Page 191 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

PHONOLOGY

There is no mystery about this property of language. Following
Saussure, we can say that phonemes are abstract and they belong to
langue, whereas phonetics are concrete and belong to parole.

See also: Difference, Phonology

Further reading: Hawkes (1977)

PHONOLOGY

The branch of linguistics devoted to studying the sound patterns of a
language. The human vocal organs are capable of producing an
extremely rich array of different sounds. Each language, however,
draws for communicative effect upon only a small portion of this total
range. Phonology examines which particular units of possible sound
constitute the basic meaningful set for any one language. It does so in
the first instance by building up contrasting pairs of sounds on the
principle that for any one language certain sounds will cause changes
in the meaning of words, whereas other sounds will not. In English if
we change the initial sound of /pig/ from /p/ to /b/ we end up
changing one word into another – changing pig to big. By using this
test, known as the minimal pairs test, it is possible to discover which
sound substitutions cause a difference in meaning. Each change in
meaning isolates a newelement of the basic sound structure of the
language, each element being known as a phoneme. Thus the minimal
pair
pig versus big isolates the phonemes /p/and /b/
pig versus pin isolates the phonemes /g/ and /n/
ten versus den isolates the phonemes /t/ and /d/
rip versus lip isolates the phonemes /r/ and /l/

and so on. The total inventory of phonemes built up using this method
is language-specific. The contrast between /r/ and /1/ in English, for
instance, is not matched by an identical contrast in Chinese dialects.
Phonological analysis is to be distinguished from phonetic analysis,
where the emphasis is on the description and classification of speech
sounds independent of meaning.

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