Language and Community in English Language and Linguistics

This exposition focuses on the relationship between the language and the community. Every community is different from one another and each one needs a kind of language which can be spoken by them. Language in short, integrates people of different cultures, age, groups, gender, values and beliefs. Explore the relationship between language and culture, dialects, social context, and more.

Running head: English Language and Linguistics
English Language And Linguistics
Language and Community

English Language and Linguistics
Language is very significant in any human’s life. This is about being social which plays a
vital role for any being in community. The main objective of language is to communicate
with the world and to understand them. There is always a purpose when people speak. A
message is to be conveyed when a person speaks. Language is used for many things such as
for expressing feelings, for apologizing or to ask for any kind of help etc. Language is used
as if it is the part of the society. Language is also influenced by the society. Social context
sometimes changes the meaning but still understood according to the cultures of the world.
There are many connotations which reflect language and the norms of the society that are
spoken by the culture. Due to community in linguistics, phonetics, semantics and morphology
are affected. The society or the community cannot be imagined without the language (Sirbu,
2015). It is the sense of own and the others identity and value. People express in different
way and those ways influenced by the wish to express loyalty to the groups which are based
on the religion, class, gender, occupation and age etc. Because of these groups, multi-
dimensional social contexts are created that wishes for multi lingual skills (Borbelly, 2011).
The relationship that language and community share is very strong. Without language
community can never exist because then there will be no communication.
Culture
Culture and language are always connected with each other in many different ways. Culture
takes out the products called language and culture shapes according to the use of language.
Any kind of language helps in viewing things differently. The only catch is that it should be
conveyed in the friendly manner. The cultural backgrounds are the same for most of the
inhabitants as there were stories said about them centuries ago. With the change of trends and
necessities, the language connects people with their culture. Example: Words are needed to
express the concepts which are invented or discovered. These inventions can be used in the
daily lives with the help of language. While culture defines the way of living and thinking,
the language displays the way of speaking and expressing. Both these can change from time
to time and place to place. People who live in rural areas also have use words to express
themselves. But their expressions can have positive or negative pint of view too as the
language they speak could be understood in any sense by the people of different culture.
Culture is very important as such type of practices might continue by passing these to current
generations to the younger one’s so that they also come to know about such things which
existed long ago. These practices are beliefs, lifestyle, festivals, religion etc. These are the
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English Language and Linguistics
things which represent the culture of any community (Mahadi & Jafari, 2012). The type of
culture which represents an individual’s life is exclusive as this counts the personality and the
attitude like characteristics of an individual (Nerbonne, Gooskens, Kurschner, & Bezooejen,
2009).
Social Context
A very important concept of communication is speech community. This is referred to the type
of humans who use similar kind of speech expressions. Speech community can also be
defined as human aggregate characterized by shared body of verbal gestures and the cluster
from same collected by important variations in the language used (Norton & Toohey,
2011).The connection between language and social context is used to study the relationship
between the language and the society on the whole. This explains as to why people speak in
different ways and in various social contexts. It examines the social responsibilities of the
language and methods in which it is used for conveying social meaning. The works that
language provides in these topics and also of relationships in the community and the way
people signal aspects of the social identity with the help of their language.
According to Ronald Wardhaugh (1986), he summed-up the relation in language and society.
He said that the possible relationships are:
Firstly, if viewed by the participants, the structure of social context might influence the
linguistic structure or the behaviour. For example: If age grading is seen, small children speak
differently to the senior children while those seniors speak very differently with older people.
Secondly, the participants might relate to different origins or region or ethnicity. Hence, they
should meet in a certain way of speaking, choice of their words and conversation (Unidue,
2018).
Another relationship which is possible between language and society is opposite to the first
one. That is: the structure of language might influence the social structure. According to Basil
Bernstein (1964), he found out the use of detailed and restricted codes.
Third relationship possible is that both language and society influences each other. This is the
influence which is dialectical in nature. Speech and behaviours constantly interacts and
material living conditions are very important factor which should be considered in a
relationship.
Dialect
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English Language and Linguistics
Many languages have various kinds of dialects and multiple speakers know two or more than
two in every community. For example: Britain has upper class language, worker class
language and middle class. Every dialect consists of distinctive registers for the use of formal
dialect by the experts of mathematics who works in the universities. The same dialect will be
informal when it is used while having conversation with the family at the dinner time. The
connotations differ for the audience with the different choices of dialects and then it has
different meaning too. Though the differences in terms of dialect would not be great (Dror,
1986). In this context, use of language is very vital for analysing the meaning when language
is spirited from the context is difficult to understand. Also, language can be taken as the
