Theories Linguistiques Contemporaines Et Approche Communicative

UNIVERSITE FELIX HOUPHOUET BOIGNY DE COCODY-ABIDJAN

THEORIES LINGUISTIQUES CONTEMPORAINES ET APPROCHE COMMUNICATIVE

Document de cours

MASTER 1

AGBA YOBOUE KOUADIO MICHEL, Maître de Conférences 01/01/2020

Ce document conçu à partir d’écrits d’auteurs reconnus dans le domaine de l’enseignement- apprentissage des langues, traite des stratégies d’apprentissage des langues. C’est un condensé de l’état des connaissances les théories linguistiques contemporaines et l’approche communicative. Il traite des courants structuraliste, générativiste, fonctionnaliste et des principes théoriques et pratiques de l’approche communicative UNIVERSITE FELIX HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY DE COCODY-ABIDJAN FACULTY OF LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND CIVILISATIONS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH-MASTER 1 Specialty : Language Didactics (Didactique de la Langue Anglaise) DLA Academic Year: 2019-2020 Semester: 1 Course Title : contemporary linguistic theories and communicative approaches Prerequisite : L3 courses Duration : 30hours Lecture Instructor : Pr AGBA Yoboué Kouadio Michel

Course Aim The aim of this course is to instruct students on contemporary linguistic theories and the communicative approach to language teaching and learning. The course focuses on the key principles of these theories, their limitations and their relations with the communicative approaches.

Specific Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course students will be able to: - demonstrate a good knowledge of the major contemporary linguistic theories and the communicative approaches - appropriately explain their key ideas and principles - critically analyze and compare them - discuss current issues in linguistics and foreign language and instruction

Course Schedule

Sessions Course content Tasks/activities Materials/Sources Structuralism: Through explanations in plenary o European School of the students are instructed on structuralism and the structuralism and it various Booklet and other Session 1 Saussurean model. trends. This will involve a readings on linguistic o American discussion between instructor theories. structuralism an Bloomfield. and students and student- student discussion. - Generativism The Through explanations in plenary Booklet and other Chomskyan revolution; the students are instructed Session 2 readings on linguistic - deep vs surface generativist, mainly on structures . theories. Chomsky’s major ideas.

- ‘Functionalism Through explanations in plenary Booklet and other o The circle of Pragues the students are enlightened on readings on Session 3 o Functional linguistics functionalism with a focus on contemporary in Britain. the circle of Pragues and British linguistic theories functional linguists.

Teacher and students mention Booklet and other Current issues in linguistic and discuss issues related to readings on Session 6 theories and language linguistic theories and language contemporary instruction instruction. linguistic theories.

Assignment:

How do the three major trends in linguistics relate to the communicative approach?

No more than 30 lines.

Please note that the course activities may be subject to variation.

GradingProcedures: Grades for the different credit will be based on:

 Assignment (40 %)  Final exam(60 %)  Passing grade: 10/20

 Readings o Allen, J.P.B and Van Burn, Paul (1971). Chomsky: Selected Reading. London: OPU Chomsky, N (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton o Chomsky, N (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. USA: MITs o Chomsky, N (1986). Knowledge of language: Its Origin, Nature, and Use. Westport: Greenwood o Chomsky, N (2000). Chomsky on Miseducation. Oxford Huddleston, Rodney (1976). An Introduction to English Transformational Syntax. Longman Searle, o Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1985). Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. o Joseph, J.E. (1994) ‘Twentieth-Century Linguistics: Overview of Trends’, in R.E. Asher (Editor-in-Chief), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. IX, Oxford: Pergamon. o Kirsten Malmkjær (2010) The Routlege linguistic encyclopedia (Third Edition) . Rourlege. USA/CANADA o Matthews, P.H. (1993) Grammatical Theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, no. 67), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. o Morpurgo Davies, A. (1998) History of Linguistics, Vol. IV, edited by G. Lepschy, London: o R.John (1972). Chomsky‟s Revolution in Linguistics. The New York Review 220 of Books Schmitt, N., ed. (2002). An introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold.

LINGUISTIC THEORIES AND THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

Three ‘mainstream’ approaches to linguistics in the twentieth century have emerged: structuralism, functionalism and generativism.  Structuralism According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Structuralism is ―an approach to linguistics which stresses the importance of language as a system and which investigates the place that linguistic unit such as sounds, words, have within this system‖.

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, called as the father of modern traditional linguist, is widely respected as the founder of structuralism. He is a major modern linguist who made preparations for structuralism. Saussure affirmed the validity and necessity of diachronic approaches used by former linguists and then introduced the new synchronic approach, drawing linguists’ attention to the nature and composition of language and its constituent parts. That is to say, Saussure holds that language is a highly organic unity with internal and systematic rules. Structuralist assumptions:  introspection should not be employed in linguistic research (since it’s subjective);  linguistic analysis should be limited to those phenomena that are directly observable; language is a social behavior that serves the purpose of communication;  induction is the best analytical method;  linguistic research must be based on objective discovery procedures (logical positivism): distribution tests, taxonomy;  limitless diversity principle: natural languages may differ in an unpredictable way; there are no universals;  each level of language (phonology, morphology, syntax) should be analyzed independently (autonomous approach);  Language is a sum total of all utterances that are produced in a given community.

