Page 148 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

LANGUAGE, FUNCTIONS OF

B: olp olt olt
A: oppy oppy
B: appy appy (laughing).
(after Keenan, 1974: 171)

This kind of spontaneous linguistic play occurs amongst children
whether on their own or in company right through the period of
language development. Not only does it seem integral to the process
of learning the first language, it seems not too fanciful to suggest that
such activity may form the basis for later poetic uses of language. The
general name for this kind of activity is the aesthetic function. More or
less self-conscious playing with language operates in differing linguistic
domains, involving not only sound-play as in rhyme and alliteration
but also punning, ambiguity, grammatical rule-breaking and so on.
Nor is it restricted to poetry proper. Advertising, for example,
employs language as much in its aesthetic function as in its conative.
Another important, if sometimes overlooked, function is the use of
language to explore and reflect upon itself, known as the metalinguistic
function. A surprising amount of everyday discourse turns out to be
metalinguistic – from the television interviewer’s, ‘Is what you’re saying
then Prime Minister . . . ?’, to someone in an argument complaining,
‘That doesn’t make sense’. Grammar books and dictionaries, of
course, rely heavily on the metalinguistic function, as does a book
such as this, especially at those moments when it supplies definitions
of terms.
The notion of function is important in the study of language,
principally because it helps to emphasise the way in which language is
much more than a tool for thinking with or a vehicle for conveying
information. In this way, functional perspectives tend to stress a range
of other pressures upon language, and other possibilities for its use,
than the need to express some kind of ‘propositional content’ in a
strict logical form that may be measured for its truth value. Thus, from
a functional perspective, one can claim that language does a great deal
more than define and express concepts. Indeed, the linguist Halliday
has argued that when children are learning their first language they use
it in the first instance much more to affect and interact with their social
environment than to convey information. Halliday’s account of
language is generally functionalist in character, being predicated on the
claim that many aspects of its organisation are ultimately derived from
the functions or purposes that it serves.
The main drawback with the functional perspective is the difficulty
of reaching rigorous definitions of the main language functions. Some

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