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Philosoph
y
Linguistic
s
Psycholog

THEORIES OF
LANGUAGE

Linguistics
Semiotics
Saussures Theory of Structuralism
Semantics
Transformational-generative
linguistic analysis of Chomsky

Semiotics

Also known as semiology, science of

signs.
It was founded by American
philosopher C. S. Peirce (1839-1914)
and the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857-1913).
Semiotics is concerned with the
relationship between form and
meaning.
Both Peirce and Saussure based their
theories on the understanding that a

The signifier is a sound or image, for

example, the aural or written word
tiger. The signified, following the
same example, is the concept or
idea of tiger.

Tig
er

Peirce believed that semiology was

the foundation of logic itself.
He describes logic as the science of
the general necessary laws of signs.
Peirce made two important
contributions to semiotics. First, he
showed that a sign can never
contain a definite meaning. Second,
he identified various types of signs,
including the symbolic sign, which is
arbitrarily related to its referent.

Saussures work is primarily

concerned with the linguistic sign,
and his attempts at a classificatory
system involve distinguishing
between different aspects of
language.
Saussures semiotic analyses tend
to be conducted in terms of
opposite pairs. First, linguistic
studies may be diachronic

Second, language may be

considered as langue or parole, that
is, either as the general set of
semantic and syntactic rules of a
particular language or in its
individual utterances. Third, the sign
comprises a signifier and a signified,
the relationship between which is
arbitrary, and which both depend on
a vast network of differences.

In literary criticism, semiotics

considers the complete system of a
text and what is required to
understand it, including genre and
other conventions. These theories
concerning the relationship between
form and meaning have influenced not
only linguistics and literary theory, but
also anthropology and psychoanalysis.

Saussures Theory of Structuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913),

Swiss linguist, whose ideas about
language structure influenced the
development of the linguistic theory
known as structuralism. He was born in
Geneva, and attended science classes
for a year at the University of Geneva
before turning to language studies at
the University of Leipzig in 1876.

He develops a theory that sees it as

a structural system of elements,
rules, and meaning socially
conceived. His methodology
establishes linguistics as a subject
of scientific study with broad
applications.
His thought posthumously in his
cause in General linguistics, form the
basis of the schools of thought

Semantics
In Greek semantikos, which means
significant.
It is the study of the meaning of linguistic
signs that is, words, expressions, and
sentences.
Example: What is the meaning of (the word)
X?
The goal of semantics is to match the
meanings of signswhat they stand forwith
the process of assigning those meanings.

PHILOSOPHICAL
APPROACHES

In the late 19th century Michel

Jules Alfred Breal, a French
philologist, proposed a science of
significations that would
investigate how sense is attached
to expressions and other signs.

In 1910 the British philosophers

Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand
Russell published Principia
Mathematica, which strongly
influenced the Vienna Circle, a group
of philosophers who developed the
rigorous philosophical approach
known as logical positivism.

A. Symbolic Logic

One of the leading figures of the

Vienna Circle, the German
philosopher Rudolf Carnap, made a
major contribution to philosophical
semantics by developing symbolic
logic, a system for analyzing signs
and what they designate.

In logical positivism, meaning is a

relationship between words and
things, and its study is empirically
based: Because language, ideally, is
a direct reflection of reality, signs
match things and facts.

B. Speech-Act Semantics

The Austrian-British philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein rejected it in
favor of his ordinary language
philosophy, in which he asserted
that thought is based on
everyday language.

Not all signs designate things in the

world, he pointed out, nor can all
signs be associated with truth
values. In his approach to
philosophical semantics, the rules of
meaning are disclosed in how speech
is used.

The British philosopher J. L. Austin

claimed that, by speaking, a person
performs an act, or does something
(such as state, predict, or warn), and
that meaning is found in what an
expression does, in the act it
performs.

The American philosopher John R.

Searle extended Austin's ideas,
emphasizing the need to relate the
functions of signs or expressions to
their social context. Searle asserted
that speech encompasses at least
three kinds of acts: (1) locutionary
acts, in which things are said with a
certain sense or

reference (as in the moon is a

sphere); (2) illocutionary acts, in which
such acts as promising or commanding
are performed by means of speaking;
and (3) perlocutionary acts, in which the
speaker, by speaking, does something
to someone else (for example, angers,
consoles, or persuades someone).

LINGUISTIC APPROACHES

Linguistic semantics is both

descriptive and theoretical.

A. Descriptive Semantics

Researchers in descriptive semantics

examine what signs mean in particular
languages. They aim, for instance, to
identify what constitutes nouns or
noun phrases and verbs or verb
phrases.

For some languages, such as English,

this is done with subject-predicate
analysis. For languages without
clear-cut distinctions between nouns,
verbs, and prepositions, it is possible
to say what the signs mean by
analyzing the structure of what are
called propositions.

In such an analysis, a sign is seen as

an operator that combines with one
or more arguments (also signs)
often nominal arguments (noun
phrases)or relates nominal
arguments to other elements. For
example, in the expression Bill gives
Mary the book,gives is an
operator that relates the arguments
Bill,Mary, and the book.

B. Theoretical Semantics
Linguists concerned with theoretical
semantics are looking for a general
theory of meaning in language.
To such linguists, known as
transformational-generative
grammarians, meaning is part of the
linguistic knowledge or competence
that all humans possess.

The semantic component, as part

of a generative theory of meaning,
is envisioned as a system of rules
that govern how interpretable signs
are interpreted and determined
(such as Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously).

The rules must also account for how

a sentence such as They passed
the port at midnight can have at
least two interpretations.

GENERAL SEMANTICS
The focus of general semantics is how
people evaluate words and how that
evaluation influences their behaviour.
Begun by the Polish American linguist
Alfred Korzybski and long associated
with the American semanticist and
politician S. I. Hayakawa, general
semantics has been used in efforts to
make people aware of dangers
inherent in treating words as more

Transformational-generative linguistic
analysis

American linguist, writer, teacher,

and political activist Avram Noam
Chomsky is considered the founder
of transformational-generative
linguistic analysis, which
revolutionized the field of linguistics.

This system of linguistics treats

grammar as a
theory of languagethat is,
Chomsky believes that in addition to
the rules of grammar specific to
individual languages, there are
universal rules common to all
languages that indicate that the
ability to form and understand
language is innate to all human

Chomsky made a distinction

between the innate, often
unconscious knowledge people have
of their own language and the way in
which they use the language in
reality.

The former, which he termed

competence, enables people to
generate all possible grammatical
sentences. The latter, which he
called performance, is the
transformation of this competence
into everyday speech. Prior to
Chomsky, most theories about the
structure of language described
performance; they were

Chomsky proposed that linguistic

theory also should explain the
mental processes that underlie the
use of languagein other words, the
nature of language itself, or
generative grammar.

Thanks.