Structuralism in linguistics has two interpretations: one derived from Saussure ( the representative of the European school) , and the other from the American school founded by Boas. o European School of structuralism Saussure sought to understand language through analysis of sounds and their impact on the nervous system. Saussure’s several distinctions laid down great foundation for later research. They are langue and parole, synchronically and diachronically (i.e. historically).  The Saussurean model In his Cours de linguistique générale Saussure famously compared language to chess, pointing out that the design of the pieces and their names are structurally irrelevant: they can take any form agreed between the participants provided only that each side starts with sixteen pieces divided into six contrasting categories, with the correct number of units in each category. The game may then proceed according to a system of agreed rules known to each player. This analogy demonstrates clearly the distinction between the surface phenomenon of ‘a game’ and the underlying system of categories and the rules for their deployment which together constitute ‘chess’. Perhaps the most important point Saussure wanted to make is that each component of the system is defined by reference to its distinctive place in the system: change one element and the entire system is affected. Removing the bishop, for instance, would destroy ‘chess’, but a different game might emerge if the new bishopless system were agreed by all participants. Similarly, language is an arbitrary system of rules and categories that works by virtue of a ‘social contract’ tacitly accepted by all speakers, a socially sustained agreement to call a rose ‘a rose’. Given the chess analogy, we can understand why Saussure’s first step towards a theory of language is to draw a basic distinction between instances of language in use (parole) and the underlying language system (langue) (the French terms have no exact equivalents in English and typically remain untranslated in accounts of Saussure’s work). Linguistic structure lies at the heart of langue and is the primary concern of linguistics (cf. Saussure 1916/1974/1983: chapter 3). Saussure goes on to characterize langue as a ‘social fact’, that is a socially sanctioned system of signs each of which represents a conventionalized (‘arbitrary’) fusion of sound (the signifier) and meaning (the signified). Since the significance of a sign derives from its relationships with other signs in the system, it has no meaning ‘on its own’. The meaning of the signifier house in English, for instance, is that it contrasts with flat, tower block, etc., and each language determines its system of contrasts in a different way. The 5 same is true for sounds: /p/ is a significant sound in English because it contrasts with /b/, /f/, etc. What is important is the total system, not the component ‘bits’. Langue is not, however, merely a bundle of signs; it is a structured system of relations organized in terms of two contrasting axes. The first is a ‘horizontal’ (syntagmatic) axis along which signs are combined into sequences. Saussure declined to call these sequences ‘sentences’, since for him a sentence was an instance of parole (a unit that would probably be called an ‘utterance’ today). In addition, each point in the sequence represents a (more or less tightly constrained) choice of alternatives on a ‘vertical’ (‘associative’) axis. This two-dimensional framework became a central feature of structural linguistics (with ‘paradigmatic’ replacing the term ‘associative’). The final point of importance in this thumbnail sketch of a complex work is Saussure’s emphatic rejection of the notion that language is a nomenclature, i.e. a set of labels for pre- existing categories ‘in the real world’. Quite the opposite – linguistic systems impose their structures on the world and each language ‘sees the outside world’ in a unique way. This does not mean that speakers are ‘prisoners’ of their linguistic categories, but it does mean that all languages are different (a cardinal principle of structuralism) and a special effort is needed to understand the categories of a new one. Saussure's Course influenced many linguists in the period between WWI and WWII. In America, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics.

Bloomfield ( 1923) acknowledged that Saussure had ‘given us the theoretical basis for a science of human speech’, but noting also that he differed from Saussure ‘chiefly in basing my analysis on the sentence rather than on the word’ (Bloomfield 1923: 319). This was to become a major point of difference between Saussurean and American linguistics, including Chomsky’s (1964: 23ff.).

o American structuralism In writing his Introduction to the Handbook of American Indian Languages, Franz Boas aimed to produce a scientific study as free from prejudice and preconception as possible and dedicated to an objective and positive approach to the practical work in hand. Thus the most emblematic of structuralist themes: respect the data and let it speak for itself. He pointed out The first task of linguistics was to provide objectively accurate phonetic descriptions on

6 the principle that ‘every single language has a definite and limited group of sounds’ (1911: 12). Later this was to become the phoneme principle. Other basic principles included: o All languages are different: ‘in a discussion of the characteristics of various languages, different fundamental categories will be found’ (Boas 1911: 39). Boas provides a memorable set of examples which must have come as a shock to readers used only to the predictabilities of a few Indo-European languages. o ‘Give each language its proper place’ (Boas 1911: 39), i.e. do not impose preconceived categories on the data – including categories derived from other …languages. o The sentence is the basic unit of language: ‘since all speech is intended to serve for the communication of ideas, the natural unit of expression is the sentence’ (Boas 1911: 23). The positivist, data-led ground rules of American structuralism had been laid; much later Bloomfield picked up the same themes in a famous structuralist dictum, ‘the only useful generalizations about language are inductive generalizations (Bloomfield 1935: 20). Bloomfield's approach to linguistics was characterized by its emphasis on the scientific basis of linguistics, adherence to behaviorism especially in his later work, and emphasis on formal procedures for the analysis of linguistic data. Bloomfield published his Langue in 1933 in which he argues that linguistics needs to be more objective it is to become a real scientific discipline. He believed that the main target of linguistic inquiry should be the observable phenomena rather than abstract cognitive processes. He thus advocated for the establishment of exact descriptive methods through which the use of linguistics could be elevated to the level of a positive discipline. His language work attempted to lay down rigorous procedures for the description of any language. He established clear principles that soon became generally accepted such as: - language study must always be centered on spoken language as against written documents. - The definitions used in grammar should be based on the forms of the language, not on the meanings of the forms. - a given language at a given time is a complete system of sounds and forms that exist independently of te past, so that the history of the form does not explain its actual meaning. 7

