Course in general linguistics, Chapter 2

In the preface we see the author laying aside things that have concerned linguistics that are not “core” or not a part of the “general”. I’m curious what this author will locate as “general”. And if it will be so abstract only the author can understand it. Surely the chief aim of language is to communicate. Why then are people who are primarily concerned with language so high on their own supply that they fail to communicate clearly?

Data and Aims of Linguistics

Linguistics takes for its data … all manifestations of human language … all forms of expression.

When I think about linguistics I don’t think about history at all. I think of instead about context-free grammars and the like, syntactic structures etc.

of what use is linguistics? … to deal with texts.

And I’m not sure he means to constrain the definition to texts here so much as give an example usage or application of linguistics.

For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialist would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs. In practice, the study of language is in some degree or other the concern of everyone.

I expect this ‘course’ then to be utterly readable and my complaints I levied against Barthes not here to stick.

But a paradoxical consequence of this general interest is that no other subject has fostered more absurd notions, … more illusions.. or more fantasies.

I think this author shares my complaints.

But it is the primary task of the linguist to denounce them, and to eradicate them as completely as possible.

Imagine that. If only you could ‘eradicate’ misconception with truth. If only you could speak it and the untruth would evaporate. If only.

Chapter 3, The Object of Study

Other sciences are provided with objects of study given in advance which are then examined from different points of view … The [linguistic] object is not given in advance of the viewpoint: far from it. Rather, one might say it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object.

!

One cannot divorce what is heard from oral articulation.

Well, this is awkward, because I don’t care about either. I’m thinking about interfaces, human-machine interaction, icons, “earcons”, “touch cons”, etc.


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