Sociolinguistics vs. Linguistics
It was once customary for such scholars interested in language and society to defend their scholarly pursuits in the face of more hegemonic approaches in linguistics
Hegemonic approaches in linguistics
Chomskyans
sought to define the essence of language in mentalistic grammars of so abstract and broad a nature that they could capture the entire human capacity for language
other scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
have gone about their business of describing concrete language use rooted in peoples’ actual experiences, needs, and exchanges
human competence of I-language (internally represented in mind)
E- or external language, real language
gains in these fields have been impressive since the second half of the twentieth century (1960s)
the Chomskyan revolution that we have learned an impressive amount about how humans acquire language, store it in the mind, and process it.
the theory of parameters
drew on work that opened up the way for related studies of dialects within a language
languages varied in their syntax
langue vs. parol (Saussure)
competence vs. performance (chomsky)
Langue encompasses the abstract, systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system; it is independent of, and pre-exists, the individual user. It involves the principles of language without which no meaningful utterance
Parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue, including texts which provide the ordinary research material for linguistics
competence as an idealized capacity that is located as a psychological or mental property or function
performance as the production of actual utterances
competence involves “knowing” the language
performance involves “doing” something with the language
Mesthrie, Rajend. 2011. The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics: Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. Page 1 - 2
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linguistics
taking account of the structure of language
the exclusion of the social contexts in which it is learned and used
the task: to work out 'the rules of language X'
transformational-generative linguistics