Leonard Bloomfield is widely respected as one of the best linguists of the last century and one of the best of all time as well. s. His best known publication Language dealing with a standard text gave a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and followers. Until very recently most American linguists considered themselves Bloomfield's disciples in some sense. Whether they studied or learned from him or not, many of their linguistic works have taken the form of working out questions raised by Bloomfield. And methods they adopted are just those suggested by him too. Bloomfield invented immediate constitute analysis (IC analysis) to dissect a sentence into small parts. e. g. for this sentence, handsome Jackie Chang is a famous actor. We can treat it in the following way by using IC analysis: The first analysis: Handsome Jackie Chang∕is a famous boxer.

The second analysis: Handsome ∥ Jackie Chang∕is a∥ famous boxer.

The third analysis: Handsome ∥ Jackie Chang∕is∕∕∕ a∥ famous∕∕∕ boxer. If a sentence is longer, this process can continually go on. No matter how long a sentence is, by adopting IC analysis, it can be divided into the different smallest constitutes which make the sentence. In this way, the different constitutes of a sentence can be examined. And it proves that a language is a system of symbolic structures.

 Bloomfield’s behaviourism

•Objective events are behaviours > Only behaviour is publicly observable > Only behaviour has scientific existence. •Bloomfield was convinced that human behaviour in general, including linguistic behaviour, was the result of repeated experiences of stimulus co-occurrences.

•Bloomfield’s theory about the speech situation: Famous example of Jack and Jill walking down a lane: Jake and Jill are walking down a lane when Jill realizes that she is hungry. Having seen an apple in a tree she produces special sounds using her larynx, tongue and lips. Then Jack climbs the tree to get the apple and gives it to Jill who finally eats it.

•The incident consists of three parts, in order of time:

• A. Practical events preceding the act of speech. (speaker’s stimulus)

• B. Speech.

• C. Practical events following the act of speech. (hearer’s response)

•Mechanism: Instead of trying to get the apple by herself, i.e. performing the practical reaction R as a consequence of her stimulus S, Jill performed the speech reaction as a substitute reaction. Bloomfield symbolizes this so-called linguistic substitute reaction by a small letter r. The symbolic expression then is the following one: S >>>------> r.

Hearing this linguistic substitute reaction of Jill, Jack fetched the apple and gave it to Jill. The hearing acted as a speech stimulus on Jack. Therefore the linguist calls this kind of stimulus linguistic substitute stimulus and symbolizes it by a small letter s: s >>>------> R.

•Reaction mediated by speech: S >>>-----> r ….. s >>>------> R.

•That means: A practical stimulus received by one person leads to a linguistic substitute reaction. This linguistic substitute reaction is the linguistic substitute stimulus for another person who reacts to this kind of stimulus with a practical reaction.

•Bloomfield’s conclusion: "Language enables one person to make a reaction (R) when another person has the stimulus (S). … The division of labor, and, with it, the whole working of human society, is due to language."

 Bloomfield’s concept of meaning

We say that speech-utterance, trivial and unimportant in itself, is important because it has a meaning: the meaning consists of the important things with which the speech utterance (B) is connected, namely the practical events (A and C). •Bloomfield finally can not explain the mechanisms that occur between the different stimuli and reactions, i.e. it is not possible to foretell how a person will react to a certain stimulus. •Two theories that suppose different solutions to this problem:

•1) The mentalistic theory: It supposes that the variability of human conduct is due to the interference of some non-physical factor, a spirit or will or mind that is present in every human being. The reason why we cannot foretell a person’s actions is that this mind or will does not follow cause-and-effect sequences of the material world.

•2) The materialistic (or, better, mechanistic) theory: It supposes that the variability of human conduct, including speech, is due only to the fact that the human body is a very complex system. This theory argues that human actions are part of cause-and-effect sequences in the same way as actions studied in physics or chemistry. However, due to the complexity of the human body and especially of its nervous system one cannot foretell human actions either.

•Bloomfield: Human knowledge in his time was too small to understand this complexity. 9

The influence of Bloomfieldian structural linguistics declined in the late 1950s and 1960s as the theory of generative grammar developed by Noam Chomsky came to predominate.

