My position on language

Language

From the onset of this course of study, I have had great difficulty translating my thoughts about language into words. The more I thought about language, and the more I learned about language, the less certain I became. Much of this difficulty may lie in the realization that, “a definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world” (Williams, 1977, p. 21, as cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p. 5), something people have always struggled with. My own struggle to define language somehow seems well founded: how do I explain in a few words what mankind has not explained in many?

Further reflection helped me realize that, perhaps, language is the tool we use to justify, if only for ourselves, our place in the world. Moreover, I believe that language is the most lasting manifestation of human identity that exists. By compiling signs, used in a rule-governed system language communicates meaning and facilitates the exchange of information. It is the mechanism that systematizes the relationship between arbitrary signs, words or parts of words, and the things they represent, or signify, in the real world (Saussure, 1960, 1986; Finegan, 1999).

I have focused upon language form, meaning, and use (Finegan, 1999; Larsen-Freeman, 2003). I then concentrate on how language is used to express identity within the context of interaction. Finally, I describe how language learning and pedagogy necessarily reflect language’s primary purpose, the expression of identity.

Language Form
Halliday (1978) defined language as “a rule-governed system of patterns and structures that convey knowledge and thought within a social context in order to represent or construct a certain reality” (p. 11, as cited in Kramsch, 1993, p. 45). Larsen-Freeman (2003) asserts that language form is language’s “visible or audible units: the sounds (or signs […]), written symbols, inflectional morphemes, function words, and syntactic structures” (p. 34). Form is the physical reality of language, its patterns and structures, the aspects of language that are easily observed and accounted for (Larsen-Freeman, 2003).

Meaning
Because “the relationship between linguistic signs and what they represent is [italics added] arbitrary” (Finegan, 1999, p. 11), a rule-governed association between the words and what they represent must be established. This association between constitutes language meaning, which links a language’s forms to the real-world objects or notions those forms represent. Establishing such a link is done using linguistic signs, which unify a concept with its sound image.
Saussure (1960) explained that language ties a concept with the real-world concept that it represents, or signifies, using a sound image. The sound image is not sound that is heard, but the impression that sound makes. For example, when thinking, you don’t produce noise, yet you have an impression of what you are thinking about as though you were saying it. That impression is the sound image, which provides meaning by connecting language forms to what they stand for using linguistic signs.

Saussure described linguistic signs as the meeting of signifier and signified, where the signifier is a word or morpheme that stands for the sound image, and the signified is the real-world object or concept to which that sound image is tied. This does not mean that language is merely a list of terms, each of which corresponds to an object (Saussure, 1960; Gadet, 1987). Rather, linguistic signs themselves, representing the conceptual process that links signifier to signified, comprise language.

The relationship between signifier and signified is said to be arbitrary because there is no logical motivation for tying any one signifier with any particular concept. This is evidenced in the fact that the words for any one concept differ from one language to another. What we know as cat in English is chat in French, gato in Spanish, katze in German, and katt in Norwegian. Language is the tool human beings use to systematize and assign meaning to the arbitrary relationship between signifiers and signified, and to bridge the gap between form and objects, notions, and ideas.

Grammar.
Language is made up of words and their meanings, constituting the lexicon and its use. Through grammar, “the system of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationship of “words” in a sentence” (Brown, 2001, p. 362), words are combined to convey meaning and communicate ideas. Larsen-Freeman (2003) defined grammar as a “dynamic, complex, rational/systemic, flexible, and discursive” (p. 23) skill people learn in order to convey meaning through language form.

If “the fundamental function of every language system is to link expression to content—to provide verbal expression to thought and feeling[, . . . then] grammar can be viewed as a coin whose two sides are [form] and meaning and whose task is to provide a systematic link between them” (Finegan, 1999, p.6). For example, the cat mentioned above is not devoid of personality or action. Words that describe the concept or its actions are put together through grammar to communicate meaning. In, Le chat a sauté de l’étagère dans mon placard (The cat jumped off the shelf in my closet), grammar is used to combine words that signify concepts such as chat (cat), sauter (to jump), a sauté (inflected for past action), de (from), and l’étagère (the shelf), to convey more than the existence of those concepts, but also the relationships between them (the cat who was on the shelf that is in the closet that belongs to me…) and the action that took place (the cat jumped).

Language Use
Besides language form and meaning, it is also important to consider how language is used, that is, “what people mean by the language they use [, . . . its] social functions (such as promising, inviting, agreeing, disagreeing, and apologizing,) and discourse patterns (such as those that contribute to the cohesion of texts)” (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p. 35). This conceptualization presents language use as the messages language conveys and the functions it serves in human discourse. I consider the most important of those functions that language serves in human interaction to be that of a means of expressing identity and of communicating within interaction so as to create dialogue.

The example above, Le chat a sauté de l’étagère dans mon placard, also demonstrates that, as Larsen-Freeman (2003) explains in her typography of the three prototypical units of language in communication, language cannot be defined solely by its form and meaning. Like Larsen-Freeman, I believe that the three components of language, its form, meaning, and use, are all equally important, mutually influential, and best presented “in a nonhierarchical fashion [. . . so as] to emphasize the dynamic interplay of the subsystems” (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p. 34).

Identity
I find most interesting the roles that language plays in our lives and the ways we put together form and meaning in use to create collaborative dialogue. I believe that language and identity are inextricably embedded in one another to the point that I now believe that language is identity.

