The Nature of Language

UNIT 2 THE STRUCTURALISTS,

MENTALISTS AND
SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Structuralists
2.2.1 The Linguistic Sign
2.2.2 Saussurean Principles: Concepts of Structural Linguistics
2.2.3 American Structuralists
2.3 The Mentalists
2.4 Sociocultural Linguistics
2.5 Let Us Sum Up
2.6 Key Words
2.7 Suggested Readings
2.8 Answers

2.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you should be able to:
Trace the development of structuralist, mentalist and sociocultural
perspectives in Europe and America,
Understand the concept of sign and differentiate between signifier and
signified, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, langue and parole,
diachronic and synchronic relationships
Understand the work of the mentalists and their differences with the
sociocultural theorists.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The term ‘structuralism’ was given to a school of thought which developed in
1960s in France when Claude Levi-Strauss published the work Anthropologie
structural (1958) and attempted to discover the objective meaning of human
culture. Thus, structuralism attempts to establish autonomous and objective fields
of study in human sciences. In the 20th century scholars believed that to complete
our knowledge of the world we must arrive at the structure of the system, i.e.
the relationship between the members of the system. Hence the search for
structure became an important guiding principle of 20th century scholarship and
created an era of structuralism in scientific research. The linguists who worked
within this paradigm are called ‘structuralists’ or structural linguists.

In contrast to structuralists the mentalists refused to look at language through

mechanistic methods. They argued that the ‘linguistic consciousness’ of speakers
must be considered important in the study of language and thought. The mentalists
24
or cognitivists, as they were called, thus made claims about the relationship The Structuralists, Mentalists
and Sociocultural
between language and the mind. The work of cognitive linguists like Noam Perspectives
Chomsky followed from the work of the mentalists and resulted in a whole new
area of study in linguistics called Transformational Generative Grammar.

There were some scholars who believed that any study of language and the mind
cannot dissociate language from culture and society. Sociocultural theorists argued
that the scope of sociocultural linguistics is vast and includes interdisciplinary
work drawing from different disciplines like sociolinguistics, linguistic
anthropology, discourse analysis, and sociology of language. Many scholars like
Sapir-Whorf and Dell Hymes (1964) highlighted the importance of studying
language through an interdisciplinary approach by understanding the social and
cultural functions of language use.

In this Unit we trace the work of the structuralists, mentalist and those who
worked within the sociocultural paradigm.

2.2 STRUCTURALISTS
The foundational principles of structural functional linguistics were based on
the lecture notes of the great Swiss linguist Ferdinad de Saussure (1857-1913)
published after his death as Cours de Linguistique Generale (CLG). Saussure’s
principles defined much of the structuralist model of linguistics and provided a
landmark in the history of linguistics. In Europe, Saussure influenced the Geneva
School of Albert Sechehaye and Charles Bally who worked on much of
Saussure’s notes after his death, the Prague School of Roman Jakobson and
Nikolai Trubetzkoy, whose work would prove hugely influential, particularly
in phonology, the Copenhagen School of Louis Hjelmslev, and the Paris School
of Algirdas Julien Greimas. Structural linguistics also had an influence on other
disciplines in Europe, including anthropology, psychoanalysis and Marxism,
bringing about the movement known as structuralism.

2.2.1 The Linguistic Sign

Saussure gave the concept of the linguistic sign. According to him the word-
labels and meaning-concepts produce a system of signs. There is no doubt that
many of our words and concepts are closely tied. When we use the word tree, we
also have in mind the corresponding image of a tree. Let’s consider the image as
the concept TREE. The concept of a tree includes a complex feature matrix which
would include a bark, branches, leaves, etc. Whenever we see a new tree we
don’t need a new word for it. We use the word tree. Notice that this naming
relationship is arbitrary. This means there is no reason why a tree should be
called a tree and not a bush. But the speaker of English would never call a tree a
bush or vice versa. This pairing of the label or name (in this case tree) and the
concept (a bark, branches, leaves, etc.) gives us
what is known as the linguistic sign. Thus, the
concept/thought of a tree, the sounds used to utter
that word and the actual object ‘tree’ must constitute
one single entity — a linguistic sign. Each sign
consists of two parts: a signifier i.e. a label or name
and a signified i.e. the concept. The sign is the
association which binds the label and the concept
together. 25
The Nature of Language 2.2.2 Saussurean Principles: Concepts of Structural Linguistics
Saussure made a distinction between langue and parole which differentiates
between the linguistic system and its actual function or use. Thus, langue is the
system or structure of a language whereas parole is the activity of speaking or
writing in a language or actual speech. These two concepts can be understood as
follows:
Langue- when language is viewed as an abstract system used by a speech
community, in contrast to the actual linguistic behaviour of individuals.
Parole- is using language both in speech or writing in context.