 Generativism Generativism is associated so closely with Noam Chomsky that it is often referred to (despite his disapproval) as ‘the Chomskyan revolution’. In 1957, he published his syntactic structures, which marked the beginning of the Chomskyan Revolution. By observing that some important facts had never been analyzed adequately, Chomsky gave an innateness hypothesis. First, children acquire language competence very fast and with almost no effort. It has been universally acknowledged that children become fluent speakers of their native language by the age of five. A child never seems to make conscious, intentional, painstaking efforts in acquiring his native language as in learning any other subject, such as mathematics or physics. What’s more, one amazing phenomenon is that the first language acquisition unconditionally takes place without any intentional or explicit teaching of it. And the language a child hears is often not necessarily the most standard of the language he or she is acquiring. What is that which enables a child retain those correct expressions and avoid what is not proper in the language? In terms of the stages of language acquisition, all children usually follow the same stages: the babbling stage, nonsense word stage, holophrastic stage, two-word utterance, developing grammar, near-adult grammar, and full competence. In terms of the correctness of grammar, a child can not only produce and understand sentences he has heard, but also sentences he has never come across before. Chomsky believes that language competence is somewhat innate, and that our children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), or language competence, which fit children for language learning. LAD is supposed to consist of three elements: a hypothesis-maker, linguistic universal, and an evaluation procedure. Chomsky further put out a new theory, ―generave grammar‖. By this, he simply means ―a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences‖ (Hu, 2002, p. 724). That is Chomsky believes that every child of a language is proficient in and internalized a kind of generative grammar that proves his knowledge of his first language. And the theory of generative grammar experience altogether five periods

10 from the beginning until the later theories, which has really brought life to structuralism in the later half of last century, helped it to go on. Chomsky’s work has always been motivated by a single goal: to explain human language acquisition. Many of the changes mentioned above were expressly designed to help account for the acquisition process by offering simpler procedures in tune with the innate capacities of the acquirer. Chomsky’s response has been to postulate the existence in each human of what he calls universal grammar (UG), a set of genetically determined principles that define the nature of language and determine the course of acquisition. It has nothing to do with the specifics of particular languages, which are acquired through contact with data in the environment. The final outcome of the acquisition process is a system of (tacit) knowledge (‘competence’ is Chomsky’s term) that can be put to use in social communication, private thought, expression, and so on, activities that Chomsky categorises as ‘language performance’. The competence/ performance distinction (first put forward in Aspects in 1965) is reminiscent of Saussure’s langue/ parole contrast, but the choice of terms is psychological, not linguistic. ‘Competence’ seems an odd synonym for ‘knowledge’ (Chomsky himself has agreed), but ‘performance’ is an effective label, though typically described in rather negative terms, as the source of memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and errors of various kinds that prevent the true reflection of underlying competence. Like langue for Saussure, competence is the ultimate focus of linguistic theory, which is defined by Chomsky in his most famous quotation as being ‘concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by [performance limitations]’ (1965: 3). How the ideal speaker-listener interacts with the actual language acquirer has been at the heart of the Chomskyan research programme since 1965.

In contrast to American structuralism, Chomsky’s theory is therefore characterized by:  Mentalism: language is a mental (rather than social) phenomenon; linguistic competence is not shaped as a reaction to external stimuli. Language is not a means of communication! It has evolved to formulate thoughts, and not to communicate them. It can be used for communicative purposes, in the same way as any other aspect of human activity (e.g. hairstyle).

Linguistic theory should focus on I-language (internal/mental language), and not E- language (external/social language). What is interesting is competence, and not performance. E-language should be viewed as an intersection of many I-languages. The existence of such intersections enables communication (but this does not mean that people can communicate because they use the same language). E-language is a political/artificial entity . To say that two idiolects belong to the same E-language is as imprecise as to say that two towns are ‘close’ to each other (‘closeness’ is not a geographical/scientific notion). Grammar should be a model that imitates I-language (the ability to produce and understand an infinite number of infinitely long sentences). A linguist can rely on introspection when analyzing his native language. Native intuition (and not a corpus, which is never exhaustive) is crucial in determining (un)grammaticality.  Deductive reasoning (from general principles to specific conclusions) is preferred to inductive reasoning (from a large number of particular examples to a general rule). The aim of grammar is to formulate an explicit (precise, unambiguous, formal) description of the implicit (subconscious) human linguistic competence. To generate means to provide a structural description of a sentence, or – in other words – to define an infinite number of sentences by means of a finite set of rules. Grammar must make clear what is grammatical, but also – more importantly – what is ungrammatical. Grammar is a kind of function that enumerates all grammatical sentences within a given I-language (and only those). In other words, grammar should not only be ‘descriptive’, but also ‘explanatory’. It should for example explain why question (ii) below is ungrammatical: (i) Who did John say that he killed? Answer: John said that he killed Adam. (ii) *Who did John kill a linguist that irritated? The structure in (ii) is ungrammatical, although it has a logical answer: Answer: John killed a linguist that irritated Adam.  Universalism: all languages are based on the same set of universal principles (Universal Grammar – UG). UG is determined biologically and distinguishes humans from other primates. It is a product of evolution. Human children are born with a specific representational adaptation for language.