social action which can be used in various dialects. Hence, one can say that every identity has
social role and every social role has the language of dialect which differs from place to place
or from people to people (Tegegne , 2015).
La Langue Parole
Langue signifies the “work of collective intelligence”, which is internal to every individual
and collective, and it cannot be changes by any individual, while, parole describes the acts of
the individuals, their statements and expressions. Language of events which reveals each time
a speaker’s ephemeral individual will through his combination of concepts and his
“phonation”—the formal aspects of the utterance (Henderson & Brown , 2013).
Saussure said that “linguistics” covers two different kinds of study. One is the study of parole
which would completely focus on the individual expressions by usage of resources of formal
study for analysing statements which are factual and in specific language. Second is the study
of Langue which will focus on usual conditions of possibility (Culler, 1976).
Hence, the course follows second route in the bifurcation which sets out the groundwork for
all attempts for grasping the elementary conditions of opportunity for language and the
language which is used generally. Without any norms, there can be no coherent and important
utterances that the author called Langue. Hence, this is forms object of study for modern
linguistics.
Discourse and Speech Community
The community of discourse also defines as swales, is linked in the context of social thinking
and perspectives. Many communities assume to be academic disciplines. Swales relates to the
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English Language and Linguistics
Herzberg (1986) theory of discourse community for signifying a group of ideas which means
maintaining and extending the knowledge of groups and attracting new members in groups
(Swales, 2016). Swales assumed that discourse communities are a big bubble of ideas (David,
Cavallaro, & Coluzzi, 2009). He also suggested that, the ideas can be easily identified as the
discourse community and it is not critical to identify them. These ideas always prompt the
question as to how such communities can be recognized on the first place. The definition of it
is very broad and it is very difficult to just identify community as discourse community. The
concept of discourse community does not necessarily to be clarified as it will turn out to be
nothing more than the translation of an established concept which is known as speech
community.
Sociolinguistics and oral communication are linked by the ethnography of speech. It is the
process of stating information or the ideas by word of mouth with the help of the definition of
speech communities. These communities were focussed by the spoken communication rather
than written communication (Silverstein, 2014). Although, it now has a new meaning in
which it represents all forms of social communications with the speech communities as a
subset. Paul James says that discourse communities are the form of life which unites words,
values, social identities, acts and beliefs and all these are the bubble of ideas which Swales
had mentioned in his definition.
Complex Adaptive System
Within the last thirty years, there is a leap taken from the applications of computing in order
to help the scientists in managing science with the integration of concepts of computer
science, the tools and the theorems with the actual science. Complex adaptive system also
known as CAS is the example of such integration of computer science and into fabric of
science. These models are used to predict, prevent and understand the excruciating problems
that individuals face in today’s life. Such issues can be the change of climate, consumption of
electricity, dangerous diseases, biodiversity loss etc. (Niazi, 2016). The study of these
systems is to be seen from the scientific point of view and as ability to interact in a systematic
manner with high complexity systems which transcend separate disciplines. This will have a
deep impact on the future of science, engineering and industries. It will also impact the
management of the resources of the planet.
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English Language and Linguistics
The name itself defines that it is the image of the complex ideas which may be difficult to
understand. The study of CAS is exactly opposite as it creates a unique way of studying
disparate systems which clarifies the process through which they operate. This is the system
in which multiple elements which are independent, leads to emergent outcomes which are
usually difficult or might be impossible to predict just by looking at the interactions of
individuals (Baumann, 2015). The tough part of CAS denotes to the huge interconnectedness
of such systems. Principles of CAS can be used for studying the disciplines as related
discipline and can be understood in a better way with the help of the applications of models
instead of the disparate collection of facts. Such facts can strengthen the understanding of
such topics and can prepare them recognized other systems as well by applying same
methods of analysis.
Language is centered to the social interactions in each and every society irrespective of the
place and the time. Language and interaction can have reciprocal relationship as well.
Language justifies the existence of the individuals. As it is hard to think of the existence of
humans without the use of language as it helps in communicating. It also helps in
socialization. The social, economic and the political factors are understood by language
(Shodhganga, 2018). The transmission of knowledge is done by the use of language in the
world. Ideas float from one to another and information is shared. Language integrates humans
and their identities. There are various languages which are used worldwide according to the
cultures of the countries. Multilingualism is much needed in this life. This exposition focuses
on the relationship between the language and the community. Every community is different
from one another and each one needs a kind of language which can be spoken by them.
Language in short, integrates people of different cultures, age, groups, gender, values and
beliefs (rebecca Dodder & Dare, 2000). The relations of language with culture, dialects and
social context is also discussed which also defines one thing that language is much needed in
any form to communicate with each other irrespective of the place and the time.
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English Language and Linguistics
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