Saussure also discussed synchronic and diachronic linguistics. The study of

language can happen at a particular point in time or can be taken up as an evolution
over time. Synchronic linguistics studies language as a system in a particular
state, at a point of time while diachronic linguistics is the study of language
across time (evolution of language over time).

According to Saussure, the system of language works in two distinct ways—

combination and substitution. These two relations are called syntagmatic and
paradigmatic and represents the relationship between signs which is associative.
In the syntagmatic relationship units such as sounds, phrases, clauses, sentences
and discourse are chained together in a fixed sequence and combination. For
example at the level of sound take the simple word like cat. This word consists
of three units — the sounds /k/, /æ/ and /t/. They combine together to form the
word cat. This relationship is syntagmatic.

Paradigmatic relationship, on the other hand, refers to the relationship which

holds between units that are there and units that are not there but potentially
could have been. Let us take an example again. The first unit of the word cat is
/k/. There are many other sounds which could have come in this place, like, /p/
or /b/ or /m/ giving words like pat, bat, mat. The relationship which holds between
the unit /k/ and other probable options like /p/, /b/ or /m/ are paradigmatic.

2.2.3 American Structuralists

Structuralism in the United States grew independently to that in Europe. The
works of Bloomfield (1887-1948) and Sapir (1984-1939) mainly influenced
structuralism in the United States. While the European linguists were interested
in how the whole was related to its parts and the coherence of the parts in the
whole system, American structuralists were mainly interested in studying the
“distribution of elements as it is observed and the capacity of these elements for
association and substitution” (Benveniste 1971:8).

European scholars were interested in ancient languages and the development of

modern European languages from them whereas American structural linguists
were primarily interested in describing and classifying the American Indian
languages. American linguistics since the beginning of this century, have been
oriented towards the current of structural linguistics by the work of scholars
such as Boas (1858-1942), Sapir (1984-1939) and Bloomfield (1887-1948).

Inspired by the work of Boaz, Sapir started analyzing the languages of American
tribes. Language, according to Sapir, was a communicative and social activity.
26
His interest in language was far ranging. In addition to grammatical analysis, he The Structuralists, Mentalists
and Sociocultural
took into account the humanistic and cultural aspects of language. He also Perspectives
published papers on the functioning of language in creative literature, mythology
and religion. Although he was a structuralist in his orientation, he held a moderate
position. For him language was a product of history, “the product of long continued
social usage” (Sapir, 1921:2). In the structural conception of language formulated
by Sapir, the most striking fact was the aspect of universality. He conceived of
language as a structure which is universal. Sapir refused to look at language
through mechanistic methods. His approach was more mentalistic as opposed to
mechanistic or behavioristic approach of Bloomfield. His student Benjamin Whorf
further developed this idea which will be discussed later in the Unit.

Another important structural linguist was Bloomfield. His work was closely
related to behaviourism in psychology. According to behaviourism, human
conduct is totally predictable i.e. it can be explained on the basis of situations in
which it occurs, independently of all internal factors. Even speech must be
explained by the external conditions surrounding its production. Accepting the
basic idea of behaviourism, Bloomfield, in his book Language (1993), formulated
his mechanistic and materialistic conception of language which is based on
stimulus-response. Bloomfield’s main concern was to develop linguistics into a
scientific discipline and this he did by using scientific descriptive statements.
Due to placing very heavy emphasis on objective observation he had become
an Empiricist and had adopted a view of linguistic science that allowed only
statements based on generalizations drawn from observable facts by a set of
mechanical procedures. Influenced by Bloomfield’s idea of language, American
linguistics remained committed for a long time to the principle that language
must be analyzed without regard to meaning. Efforts were made to evolve a
methodology based on an exhaustive description of the behavior of linguistic
units without reference to meaning. Within Bloomfieldian structuralism the
researcher’s task would simply be classification or taxonomy — a grammar is
simply a classification of segments (phonemes, morphemes, words, word groups)
that appear in the utterances of the corpus.

Structuralism, of which American structuralism is the extreme formalizing

tendency, thus introduced the epistemological break which was a flat description
of language.
Check Your Progress 1
1) Trace the development of structuralism in linguistics.
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2) Discuss the difference between the following:
i) Diachronic and synchronic linguistics
ii) Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships
27
The Nature of Language iii) Langue and parole.
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2.3 THE MENTALISTS