If we assume UG, it must be legitimate to use cross-linguistic data to determine and analyze the structure of any language (all natural languages share the same underlying structure).  Nativism: linguistic competence (I-language) is innate (transmitted genetically). Language is acquired, and not learnt. It doesn’t depend on individual intelligence, which makes it different from cognitive skills such as playing chess. It’s a kind of organ. Linguistic competence makes it possible to acquire any natural language in a relatively short time.  Poverty of the stimulus: grammar is unlearnable given the linguistic data available to children. Therefore, our brains must be genetically ‘programed’ for language. 25 In the process of language acquisition, the innate linguistic competence is parameterized/adjusted to a given natural language. It also gets complemented with a lexicon.  Transformationalism: It can be observed that certain linguistic structures are derivable from other (more basic) structures. The idea of transformations lets us capture this intuition in a formalized way. Thanks to a transformational approach, very complex structures can be analyzed as related to simpler syntactic patterns. Chomsky assumed that there would be considerable similarities between deep structures in various languages (such similarities would be concealed by language- specific surface structures) The surface structure is actually produced structure. It refers to the sentence as it is pronounced or written. The deep structure is the abstract structure that allows the native speaker of a language to know what the sentence means. It may then be said that the deep structure expresses the semantic contents of a sentence, whereas the surface structure of a sentence determines its phonetic form.  Transformation functions as a link between deep structure of sentences and their surface structures. o For example . Surface structure: Visiting doctors can be nuisance. . Deep structure: 1.We visit doctors. It can be nuisance. 2. Doctors visit us. They can be nuisance.

. Surface Structure Systems : Identifying words, reading fluently Grapho-Phonic System : Letter/sound knowledge, alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, decoding Lexical System Visual word recognition based on frequent visual exposure to words Visual memory for all words Syntactic System Understanding of language structures at the word, sentence, paragraph and whole text level (usually auditory)  Deep Structure Systems: - Comprehend literally to get the gist of the story, - comprehend deeply and probe ideas - Semantic System : Understanding word meanings from literal to subtle, discuss and write about experiences/associations related to words, precision and word choice in writing . - Schematic System : Constructing meaning at the whole text level; understanding themes, ideas and concepts, storing and retrieving relevant knowledge, connecting the new to the known - Pragmatic System: Multiple experiences with ideas we’ve read or learned; sharing and applying meaning; constructing meaning through oral, written, artistic, and dramatic means; writing for specific purposes and audiences; revising thinking based on interactions with others; adopting the habits and mores of readers and writers

 Functionalism While generativism reformulated structuralism without changing fundamentals such as the centrality of the sentence, functionalism transformed it by restoring an aspect of linguistic organization that had been set on one side by the emphasis on form. Form and function have long been traditional partners in the business of accounting for language and its use, form being concerned with the establishment of categories and function with the relations between them. In an English sentence like The cat caught the mouse, for example, the cat and the mouse have the same form (noun phrases) – but different functions: The cat functions as the subject of the sentence and the mouse as the object of the verb. ‘Function’ can be extended to cover notional distinctions: the cat, being animate, functions as the agent of the catching, while the mouse as the one affected by the catching functions as the ‘patient’. Functionalism can be said to have had two godparents, both European: (i) the Linguistic Circle of Prague (1926–39), and (ii) the linguists of the so-called ‘London School’. 14

o The Linguistic Circle of Prague (1926–39) The principal aim of the linguists of the Prague Circle was to explore Saussurean structuralism and make proposals for its extension. Their best-known work is Trubetzkoy’s Principles of Phonology,. Following Saussure, Trubetzkoy was the first to distinguish systematically between phonetics (parole) and phonology (langue), placing the distinction in a functional context: ‘phonology of necessity is concerned with the linguistic function of the sounds of language, while phonetics deals with their phenomenalistic aspect without regard to function’ (Trubetzkoy 1939/1969: 12), the best-known instance of this principle being the phoneme and its contrastive function in distinguishing between different words, e.g., pin and tin in English. The characterization of the phoneme itself as a ‘bundle of distinctive features’ also derived from Prague and was taken to America by Jakobson in 1942 and incorporated in publications with Morris Halle and others, including Fundamentals of Language (1956). At the other end of the scale so to speak was the functional approach to text introduced by Karl Bühler who proposed a threefold classification which distinguished between a central ‘representational’ function concerned with the content of the text, together with a contrasting pair of functions: ‘expressive’ relating to the speaker/writer and ‘conative’ to the listener/reader. Bühler’s was the first of many such schemes which later influenced both Jacobson and Halliday. Somewhere between the micro-functions of sentence components and the macro-functions of textual design, the Prague School founded an important line of research which came to be known as ‘functional sentence perspective’ (FSP), aimed at identifying systematic relationships between linguistic units and features of text structure. It was specifically concerned with the way in which successive sentences in texts are constructed in order to reflect the developing pattern of information: what is ‘new information’ (theme) in one sentence, for instance, becomes ‘given information’ (theme) in a later one and each language has its own way of signaling these relationships. o Functional linguistics in Britain The main British contribution to scientific language study focused on phonetics,. The founding of the School of Oriental Studies (SOS) in 1916 expanded the range of expertise in the linguistic sciences considerably. 15