To make ourselves understood as we communicate, we must establish our relationship to each other and the world. Language is the communicative means by which we are able to express our individual identities and to situate those identities vis à vis other people. Identity represents “how people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how people understand their possibilities for the future” (Norton, 1997, p. 410). The importance of the relationship between language and identity, even cultural identity is made evident in the reactions of people in societies where language policies prohibit one language in favor of another.

In pre-World War I France, for example, people in most provinces outside of Paris spoke mainly local languages or patois. With the onset of the war, soldiers were brought together from different parts of the country to fight and were obligated to use French as the lingua franca (B. J. Kerr, personal communication, fall semester, 2001). When they returned, they continued using French. Further, pro-French language legislation began to be enforced around the country. Provinces such as Brittany ignored that legislation. After WWI, that was no longer possible. In 1925, legislation was passed, declaring that “Pour l'unité linguistique de la France, il faut que la langue bretonne disparaisse” (For the sake of France’s linguistic integrity, the Breton language must disappear) (Monzie, 1925, as cited in Leclerc, 2005). After that, if children spoke Breton in school, they would be punished. The co-influential nature of language and identity is evident by the fact that very few people younger than 70 speak Breton fluently, and many of Brittany’s artistic and cultural traditions, those very things that stand for Breton identity, have become nothing more than history.

The strength of the language-identity connection is also evident at the personal level. A student of mine when I lived in France, Manu, is a native speaker of Portuguese, who moved to France as an adult. Manu arrived in Brittany with a low level of French proficiency. Initially, he only knew a few words, such as, bonjour, toilettes, and merci, the very few necessary to survive and meet his physiological needs. Manu worked as a mason with many other workers, most of whom were French, but others who spoke neither French nor Portuguese. Manu was not able to communicate with his coworkers, establish his relationship to them, or even express himself. Clearly, his identity, or lack of identity was tied to language.

Norton (1997) held that identity is related to a person’s desire for such things as recognition, affiliation, and safety. This interpretation is integral to my conviction people use language to manifest identity and meet their personal needs. Until Manu learned enough French to communicate in his work, he could only express himself at home, where everybody spoke Portuguese. To help with this, and to establish himself at work as well as in the community, Manu would attend French classes at night.

Language allows us to define and situate ourselves with respect to our environments and the people whom we come into contact with (Heller, 1987, as cited in Norton, 2000). “It is through language that a person gains access to – or is denied access to – powerful social networks that give learners the opportunity to speak” (Norton, 2000, p. 5). Admittance to social networks is contingent upon one’s understanding of whom he or she is and what he or she is allowed to do. Within that negotiation for acceptance, power or prestige, “identity references desire – the desire for recognition, the desire for affiliation and the desire for security and safety” (Norton, 2000, p. 8). At its most basic level, it seems, it is impossible to separate any language from identity.

Learning French allowed Manu to take advantage of an ever-increasing understanding of whom he was and what he was allowed to do in his new community. He was recognized within the social networks that mattered to him. As he became more able to express himself, he became more confident in expressing his social identity, and his confidence and sense of self were more apparent. In Manu, I witnessed how important language is in expressing identity, and how language is inextricably tied to our concept of humanness.

Collaborative Dialogue
When people interact, the resultant conversation is co-created by participants who scaffold each other to support creation of the dialogue. Collaborative dialogue, or the “co-construction of meaning and events” (van Lier, 1996, p. 180) exists when all participants in an interaction are able to: a) contribute to the dialogue to transmit or receive transmitted information, b) experiment, analyze and process that information through questioning, c) exchange information “by means of a two-way process, where the direction of the discourse, and the relevance of contributions, (. . .) are jointly [italics added] determined by all participants” (van Lier, 1996, p. 180), and, d) transform the interaction so that “the agenda is shaped by all participants” (van Lier, 1996, p. 180).

In the dialogue that follows, C begins the discussion by explaining why she thinks that E might have le gale (scabies). Together, the interlocutors proceed to co-construct the meaning of their interaction:

C. Alors que tu as un petit truc ici, tu vois, simplement aux mains, y a, y a que les mains qui te grattent, mais ça, ça se propage tellement vite et tellement partout que il faut
E. Mais après, ça te gratte sur
C. Et alors ça pue, ça pue! Alors là, tu vois, tu as la gale, tout le monde le sait, hein!
E. C’est vrai?
C. Ça pue le produit, que ça pue! Disons que ça sent le produit, hein, c’est pas une mauvaise odeur mais c’est une odeur forte.
(. . .)
C. Moi, je me, non, moi je me souviens pas que ça m’ait gratté tellement.
E. Tiens !
C. Mais euh, peut-être au dut, mais ça, ça te dém-, moi, ça me démange pas, ça me grattait un peu, mais ça me dé-
E. Alors comment tu as vu euh, comment tu as, ça s’est déclaré ça te grattait pas, c’est que tu avais de la fièvre ou
C. Non, non ! Mais y avait, je crois que c’est ma mère qui a, qui a dégotté ça. Je sais pas comment elle a fait. Et, alors elle, ça la grattait énormément et puis bon
(Kerr, 1997, p. 16).

All three participants in this conversation contributed to its development. The speakers scaffolded, that is, supported and assisted each other’s contributions to co-constructing meaning within the discourse. By doing this, they created a collaborative dialogue. Each of them processed and exchanged information received from the others. Together, they transformed the conversation and set its agenda. Not only did they co-create a dialogue, but also, the resultant interaction involved language form and meaning conveyed through the process of language use.

Copyright 2005, D. Pensec