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EN 2710 3.0 F2012
Exhibit 1
Lecture 1 notes:
A
and
and
and
and
controversy
did
fervor
ideological
intrigue
know
lexicography
nastiness
near-Lewinskian
of
on
probing
reveals
scale
seamy
strife
that
the
underbelly
US
you
“If the purpose of studying grammar is to avoid error, then it should follow that learning the
‘rules of grammar’ will make you a better writer because you will avoid error in your
compositions. There are two problems with this assumption: First, the purpose of studying
grammar goes far beyond that of avoiding error; and, second, composition teachers realized long
ago that error-free writing is not necessarily effective writing.” (Martha Kolln & Robert Funk,
Understanding English Grammar).
Exhibit 2:
Two examples (drawn from real life):
a) “I’d like to thank the Dean for that fulsome description of the Vice President’s
achievements.”
b) (in a whisper) “Just between you and I, the Chair just misused fulsome.”
Exhibit 3:
Another one (made up for the occasion):
a) “This morning Arugula took the Keele 41E bus with I.”
b) “This morning Zorro and Elvis were on the Keele bus with Arugula and I.”
Key distinction 1:
Grammar: The system of rules implicit in a language governing the generation of
communicable sentences in that language. By extension a normative set of rules setting
forth currently accepted standards of appropriate sentence production.
Usage: The way in which words or phrases are, or ought to be, used, spoken or written among
members of a speech community.
The key point of the latter definition being the gap between “are” and “ought to be.”
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Key distinction 2: Two approaches to the study and understanding of language/grammar
Prescriptivism: The notion that the study of grammar should focus itself on instructing
students about rules and how to follow them, that the role of grammarians is to police
standard correctness.
Descriptivism: The notion that the object of study is language as it is actually used by people
actually speaking a language. Within this lurks the notion that all rules are arbitrary in the
bad sense and constrain creativity and expressiveness.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1916)
“The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound image.”
Two Saussurean distinctions:
Signifier and signified:
Saussure proposes that we call this material image—spoken or written--the signifier and that we
call the concept the signified and that together they make up the linguistic sign. What’s important
here is that the two are linked and mutually determinative. What you name a concept, subtly or
less so, changes that concept.
Langue and parole: the “langue” is the sum of all possible language acts within the field
of a given language (including nonsensical ones and ungrammatical ones). Parole is any
individual instance of speech or writing and, by extension, the pattern of an individual’s
utterances—the ways in which a given person most usually speaks.
Discourse: in 2710 we are going to apply the term “discourse” to these paroles that are shared
among communities. We might call them jargons or specialized professional languages—the way
tech geeks speak among their own, or lawyers speak to lawyers—but that would miss other sorts
of discourse communities that are determined by age, or ethnicity, or geography or class or
fashion. For us, a discourse community is a group that shares, to a greater or lesser degree, a
common parole, or at least access to a common parole.
Another distinction:
Heteroglossia and monoglossia: The notion, derived from Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, that,
as all speakers within a langue are multilingual or polydiscursive, the individual elements within
the langue—words, expressions—occupy different places within differing discourses and are
always sites of contestation. A word like “sick” for instance knots together a number of
discourses thus is, in itself, heteroglossic. The grammar and usage police would like to stop this
and curtail the diffusion of meanings, make everything a part of on, strictly governed tongue, i.e.
monoglossic.
Structure of speech, according to Roman Jakobson:
The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to an ADDRESSEE.
To be operative the message requires:
a CONTEXT referred to (or referent) graspable by the addressee, and either verbal or
capable of being verbalized;
a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and the addressee;
and finally a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the
addresser and the addressee, enable both of them to enter into and stay in communication.
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Thus
ADDRESSER
CONTEXT
MESSAGE
CONTACT
CODE
ADDRESSEE
With the four in the middle of the page making up among them the sum total of the message.
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Jakobson overlays these with other functions which are not merely communicative depending on
their relative importance in the utterance. These are:
EMOTIVE
REFERENTIAL
POETIC
PHATIC
METALIGUAL
CONATIVE
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