Bronislaw Malinowski, an anthropologist with an interest in language developed a functional repertoire of text types. His principal theoretical contribution was a notion that became closely associated with London linguistics: the context of situation, without knowledge of which he argued, no coherent account of the meaning of spoken utterances was possible. In a detailed example based on a narrative describing the return home of a canoe, a key phrase literally translatable as ‘we paddle in place’ could only be understood properly as ‘we arrived’ if you knew that paddles replaced oars in the shallow water near the shore, i.e. the context of situation imposed a meaning on the text that in isolation it did not possess. For Malinowski this interdependence between contextual meaning and linguistic form was crucial. Writing in 1950, Firth expanded the notion of ‘context of situation’ into a schematic construct, as he called it (Firth 1950/1957b), and one of the major themes that he drew from it was the importance of language variation in context, an idea that later became known as ‘register’. In fact the investigation of ‘meaning’ in all its manifestations is at the heart of Firth’s work, but it was only with Halliday (from 1961 onwards) that the crucial interrelationship between meaning and its linguistic realization began to find a systematic foundation. Halliday’s contribution to late twentieth-century linguistics is immensely generous. He insists, following Firth, that language must be studied in an integrated, unified manner without the intervention of a langue/parole distinction (cf. Firth 1950/1957b: 180–1). Instead, linguistics must study language as ‘part of the social process’ (Firth 1950/1957b: 181) or as ‘social semiotic’ (Halliday 1978). More specifically, the linguist must attempt to make explicit and systematic statements on the choices people make within the linguistic systems at their disposal (‘textual function’) in response to their social (‘interpersonal function’) and cognitive (‘ideational function’) needs. The three functions (or ‘metafunctions’) provide the basic architecture of the approach within which the key concept is the network (or system) of choices. Taken together, these features explain the use of ‘systemic-functional linguistics’ as the name for his approach. As Halliday says in his Introduction to Functional Grammar (1985/1994: xvi–xvii), his early work concentrated on the importance of meaning in language, since he believed the current stress on formal syntax was undervaluing it, but later his emphasis shifted as he felt that the formal properties of language were being neglected in a rush for meaning. The interdependence between the two is the bedrock principle of his work. 16

Halliday described language as a semiotic system, "not in the sense of a system of signs, but a systemic resource for meaning".For Halliday, language was a "meaning potential"; by extension, he defined linguistics as the study of "how people exchange meanings by 'languaging'". Halliday's grammar differs markedly from traditional accounts that emphasize classification of individual words (e.g. noun, verb, pronoun, preposition) in formal, written sentences in a restricted number of "valued" varieties of English. Halliday's model conceives grammar explicitly as how meanings are coded into wordings, in both spoken and written modes in all varieties and registers of a language. Three strands of grammar operate simultaneously. They concern: (i) the interpersonal exchange between speaker and listener, and writer and reader; (ii) representation of our outer and inner worlds; and (iii) the wording of these meanings in cohesive spoken and written texts, from within the clause up to whole texts.[6] Notably, the grammar embraces intonation in spoken language. Halliday's seminal Introduction to Functional Grammar (first edition, 1985) spawned a new research discipline and related pedagogical approaches.

. Systemic-Functional Linguistics

Systemic-Functional Linguistics also called critical linguistics (Fairclough, 1992; Pennycook, 2001) is an approach to language developed by Halliday (1985).. SFL does not address how language is processed or represented within the brain, but rather looks at the text produced (whether spoken or written) and its contexts. As it concerns with language use, SFL places more emphasis on language function (what it is used for) than on language structure (how it is composed). SFL starts at social context, looks at how language acts upon it and is constrained by it (O’Donnell, 2011: 2).

A central notion in SFL is stratification in which language is analyzed based on four strata: context, semantics, lexico-grammar, and phonology-graphology.

 Context: From SFL point of view, language can only be understood in relation to its environment of use. The environment of language seen as texts and their component parts is called the context of situation, whereas the environment of language seen as a system (its lexical items and grammatical categories) is the context of culture (Halliday, 1978). As Halliday (1978: 10) points out, “the context of situation is a theoretical construct for explaining how a text

17 relates to the social processes within which it is located”. Context of situation consists of field, tenor, and mode. First, Field refers to what the talk or the text is about. Examples of typical field are science, education, war, medicine, sports and specific fields are biology, microbiology, language education, English language education, etc. Second, Tenor refers the people involved in the communication and the relationships between them. This includes: Power relations (e.g. unequal: doctor/patient, teacher/student, equal: friend/friend, student/student), formality (formal/informal), closeness (distant/neutral/close). Third, Mode refers to what part the language is playing in the interaction and what form does it take (spoken or written). It includes Role (Ancillary: language accompanying nonverbal activity, as when we talk as we cook together or constitutive: the event is defined by the language, as in a speech), Channel: written vs. spoken, or some mix, directionality: uni-directional channel or bi-directional (unidirectional allows only monologue, while a bi-directional channel allows dialogue), Media: +/-visual contact (e.g., -visual for a telephone conversation); use of multimedia (video, powerpoint, etc.), Preparation: spontaneous vs. prepared; rushed vs. time for reflection (O’Donnell, 2011).

