Modern areas of linguistics

Ethnolinguistics - a synthesis of two sciences - linguistics and ethnology; is studying the interaction of language and culture. Interested in the questions: 1) by what means, in what way and in what form are cultural ideas reflected in the language; 2) what forms and means of communication in the language are specific.

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity is first presented in the works of Sapir E. and Whorf B. It lies in the fact that we perceive the world through the prism of language. Scientists compared languages ​​and found patterns (compatibility of words). Conclusion: speakers of European languages ​​perceive the world differently. Language dictates different perceptions of reality.

But this theory has been criticized. Since the perception of the world is reflected differently in the language. Wezhbitskaya, Shmelev, Apresyan studied the reflection of the linguistic picture of the world. This helped to reveal the universal features of different pictures of the world. The purpose of this is to establish the differences in linguistic pictures of the world.

Questions:

1. Relationship language means.

2. Study of the forms and means of communication.

Linguists explore speech behavior.

In other cultures, during a conversation they can interrupt, suddenly get up and leave.

This science also studies ways of organizing forms of communication.

The next direction is sociolinguistics . It arises in opposition to structuralism. Sociolinguistics deals with the interaction of language and society. The focus is on the internal functioning (age, gender of the speaker, particularities of the situation).

This direction originated in the 30s, and the term was introduced in 1952. It arose at the junction of sociology and linguistics. Representatives of this direction are: Vinogradov, Vinokur, Polivanov, Zhirmunsky, Meye, Charles Balli.

The main objectives are to study:

1. How people use language. What does the people constituting a particular society.

2. How do changes in the society in which a given language exists affect the development of a language?

Goals cause problems :

1. Social differentiation of language.

2. Social conditionality of the language. With the development of society, language is changing. Social change is primary.

Other problems:

1. Related to the social aspect of language proficiency. This means that sociolinguistics studies social roles, how we can study the style of communication.

2. Related issues related to which language is the main one (interactions of different languages).

3. Language policy issues. The state can regulate the norms of spelling and punctuation.

Pragmatics - studies the relationship between a language sign and a native speaker. This science is interested in the mechanism of speech. She solves the questions :

1. Who says to whom, what and why.

2. How a person builds a statement and how it relates to the communication situation.

One of the leading directions is the theory of speech acts - authors Austin, Ser, Grice, and others.

A speech act is a unit that includes three components: the speaker's intention (illogution), the actual speech segment itself, and the result achieved (perlocution). For example, order, question, gratitude, agreement.

The theory of speech acts is based on: 1) what is the result; 2) what language tools we use to express our goal.

There are indirect speech acts. For example: Will you give me salt?

Grice's rules of conduct (maxims):

1. The principle of quantity: you need to say no more or less of what is needed to achieve the goals.

2. The rule of quality is that in the dialogue we must speak truthful information.

3. Thematic relevance. The statement should be related to the topic.

4. Maxim manners.

Everything depends on the speaker's goals, on what type of behavior the speaker has, on the way the information is presented, on the interpretation of this information.

Psycholinguistics originated at the intersection of psychology and linguistics. It originated about 40 years ago in the USA. The object of psycholinguistics is language as a phenomenon of the psyche. She is interested in the question of how the ability to speak develops. Also interested in :

1. The reason why speech problems occur (congenital and acquired), how to deal with them.

2. Is the process of speech generation and perception symmetric?

3. Are the mechanisms of mastering native and non-native language the same?

4. What mental processes provide reading.

5. What features of the language personality we can identify by analyzing the language personality.

Experiments (for example, associative) have become widespread. Such experiments help in learning languages.

Mental thesaurus - how concepts are connected in the mind of a native speaker.

Cognitive linguistics originated in the 70s. It aims to reconstruct the linguistic picture of the world (in the language there is a reflection of the worldview, perception). The logical picture of the world, the naive and scientific picture of the world stands out. Different nations have different language pictures of the world. Central concepts - concept, frame, script. Concept - reflects the logical information, subjective information. A concept is a mental unit with which we can describe the linguistic picture of the world. First studied folklore texts, then artistic texts, journalistic and colloquial speech. All concepts are going together and it turns out the language picture of the world. The concept is broader than the concept.

A frame is a unit of knowledge organized around a concept. This concept is narrower than the script; This is one frame (paragraph script).

The script is a program of action.

Studying metaphors, you can go to the problems of consciousness, see how consciousness changes.

So, the center of study of modern linguistics is the language in different directions.