语言与应用语言学教学辅导.

《语言与应用语言学》教学辅导An OverviewThis book contains ten units. The last unit gives the general view about the course and its assessment. It is intended to give you a better idea of what the book is about. But unfortunately the book gives neither clear system of linguistics nor clear titles for each unit, thus causes certain difficulty in students’ understanding and self-study. As a matter of fact:Unit 1: Awareness of Our Language talks about Historical Linguistics;Unit 2: Physical Aspects of Language mainly discusses Phonetics;Unit 3: The Symbolic Nature of Language is about Semantics;Unit 4: Organizing Our Experiences of the Material World is about the basic function of language: naming;Unit 5: Doing Things with Language is about Pragmatics;Unit 6: Managing Interpersonal Relations is also about Pragmatics;Unit 7: Talk, Talk and Talk is about Discourse Analysis;Unit 8: Language in Society is about Social Linguistics;Unit 9: Language, Brain, and Mind is about Psycholinguistics;Unit 10: General Review and Course Assessment: A preface which gives the main idea of the book.Generally speaking, the first nine units can be reorganized into three parts: Part 1, bases of the production of language (the social bases: Unit 1 and the psychological bases: Units 2 and 9); Part II, the nature of language (Unit 3); Part III, the functions of language (Units 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8).Part I Bases of the production of languageI. The social bases: Historical Linguistics (Unit 1)There are different explanations as to the coming into being of language: The Bible and Historical Linguistics. The latter explores from a scientific view the history of human beings and the language. The unit also deals with a nature-nurture controversy about language.A lot of facts on the history of human development with the time are to beremembered in this unit.II.The psychological bases:1)Psycholinguistics or Neurolinguistics (Unit 9)First distinguish between the brain, the mind and the heart; human brain has two nervous systems. Language is controlled by the left hemisphere; there are necessary conditions and sufficient conditions in language acquisition; to acquire a language means a child learns his mother tongue naturally without any effort; to learn a language need s a man’s positive effort.2)Phonetics (Unit 2)This unit deals with some speech organs. There are face-to-face communication and written communication. There are four steps: hit upon an idea ... The production of speech needs three stages: initiation, phonation, and articulators. It is important to remember the names of speech organs matched with pictures: tip, blade, front, center and back of the tongue, hard palate, soft palate, uvula, epiglottis, and teeth.Part II The nature of language (Unit 3)We human beings live in multiple worlds. First there is a physical and tangible world; it is also called a material world. Second, there is a subjective world. It consists of things like feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values, motives, and intentions. No one else can verify them. Furthermore, there is a third symbolic world, that is, the world artificially constructed by symbols. This may be confusing. Simply speaking, the symbolic world is just the world in the books. This shows that words have symbolic functions, because they are used to refer to things found in the three worlds.The sounds of a word, or its spelling or its strokes are to a word as the material, the shape and the size are to a chair. They are material realizations of an abstract word-form with a meaning attached to it. It is the abstract word-form with its meaning and its relation with other words in communication that makes a word a word. This chapter needs to be read more times for better understanding.Part III Functions of LanguageFunction 1: Organizing, i.e. naming and categorizing (Unit 4)Generally speaking, this function means that people use language to name things and categorize them so that everything is organized in good order. This is the process of abstraction.Naming makes a proper name; categorizing makes a concept. So an abstract concept about all the individuals of the same kind is a conceptual meaning; it is stable. An emotional attachment to a symbol/word is an affective meaning; it is changeable.Function 2: One can say a sentence means three things: Speech acts theory (Unit 5)That saying something is doing a speech act means when one says a sentence he has done three acts: A locutionary act, that is the utterance itself; an illocutionary act, that is what the speaker intends to say. The formula is: In saying ... the speaker performed an illocutionary act of -ing (declare, order, congratulate, criticize). At last he is doing a polocutionary act, that is the purpose the speaker attempts to achieve. The formula is: In saying ... the speaker performed an illocutionary act of -ing in order to ...The unit also deals with the analysis of apologizing and accepting.Function 3: People use language to well manage interpersonal relations (Unit 6)First the difference between Chinese lian and mianzi: lian meansself-respect, it is what one needs and wants while mianzi means other-respect, it is what others give you.The analytic mode of lian is:Expectations: ... Actual performance: ... Assessment: ... (lian lost or enhanced)The analytic mode of mianzi is:The intended goal: ... The actual achievenment: ... Assessment: ... (mianzi lost or gained)Performance theory of fact: Positive/self-image face: people have desire to be appreciated. Negative face: people have desire to do something freely: others’ will is not to be imposed on them. (not available in China)Distinction between Chinese and English faces and values:In faces: Chinese faces are positive while English people have both positive and negative faces.There are five politeness maxims in Chinese values while there are six politeness maxims in English.Function 4: Discourse analysis: Analysis of a talk (Unit 7)A talk involves two roles: speaker and hearer. It can be analyzed into three chunks: Opening: initiation and response;Keeping going: topics, change topics and safe topics; the key to success is mutual understanding and tolerance for differences.Closing: three ways.There are differences in initiation of a talk: Chinese are other-oriented while the English are self-oriented.Classroom talk is also managed in this three chunks.Function 5: To maintain identity (Unit 8)This unit is easy to understand. There are 4 aspects in terms of identity.1.National identity: to establish national language2.Regional and Status identity: Putonghua, Cantonese, English are of higher status3.Gender identity: there are gender difference in language; prejudice against women4.Political identity: the effect politics has on language; in China ... in America ... Politicians use language to hide their incompetence or facts, to glorify their deeds, to show their false learning. English is in a bad way.Assignments:Titles and directions:Unit 3: What makes a word a word?(Use the theory on page 92-104 and provide examples to analyze and prove it.)Deadline: Sept. 12, 2001Unit 4: T he Most Basic Function of Language: Naming and Categorizing(Use abstraction ladder and examples)Deadline: Sept. 22, 2001Unit 5: T he Process of Apologizing and Accepting(Use an example to analyze and prove it. P. 181)Deadline: Oct. 5, 2001Unit 6: M ianzi Lost or Gained?(Use examples and the format on page 218 to analyze the situation)Deadline: Oct. 15, 2001Unit 6: A contrastive Study of English and Chinese Politeness Maxims(Use examples on page 232)Deadline: Oct. 25, 2001Unit 7: A nalysis of a Talk(Use your own example to analyze it; page 251: opening, keeping going, closing)Deadline: Nov. 4, 2001Attention:1.Plagiarism and being overdue cause bad results.2.Good topic sentences, definitions and examples contribute to high marks.3.Definitions are needed and to be quoted with quotation marks.4.Examples should not be taken from the text.5.An outline before each assignment is needed on a single page and it should go in format and idea with your article; otherwise you will lose 4 points of organization.The format of your outline should be:I. Introduction:(Topic sentence or main idea in one sentence only)II. Development:1.(Topic sentence)2.(Topic sentence)3....III. Conclusion/summary:(Topic sentence or repeated main idea in one sentence only)。