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Linguistic Forms and Functions

This document summarizes and analyzes the text "Linguistic forms and functions" in three parts. It discusses the functions of language as both transactional (related to content) and interactional (related to social skills). It also contrasts spoken versus written language, noting that speakers have paralinguistic cues while writers have editing abilities. Finally, it analyzes the differences between analyzing sentences versus utterances/discourse, noting that grammarians focus on rules within sentences while discourse analysts examine broader linguistic patterns across discourse.

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2K views

Linguistic Forms and Functions

This document summarizes and analyzes the text "Linguistic forms and functions" in three parts. It discusses the functions of language as both transactional (related to content) and interactional (related to social skills). It also contrasts spoken versus written language, noting that speakers have paralinguistic cues while writers have editing abilities. Finally, it analyzes the differences between analyzing sentences versus utterances/discourse, noting that grammarians focus on rules within sentences while discourse analysts examine broader linguistic patterns across discourse.

Uploaded by

api-257693907
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Summary: Linguistic forms and functions

The following pice of writing I will summarise the text Linguistic forms and
functions in three parts: functions of language, spoken and written language, and
sentence and utterance. The first concept for this subject is analysis of discourse, the
text defined as the analysis in language use by discourse analyst.

Functions of language
There are two concepts to describe the purpose of the language: transactional,
referred to context. Interactional, referred to social skills and personal attitudes.
Transactional view: related to the content. This function allows a speaker or written to
communicate efficiently transmitting and understanding the message with the
information given.
Interactional view: related to social development by interaction.This function allows the
speaker or writer to establish social relationships.This function It is used to contribute in
a conversation more than just giving information.

Spoken and Written Language


Manner of production
Speaker: He has available to him a full range paralinguistic cues (as facial expression,
postural and gestural systems) to reinforce the meaning of his utterances. The
circumstances under the speaker is processing his message are considerably more
demanding.
Writer: On the contrary, He has the advantage of changing, checking, or reordering what
has already written. As a disadvantage he has no access to immediate feedback from
his recipient.

The representation of discourse


Spoken texts (tape-recording) The perception and interpretation of each text are essentially
subjective, because different individuals pay attention to different aspects of texts. This texts
need to be decoded using phonetic transcription analysing voice, quality and intonation.
Sentence and Utterance

On one hand, sentences represent the structure for produce a written language; In the
other hand, utterance as the speech sequence that compound the spoken language,
linguists differ in the methodology of the description in the sentence though their goal is
produce an appropriate description in the language. each of these issues, concerning
'data" 'rules', 'processes' and 'contexts', the discourse analyst will take a different view
than grammarian.

On Data
Grammarian focus the information into a specific part of the data, a single sentence or a
couple of them to show features about the language studied. In contrast, discourse
analyst takes extended extracts and based on the linguistic output from others analysts

Rules v/s Regularities


Discourse analyst present regularities, which are based on the frequency with which a
particular linguistic feature occurs under certain conditions in his discourse data. On the
other hand, grammarian Linguists produce a set of rules with 100% fidelity required to
accomplish their data. Those rules prevent the presence of possible mistakes in their
sentences.

Product v/s Process


Grammarian not generally take account of this since data is not connected to behaviour.
Otherwise, the regularities which discourse analyst describes normally expressed in
dynamic not static terms, likely to contain evidence of the behaviour element

On context
Grammarians construct the context to know the best acceptability of it in the sentence,
Analysis of discourse, find necessary to know why people are using the language and
what they are doing with it in context, in order to analyse the discourse.

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