Methodological approach (Thomas Kuhn "Structures of Scientific Revolutions", paradigms and normal science). 4 main paradigms of linguistics

Between the 2 paradigms:

• 
  a period of different anomalies (crises)
  
• 
  a set of questions
  
• 
  fact
  

The period from the previous paradigm to the new one called a paradigmatic shift. It may be of 2 kinds:

• 
  a revolution
  
• 
  an evolution
  

- the historical comparative paradigm

- the structural paradigm

- the generative transformational paradigm

- cognitive communicative paradigm
26. Functional approach to the language meaning. Discourse Analysis.

The term “discourse analysis” has come to be used with a wide range of meanings, which cover a wide range of activities. It is used to describe human language activities in socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics, philosophical linguistics and computential linguistics. Scholars, working in different fields tend to concentrate on different aspects of discourse.

1. 
   Socio-linguistics concentrates on the structure of social interaction, which is manifested in conversations & their descriptions emphasize features of social context. , so discourse in this study is concerned with generalizing of real instances, examples of language in use. Socio-linguistics usually deals with spoken data & is interested in cases of socio- educational status of various interlocutors.
   
2. 
   Psycho-linguistics is particularly concerned with issues, related to language comprehension. They typically employ a strict methodology, which is derived from experimental psychology. They pay attention to separate words, phrases & constructions to investigate problems of comprehension in rather short texts. Psycholinguists don’t investigate spoken data, but deals with the written documents.
   
3. 
   Philosophical ling. is concerned with semantic relationships between constructed pairs of sentences & with their syntactic realizations. They speak about some special words, which may unite different sentences in discourse. They try to formulate the truth values, expressed by separate words & sentences. They pay attention to a connection between constructed sentences of the speakers & listeners, which may be called typical texts & messages. The number of sentences, they investigate, is not very great. The study may include up to 10 sentences, attributed to typical speakers & listeners.
   
4. 
   Computentional linguists are concerned with producing models of discourse- processing. So discourse is studied as a process, but again linguists deal with the highly limited context & mostly show the connections between those ideas, expressed in the sentence & those, which are observed in the surrounding world.
   

Speakers construct linguistic messages for listeners & how these listeners work on ling. messages in order to interpret them. We call on insides from all the disciplines, which also deals with discourse.

In functional linguistics we take into account how language forms are used in communication. The main idea in functional linguistics is to discuss different functions of the language.

R. Langacker: Functions deal with a number of factors. These factors are of extra-linguistic & linguistic character. They are: environmental, biological, psychological, developmental, historical, socio-cultural.

1. 
   semiological (sign)
   
2. 
   communicative
   

Different linguists spoke about meta-language function, poetic function, expressive function, cognitive function & so on..

The semiological & communicative functions are 2 sides of the same coin. We can explore it for purposes for silent thought. We acquire language through social interaction & we speak about discourse, when we pay attention to meta- process in a human mind.
All these functions are discussed in linguistics, when we pay attention to the notions of the text is the result of some active processes in structural & generative linguistics. Linguists usually discuss the structure of sentences. In this case a sentence or a number of sentences are usually observed as objects. In the case of discourse linguists in different spheres pay attention to dynamic processes. They usually speak about actual speech behavior & mental experience of a human- being.

So discourse is regarded as a process, here we deal with a number of constituencies of the process: firstly we pay attention to a person who is speaking, he is one of the interlocutors, who is the producer of an utterance. In this case we get to know how a communicative event makes it possible to imagine what this person is likely to say, which knowledge is represented in a message & which one in his brain. On the other side, there is one more interlocutor- addressee (listener, reader, audience). If a linguist is trying to depict the knowledge of an addressee, he analyses expectations of this person or the audience.

Addressee -> setting ->addressee

(speaker (place (listener

Writer) time reader)

language

terms

gestures)

Несколько подходов.

- Соссюр- Refential approach

- ideational- репрезент. идея в голове

- functional approach

functional approach to the meaning is concerned with the representation of the semantic level of the language meaning to the development from the primary meaning to some secondary.

e.g. Будагов предложил схему

face primary meaning

to make faces(metaphor)

outward appearance(metonymy)

the front part of the building (metaphor)

In traditional linguistics, in the cognitive sphere of linguistics the meaning is aquated with conceptualization. .

Semantics interprets the meaning of the word as an abstract entity which includes thoughts & concepts. In this case the semantic structure of the words acompo new conceptions as well as fixed concepts. The conceptualization includes the information about the sensory, kinesthetic and emotive experience of a person. In this case we speak about the prominence of 1 meaning, from which all others may appear.

Prominent meaning - primary meaning. All other meanings can be represented as rather salient in the process of communication. ( how this meaning appear)

1. 
   functional linguistics pays attention to the network form of the semantic function.
   
2. 
   … pays attention to the speaker’s knowledge of a lexical item which represent a word as a system of meanings & 1 of these meanings in a particular situation focuses on some particular features of an object.
   

- a piece of jewelry

a circular entity

a circular mark