THE SYMBOLIC NATURE OF LANGUAGE The Symbolic Nature of Language Wanda Black Everest College THE SYMBOLIC NATURE OF LANGUAGE How does language allow self-reflection? Self-reflection is language that is allowed as a way in which we speak to others. There are two aspects of self: First, I which acts a spontaneous side of your creative self, which acts as an impulsive response to inner needs and desires regardless of social norms. Second, Me is the socially conscious part of our thinking. Me reflects the I monitoring and moderating the I’s impulses.
Everyone has had the experience of having their words misunderstood by others. In addition, we all use words not merely to express our thoughts but also to shape them. Developing our critical thinking skills, therefore, requires an understanding of the ways in which words can (and often fail to) express our thoughts. Although language has its complexity, human nature most useful acknowledgement of language is symbol, knowledge, and expressing emotions from the body, which are all key importance of language. Language is important because it is a symbolic communication system that is learned instead of biologically inherited.
However, the actuality that language builds a meaningful communication barrier is simple to understand; with the many different native tongues spoken around the world, it does not take much understanding to accept this debate. Because there is a barrier, expressing oneself to a person of a different heritage by utilizing speech alone is not an easy task. A debate can be formed that verbal communication brings about a tremendous amount of confusion, whether it be through actual words choice, the articulation or the hidden definition behind the words itself. Language is considerably an important part of culture; it can also be diving amongst cultures. I find language to be very important and interesting especially how it is used diversely around the world whether it is verbal or nonverbal.
When a person desires to communicate, many problems are averted. There are more languages than spoken ones. One type of language that we often use unknowingly is body language. Body language is a form of communication that requires no writing or sound to get across things that you think and feel, but it actually accounts for more than 60% of interpretative language. People may be totally unaware of the fact that they are communicating a feeling or an idea without actually saying it.
The second approach is the ‘intentional approach’, this type of approach occurs on contrary to the case, which links to representation. Basically, the ‘speaker or the author’ uses language as a tool to enforce their own distinct ‘meaning on the world through language. Words mean what the author intends they should mean.’ The final approach is the ‘constructionist approach’. This approach shows new knowledge, which comes from experience. When individuals incorporate, new understanding into an already existing framework without changing that framework.
Discourse Analysis (DA): The study and analysis of the discourse of a text (anything that communicates a message) and how the message constructs a social reality or view of the world by taking into consideration the surrounding social and historical contexts. Discourse can have several meanings, including: Language beyond the level of a sentence (past features such as phonetics, syntax, and morphology) (Mills, 2004). Language behaviors linked to social practices (a type of language specific or unique to a subject or discipline, such as the discourse of law) (Mills, 2004). Language as a system of thought (Foucauldian discourse analysis: discourse creates a social context, which gives meaning to language: “Nothing has any meaning outside of discourse” (Foucault, 1972, p. 44)). ACTIVITY 1: Watch “What is Discourse Analysis” video—Can you think of other examples similar to the one used in the video?
Levi Strauss says that the articulation of culture is like that of a language. The superficial details of this language are peculiar to particular social systems: the way it is manipulated is the outcome of individual self-interest; but the ultimate grammar of the language is a human universal. All human beings are assumed to have roughly the same physiological needs and the same physiological responses. Behavior which is the immediate undecorated outcome of these physiological drives (breathing, sleeping, eating, drinking, and so on) is looked upon as part of human nature. The residual category of “non-natural behavior” is treated as either idiosyncratic or cultural.
ESSAY I: GRAMMATICALITY AND ACCEPTABILITY IN RELATION TO COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE Introduction It is generally assumed that there is a difference between the “competence” and “performance” of native speakers. At least this is a widespread and well accepted notion in Chomskyan theory. In that theory “competence” is defined as one’s knowledge of language, whereas “performance” shows how one uses that knowledge to understand and utter sentences. This means that there is a strict line that distinguishes sentences in pure theory and real utterances as the actual use of language. Related to the competence-performance distinction are the terms “grammaticality” and “acceptability”.
Metonymy is an important way of expressing ideas, a cognitive process, consisting in the transference of meaning based on associations. A metonymic description of a subject is an essential part of any language therefore metonymic thinking can be considered as an element of the cultural identity of a person. Traditionally, metonymy was understood as a figure of speech used in rhetoric, or as a way of building a polysemic structure. The scholars also defined it as the relationship of a different nature between the objects and the phenomena of the real world (e.g. cause and result, part and whole).
1974). As the field of psycholinguistics developed, it became clear that theories of sentence comprehension and production cannot be based in any simple way on linguistic theories; psycholinguistic theories must consider the properties of the human mind as well as the structure of the language (Fodor et al. 1974). Language comprehension, basically, is the ability to understand language. However, this ability is much more complex than it seems on the surface.