 Semantics: Semantics in SLF includes pragmatics. Halliday (1985) developed a theory of the fundamental functions of language. The SFL semantic component is construed of three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. First, ideational metafunction (the propositional content) is about the natural world in the broadest sense. In informal terms it refers to the content of the message. It is concerned with the processes involved (i.e. actions, events or states, entities) and the circumstances within which they take place. Second, interpersonal metafunction is about the social world, especially the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, and is concerned with clauses as exchange. It includes speech function, exchange structure, expression of attitude, etc.). Third, textual metafunction is about the verbal world, especially the flow of information in a text, and is concerned with clauses as messages. It deals with how the text is structured as a message, involving thematic structure, information structure, and cohesion (Halliday (1985). Fifth, lexico-grammar is a term peculiar to FLF to describe the continuity between grammar and lexis. For many linguists, these phenomena are discrete. But Halliday brings them together with this term, he describes the relation of grammar to lexis as one of a cline and delicacy. He states 'The grammarian's dream is...to

18 turn the whole of linguistic form into grammar, hoping to show that lexis can be defined as "most delicate grammar" (1961). The term lexico-grammar has two distinct but related notions: (1) the typical lexical and grammatical environment of a sign as it is habitually used in naturally occurring texts or ‘discourse’, and (2) the core stratum of ‘wording’ in Halliday’s model of language, which serves to mediate between the lower stratum of ‘sounding’ (graphology/phonology) and higher ‘meaning’ (semantics/discourse) (Halliday, 1961, Fries et al. 2002, Halliday & Matthiessen 2004). . The Role of SFL in Language Education

SFL has had much influence in education in various parts of the world (Connor, 1996) and its influence is most prominent in teaching writing (Wells, 1999) and critical discourse analysis (Faircoulgh, 1995). Its contribution to language education is centred on its relevance to the explanation and interpretation of texts. It is therefore the primary 'learning outcome' of courses in SFL will be an awareness of the role of lexicogrammar (the integrated system of grammar and lexis) in the production and negotiation of the social meanings that are realized in both spoken and written texts. Systemic Functional Linguistics highlights the relationship between language, text and context. SFL is both a theory of language and a methodology for analysing texts and their contexts of use. Due to its dual nature, SFL aims to explain how individuals use language and how language is structured for its different usages (Eggins, 1994). With regards to language education, Lock (1996: 1) states “systemic functional perspective does not focus on the distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical linguistic forms, but rather on the appropriateness of each lexico-gramatical choice for a particular communicative purpose in a particular social context”. In learning a foreign language the learners are expected to develop the ability to communicate effectively with other speakers or writers of the new language. To do so, they need a grammatical descriptionof the language that goes beyond listing forms and structures and includes a description of the available linguistic resources and of how they are used in social interactions. Systemic functional linguistics is particularly adequate for the task since it conceives: “The grammar of a language as a resource for making and exchanging meanings. A functional grammar is therefore the kind of grammar most likely to have useful things to say to language learners and teachers” (Lock, 1996: 3). Since SFL is interested in explaining how people use language in everyday life and how language is structured according to its different forms of usage, the notion of context is central in this approach.

From a systemic point of view, language can only be understood in relation to its environment of use, and this premise is particularly evident in the language classroom, where both spoken and written texts should not be interpreted in isolation from their contexts of production and circulation. According to SFL, the environment of language seen as texts is the context of situation, whereas the environment of language seen as a system is the context of culture (Halliday, 1978). Halliday (1978) argues for the importance of the context in language education based on the unique role played by language in the learning process. Here language functions as substance, instrument, and object. A substance means learning a language, be it a native language or foreign language. An instrument means learning through language, which applies to all fields of knowledge and to all educational levels. And an object means learning about language such as its grammar, genres, registers, word formation, etc. If all kinds of learning are mediated through language, what is the specific role of language in language education? The answer comes from Halliday is that in the environment of language teaching/learning there is an inseparable relationship between language as medium of learning (as in developing oral proficiency, for instance), and language as the substance of what is being taught/learned, as in the process of teaching/learning second or foreign languages, the mother tongue, reading and writing, grammar, etc. In a functional level, what is distinctive about language education is its permanent focus in the context, a context which is outside of language itself (Halliday, 1978). Language plays a three-fold role in language education: (1) in linguistic terms, it is the substance of what is being learned; it is what we have to master in order to perform; (2) in extra-linguistic terms, it is the ‘instrument’ through which we learn, and in that sense it constitutes a resource for learning; and (3) in ‘metalinguistic’ terms it is the object of learning, the content we have to learn about. According to Halliday (1978), what unites these aspects of language education is that learners are expected to create a system, a meaning potential, from the instantiations of language (texts) they are exposed to. And the key to this transformation is the context of situation, that is, “the coherent pattern of activities from which the discourse gains its relevance” (Halliday, 1978: 22). And it is also from the context of situation that the language learner will be able to construe a higher level system−the context of culture. In language educaon, learners have to make predicons in two ways: to predict the text from the context, and to predict the context from the text, and this poses a particular difficulty to second or foreing language learners who are still 20 unfamiliar with the total pattern of the new language: they have to learn from texts produced in a language they have little experience of. In Halliday’s (1978: 23) words, in language education “The learner has to (1) process and produce text; (2) relate it to, and construe from it, the context of situation; (3) build up the potential that lies behind this text and others like it; and (4) relate it to, and construe from it, the context of culture that lies behind that situation and others like it. These are not different components of the process, with separate activities attached to them; they are different perspectives on a single, unitary process.” Considerable emphasis in teaching is therefore given to the exploration of how the functional elements of language structure realize available options from the three general areas of meaning referred to above. Texts may then be analyzed in terms of the range and nature of such options. In the teaching and learning environment this clearly requires a constant alternation between the development of descriptive and analytical skills and their application to a range of text types. A typical exercise might involve, for example, the comparative analysis of lexico-grammatical features in different types of texts.

