Page 30 - Critical and Cultural Theory

MEANING
live and the descriptive approaches. The first is concerned with
establishing the rules that underpin a correct use of language. The
second concentrates on the ways in which people actually speak
and write, regardless of their correctness. Whereas traditional
grammarians - from Classical Greece onwards - focused on
written texts and on literary language in order to prescribe certain
principles of correctness, modern linguists concentrate on speech
and stress the importance of informal and colloquial language
usages, as well as of dialects, as no less systematic than the
standard language taught in schools. What has been marginalized
as incorrect or substandard nonetheless forms a system amenable
to scientific analysis and description. The same applies to so-called
primitive languages, which have often been seen as shapeless and
inferior purely on the basis of ideological and racial prejudices.
The two principal features of language are its dual structure and
its creativity. The structure of language is dual because it
comprises syntax (the study of sentences as combinations of units
of meaning) and phonology (the study of sentences as combina-
tions of units of sound). Creativity refers to a language user's
ability to utter and grasp a virtually limitless series of sentences
which s/he has not actually heard or read before - and which,
indeed, may never have been uttered or written before.
A crucial contribution to modern linguistics in the American
context was made by Franz Boas (1858-1942). He supplied a
detailed investigation of American Indian languages so as to
demonstrate that all languages have their own unique structures
and that the linguist's task is to identify the most precise ways of
describing those structures. No less important were the theories
put forward by Edward Sapir (1884-1939). Sapir viewed language
as a fundamentally human endowment, connected with reason
rather than thought. While pursuing this humanist argument,
Sapir also laid the foundations of American structural linguistics
by maintaining that languages function on the basis of structuring
criteria which native speakers often rely upon unconsciously.
Sounds play a crucial part, in this respect. Sapir drew an impor-
tant distinction (also emphasized by Saussure) between phonemic
and phonetic differences. Phonemic differences are central to the
structure of a language and native speakers recognize them as
meaningful, or productive of meaning. Phonetic differences, by
contrast, are hardly recognized. Thus, the phonetic difference

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