to make up for lost t ime. Onlygradually did scenario writers real ize that real l i fe can be mirroredmuch more fa i thful ly by act ion in terposed with ta lk , especial lygiven the unres t r ic ted resources of the camera, as compared withthe physical l imi ta t ions of the s tage. The importance as data forl inguis t ics of d isconnected discourse , as compared with connecteddiscourse, l ies in i ts greater frequency cf occurrence and i ts closerrelat ion to the rest of l i fe, with consequent greater influence onchange of sound , meaning , and s t ruc ture . Any s ta t i s t i ca l s tudyof l inguis t ic form s w ould be m u c h m or e s ignif icant if w e couldgather speech data from real l ife instead of, as has usually beennecessary , f rom composed discourse or f rom quest ion and answerbetween the l inguis t and the nat ive speaker .To have a correct view of how language operates in l i fe is ofcourse a different matter from how to use language effect ively inscience, art , or pract ical affairs , or for that matter , in present ingthe facts about a language to l inguis ts . In the more sophis t icateduses of language there is usual ly more use of long, connected discourse, and of technical ly defined terms in ways that are not usual lyaccepted or unders tood by most o ther speakers of the language. Inpresent ing the facts of a language to l inguists , say in the form of agrammar and a lexicon, conciseness and completeness are the a ims,though the users of the language being descr ibed may ta lk in adiffuse s tyle. I t is only in com po sing a tea ch ing text for a langua geor in writ ing real is t ic dialogues for a play or a novel that one aimsat imitat ing a piece of real l i fe, with i ts connected dialogue andact ion and i t s d isconnected discourse . But even here , one mustorga nize , co nd en se , and select the essent ials in ord er to have arealist ic presentation of language in real l ife. For real l ife is toolong and too un typ ica l to p resen t enough rea l i sm wi thout be ingedited. A child has al l the waking hours of his early years to learnto talk. A language student has only a few hours a week in whichhe has to get the language in concentrated doses . The plot of aplay may cover days or years of the l ives of the characters . The

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7. F O R M S O F D I S C O U R S Eplaywright will have to organize his dialogues in such a way asto give the most natural development of the plot with the leastwaste of words and action. As A. A. Milne has shown in his autobiography, a piece of life taken from real life is the least realisticpresentation for use on the stage (see p. 115). For the linguist, thedata will still have to come from real life, but in the presentationof his findings, he can organize them as a playwright organizes hisplot. However, the linguist has an advantage over the playwright.A play has to seem like real life. A treatise on linguistics is notexpected to be as readable as everyday language.

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language and the study of language

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