 Two macro-themes Two themes have played a powerful role in the history of linguistics over the past 150 or so years. Both have to do with the implications of major methodological decisions and their theoretical implications. The first of these themes relates to the imposition of a basic distinction between linguistic systems and language-in-use: Saussure’s langue/ parole distinction is the original one, but Chomsky’s competence/performance contrast is drawn in much the same place on the map. It could also be said that Bloomfeldian structuralism tacitly operated a system/use distinction in the search for ‘patterns’. At the outset, it seems a convenient way of coping with the scope of the material, if nothing more. However, before long the theory-laden abstract ‘sister’ (langue, competence, system, etc.) has moved centre stage and her ordinary, everyday, ‘real-world’ sibling is marginalized. In 1875, Whitney said something rather powerful that may well still be relevant: ‘not one item of any existing tongue is ever uttered except by the will of the utterer; not one is produced, not one that has been produced or acquired is changed, except by causes residing in the human will, consisting in human needs and preferences and economies’ (Whitney 1875). Where has this gone? (cf. Joseph 1994)

Finally, it is appropriate to finish with a restatement of Saussure’s basic aims for linguistics which reflect the second macro-theme of recent linguistic history: the contrast between diversity and universality. This was recognised by Sapir in 1921: ‘There is no more striking general fact about language than its universality’ and ‘scarcely less impressive than the universality of speech is its almost incredible diversity’ (1921: 22–3); and by Saussure in 1916, in a statement of basic aims which is out of date on specifics, but entirely relevant in its general thrust: The aims of linguistics will be: 1. to describe all known languages and record their history (this involves tracing the history of language families and, as far as possible, reconstructing the parent languages of each family); 2. to determine the forces operating permanently and universally in all languages, and to formulate general laws which account for all particular linguistic phenomena historically attested; 3. to delimit and define linguistics itself. (Saussure 1916/1983: 6)

 THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH A communicative approach is an approach which is worldwide known and established it has established itself in many parts of the world as a way of teaching languages, especially English. It is the approach that has prevailed in English Language Teaching over the past 50 years, and it is still used nowadays. The teaching syllabus of communicative language teaching will generally include: (1) The social situations typically for students to use a foreign language. (2) The topics they are likely to address. (3) The language functions they need to use. (4) The vocabulary and grammar structures needed for these functions. (5) The communicative skills required in typical social situations. The origins of the Communicative Approach are to be found in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The linguists Hymes, Chomsky, Wilkins, Van Ek and Alexander, felt that students were not learning the language in the right way. They claimed that they did not learn the ‘whole language’ and realistic language. Students did not know how to communicate outside the classroom in real life situations, using the appropriate social language. So far they were relying on the structures of language instead of relying on functions and notions of language. This made them unable to communicate in the culture of the language studied.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. Communicative language teaching can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom. Communicative competence includes the following aspects of language knowledge: - Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions; - Knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants; −Knowing how to produce and understand diﬀerent types of texts; - knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language knowledge. Communicative Language Teaching thus emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language

 Principles of CLT: - meaning is given prime importance. The main focus of the approach is to make the learners able to understand the intention and expression of the writers and speakers. - it is believed that communicative functions are more important rather than linguistic structures. - the target language is used in the classroom. The target language is a vehicle for class room communication, not just the object of study . - −Appropriate use of language is emphasized rather than accuracy. Accuracy comes at the later stage. - −Language cannot be learnt through rote memorization. It cannot be learnt in isolation. It should be learnt through social interaction. - the major focus is to make the learner able to communicate in the target language. Errors are tolerated by the teacher because what is more important is to make them able to speak in the target language. The teacher should not correct them during the activities in which they are using the target language. The teacher can note the errors of the learners and make it correct after the activities are over. - −CLT provides opportunities to communicate in the target language to the learners. It encourages teacher-student and student-student interaction. It helps to encourage the cooperative relationship among students. The teacher should give work in a 23

group or in pair which give opportunities to share the information among them. It also helps to promote communication among them. Richards and Rodgers state that students are expected to interact with other people, either in the flesh, through pair and group work, or in their writings. - −CLT provides the opportunities to the learners not only about what to say and but also about how to say. - −Teacher should create situations which help to promote communication. He should teach them how language is used in a social context by giving activities such as role play which help the learners to learn the language in social context. - −Language teaching techniques should be designed in such a way that it encourages the learners to use the target language. Functional aspects of language should be given importance. Dramas, role plays, games should be used in the classroom to promote real communication. - −Students should be given opportunities to listen to language as it is used in authentic communication. They may be coached on strategies for how to improve their comprehension

Suggestions for further reading

 Chen, Jianlin. (2000). Organization and Management of Modern English Teaching. Shanghai: Foreign Language Teaching Press.  Cook, Vivian. (2000). Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.  Gao, Qiang; Li Yang. (2006). Review of the Latest Research on Foreign Language Teaching Styles. Foreign Language Teaching, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 53-58.  Hu, Zhuanglin; Jiang Wangqi. (2002). Advanced Linguistics. Beijing: Peking UP. [6]  Richards, Jack. C. (2000). Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. Beijing: Foreign language teaching  Yin, Zhonglai; Zhou Guangya. (1990). Theories and Schools of English Grammar. Chengdu: Sichuan UP.

 Zhou, Sheng. (2003). Study of English Language Test. Chengdu: Sichuan UP