Structuralism And Post-Structuralism In Language

Too view language as if it were an object devoid of its social context would not be seeing language for its creation and use, language is used at its full potential when spoken, language is so important to humans, we use language to express, to think and communicate within the world we live. Language has changed over time, it is thought that at one time we had one original language that was spoken, and “as different human groups spread across the world and communicated only with each other, the original language changed in different ways in different places” (Gee, P,. & Hayes, E. (2011). pg 8), because of these changes, and socialisation of different humans, we now have many diverse human languages. Language has changed and will continue to

Structuralism is a philosophy that views society as composed of structures such as class and race that shape our lives, making it challenging for all individuals to have access to equal opportunities. Thus, it is focused on exposing these structures and investigating power, who has it, who doesn’t and what we can do to change this often by way of advocacy, actions, and campaigns, strive for social change (J. Poole, personal communication, September 13, 2017).

BA#3 “Lost in Translation” by Lera Boroditsky is aimed at persuading the audience that meaning changes from language to language due the different structures within those languages. The most likely audience are a more technical type of people who are interested in philosophy, want to learn a new language, and, or are already multilingual. Borodisky anticipates the objection of “just because people talk differently doesn't necessarily mean they think differently” by pointing out that “in the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk . . . [and] ask whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language.”

With representation, constructionists argue we use signs, organized into languages of different kinds, to communicate with others (O 'Shaughnessy & Stadler , 2012, p. 406). Languages can use signs to symbolize, stand for or reference objects, people and events within reality (Hall, 1997, p. 25). Meanings are constructed through signifying practices (O 'Shaughnessy & Stadler , 2012, p. 406), but we cannot

Famous American anthropologist and social theorist Clyde Kluckholm , claims in one of his publication that “Every language is also a special way of looking at the world and interpreting experience concealed in the structure of language are a whole set of unconscious assumptions about the world and the life in it”(Writing logically, Thinking critically 7th edition P 35). Based on this theory, we can learn more

In sociology, there are three major theories. These theories are Structural Functionalism, Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interaction. There are many people who have influenced all three of these theories. Although not all of these theories are still used much now, the thoughts and views that emerged from these theories are still referenced to this day. Ideas used in these theories helped shape new theories and teach us a lot about understanding society and what shapes it.

The events that had occurred during WW2 in Poland clearly support the structuralist historian’s argument. Structuralist historians in this

Ever since slavery was abolished, there has been a continuous struggle in the United States between African Americans and Caucasians involving social class, poverty and equality. Although blacks have suffered terribly in the past, they are still commonly looked down upon and even placed in a lower class category. The struggle over slavery opened to flood gates to the Civil War, Reconstruction, segregation, Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement and is still something we are overcoming as a Nation.

Well Mrs. Sawyer, when considering Dr. Titchner’s work, I would have to say it is the lack of individuality that has created structuralism’s downfall. You see, Dr. Titchner focuses on reducing the experiences of the mind to several thousand sensory images. These images are then applied to every individual within the universe. This application de-individualizes the mindful process of experience, and fails to acknowledge that no two experiences are alike; nor are they the same for

Linguistic relativity is the notion that language can affect our thought processes, and is often referred to as the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’, after the two linguists who brought the idea into the spotlight. Whorf writes how “Language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity” (1956:212), and I will explain how it is able to do so. In this essay I will argue that certain ways of mental categorization, spatial cognition and reality interpretation, based on the characteristics of our specific variety of language, influence our perception of the world. I will discuss how languages divide up nature differently, and

Key features of language include its words and their sub structures such as morphemes, graphemes and syllables at the writing level as well as reading or speaking, words, their meanings and contexts in which the words get spoken or read. Language has to be interpreted as a whole, and not just as the specific word. There must be an explicit pattern or structure. In order for language to be understood correctly, the meaning of words must be arranged in a given context. This is what constructs language; even though words are arbitrary themselves, in order to integrate as a language, they must be used in the appropriate context. This pre-established cultural context is what will enable effective communication. (Daniel Willingham, 2007, p. 1).

Throughout twenty-centuries ago, writers thought that ordinary language and literary language were two different languages. But this is an analytical assumption. There is only one language, which

Linguistics has impacted cognitive psychology as the quest to understand language acquisition and the structure of language itself is undertaken. Linguistics is a complex and multifaceted; it includes language structural patterns and language development (Barsalou, 2005). The process of language development is complicated and dense, as the study of language is examined; the role of cognition is inherently examined and analyzed. Sternberg (2006) also explores language as an innate process and presents the idea that humans are born ready for language as a biological and cognitive process.

He seeks to find underlying similarities across these “distinct” languages, to construct a general theory of a singular language. However, it seems as though he cannot be scientifically vindicated without the groundwork being laid down by many of the authors that he is critical of. Thus, it is particularly interesting that Chomsky seems to be so at odds with the idea of descriptivism. When Chomsky says, “Grammar should not be merely a record of the data of usage, but, rather, should offer an explanation for such data,” (587) he is acknowledging the usefulness, presumably to his own theories, of descriptive linguistics. He in fact recognizes the debt he owes when he says, “To me, it seems that [structural linguistics'] major achievement is to have provided a factual and a methodological basis that makes it possible to return to the problems that occupied the traditional universal grammarians...” (590) But he goes on to say, “On the other hand, it seems to me that the substantive contributions to the theory of language structure are few, and that, to a large extent, the concepts of modern linguistics constitute a retrogression as compared with universal grammar.” (590) Where the descriptivists see an end, Chomsky sees only the means, and is somewhat dismissive of them.

Originally from the Germanic fōt, and used to describe the lowest extremity of the human form, the link was made around the 1300s to describe imagined ‘feet’ of objects such as the foot of the hill . This can also be shown in words of a similar lexical field, such as head, linking to head of the table etcetera. The fact these words are related and their new meanings are linked would have been significant to Stephen Ullmann. Whilst several scholars have attempted to theorise the nature of semantics, it is Ulmann ‘s structuralism approach (1957, 1962) that is most recently notable. His belief was that words can be divided into semantic fields and if a word fell into the same field as one whose meaning had changed, the former word’s change could be predicted to be similar . Whilst there are flaws in Ulmann’s theory (such as it is difficult to differentiate between why a word changes and how it changes in a lexical field), it can be applied to situations where the metaphorical link exists over an extended period of time. A key established example of a semantic field cited by George Walkden is that of time as money . In this case a stimulus- the saying ‘time is money’ - has prompted growth of multiple meanings of cost, spend and borrow in recent years, relating not only to financial transactions but also gains and losses in time. A further example is the word wit. Whilst it stemmed from the Old English gewit(t), it was centered around the