Page 146 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

LANGUAGE, FUNCTIONS OF

‘body of words’, but rather as a generative structure or langue which
is capable of producing signs. Beyond phonemic analysis, linguistics
has developed around the study of semantics and syntax (rules of
combination).
Linguistics has traditionally centred on speech. Semiotics, on the
other hand, has taken over the Saussurian model of language and used
it to analyse all kinds of signification other than speech – writing,
architecture, television, cinema, food, fashion and furniture, for
instance. There is no doubt that such sign systems do signify (that is,
the way their elements can be selected and combined does serve to
communicate meanings), but whether they do it as languages or like
language remains a matter for debate.
Within communication and cultural studies there is widespread
agreement that whether they are studied as languages or as language-
like, signifying systems of all kinds share certain characteristics. These
are:

. meaning is not a result of the intrinsic properties of individual signs
or words, but of the systematic relations between the different
elements;
. language is not an empirical thing but a social capacity;
. individuals are not the source of language but its product – language
thinks itself out, as it were, in individuals.

Language always escapes the individual and even the social will. Some
of the more important concepts and terms associated with the study of
language are included under separate entries.
See also: Code, Diachronic, Discourse, Language, functions of,
Langue, Paradigm, Phonemic/phonetic, Semiotics, Sign,
Signification, Structuralism, Synchronic, Syntagm

Further reading: Culler (1976); Halliday (1978); Montgomery (1986)

LANGUAGE, FUNCTIONS OF

The purposes which language can be made to serve in different
situations. Although we may regard language primarily as a means of
making statements that are true or false (the referential function)orasan
instrument for the communication of ideas (the ideational function), this
is only part of the total picture. Thus, while the referential or
ideational functions may be seen as prominent in news reporting,

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