In the early 1950s, many scholars began to question structuralism, and by the
end of the decade new ideas emerged in a big way. During this time a new
theoretical perspective known as mentalism became popular. The term refers to
those branches of study that concentrate on perception and thought processes:
for example, mental imagery, consciousness and cognition, which are studied
in cognitive psychology. The term mentalism has also been used by behaviorists
who believe that scientific psychology should focus on the structure of causal
relationships to conditioned responses, or on the functions of behavior. The
mentalists unlike the structuralists believed that objects of knowledge have their
existence in the mind of the perceiver and thus it is important to study the
properties of the human mind, rather than just their directly observable
manifestations. Though mentalism was an offshoot of behaviourism it gave way
to cognitive linguistics. In linguistics, mentalism is associated both with
generative linguistics and the more modern approaches that go under the heading
of cognitive linguistics. Mentalist linguists describe the mental patterns of
language or the internalized grammars that underlie linguistic behaviour.
The mentalist notions of Chomskyan linguistics has had a profound influence on
applied linguistics. Chomsky, a student of Zellig Harris was concerned with
discovering a general theory of grammatical structure. He believed that an
adequate grammar should provide a basis for explaining how sentences are used
and understood. He reproached the Bloomfieldians for “their satisfaction with
description and their refusal to explain” (1981:38). According to him, as other
developing sciences, linguistics should also endeavour to establish a more
ambitious goal than mere description and classification. Linguists should aim at
developing methods not just for description of language but also for
understanding the nature of language. This was possible only if one takes
recourse to intuition of native speakers.
Generative grammar is the theory of language proposed by Chomsky in his book
Syntactic Structures (1957). It provides a set of finite rules that defines the
unlimited number of sentences of the language and associates each with an
appropriate grammatical description. There are two principal goals which underlie
this theory:
a) The universal features (i.e. features which are inherent to language as a
whole) which constitute grammars of individual languages should be
characterized in formal terms. This is called Universal Grammar (UG).
b) In order to arrive at formal statements to characterize the grammars of
28 individual languages it is important to describe the tacit knowledge or
 competence which native speakers have about syntactic, phonological, The Structuralists, Mentalists
and Sociocultural
morphological and semantic patterning in their language. Linguistic Perspectives
performance is the way language system is used in communication.
Generative grammar sees the theory of competence as forming a central
component of language which interacts with principles from cognition,
neurology, physiology and other domains to give language its overall
character.

Chomsky’s notion of competence and performance are in many ways modern

reinterpretations of Saussure’s classic distinction between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’.
However, there are some major differences between the mentalists and the
structuralists—the most significant being Chomsky’s reinterpretation of the goals
of linguistic theory. While the structuralists’ goal of linguistics was to construct
inventories of the linguistic elements in particular languages, along with
statements of their distributions, Chomsky believed that the goal of linguistics
must be redefined to define specification of a universal grammar (UG). This UG
is innate to human mind.
Chomsky took up certain concepts given by his teacher, Harris, and gave them a
new interpretation, for example the notion of transformation. This introduction
of the concept of transformation has led to referring to the entire formal approach
as Transformational Generative Grammar. He also interpreted many features
of the American structuralism in a new fashion, as for example his notion of
deep structure could be traced back to Sapir’s inner-form. Despite the
resemblances to his predecessors, there was an element of novelty in Chomskian
theory.
Katz, in his book ‘Mentalism in Linguistics’, treats the problem of taxonomic
conceptions in linguistics as done by the Structuralists, and asserts that taxonomic
conceptions of linguistics should be rejected. He wrote “we have found that the
taxonomic linguist confined linguistic investigation to stating those facts about
the structure of a natural language which can be formulated within the framework
of a classificational system, while the mentalist goes far beyond this in seeking a
full answer to all three questions. This difference is important: it justifies us in
rejecting the taxonomic conception in favor of the mentalistic one.” (Katz, 1964:
84)
Within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, the work of Steven Pinker is
noteworthy. Pinker who is a Canadian-American cognitive linguist, works
on visual cognition and psycholinguistics. He has published in the area of
children’s language development, regular and irregular phenomena in language,
the neural bases of words and grammar, and the psychology of cooperation and
communication, including euphemism, innuendo, emotional expression, and
common knowledge. In his books he proposed a general theory of language
acquisition and discussed how children learn verbs. In his work with Alan
Prince (1989) he questioned the connectionist model of how children learn the
past tense of English verbs, arguing in favour of default rules such as adding
“-ed” to make regular forms and learning irregular forms one by one.
In his books, he has argued for the instinctive nature of the human language
faculty, which is shaped by natural selection and adapted to our communication
needs. Five of his books are on aspects of psycholinguistics and cognitive science.
These are: The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words
and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007). 29
The Nature of Language In the next section we will consider the work of sociocultural linguists who
argued that the study of language must not only consider aspects of competence
but also performance, which cannot be understood in isolation from the context
in which language is used. Thus, the complex interplay of language with culture
and society must be acknowledged to gain a holistic understanding of how
language operates on practice.
Check Your Progress 2
1) What is the difference between the mentalists and the structuralists? In what
way have the mentalists made advancements on structuralists?

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2) What is the difference between competence and performance?

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2.4 SOCIOCULTURAL LINGUISTICS

Sociocultural linguistics includes a range of theories and methods for the study
of language in its sociocultural context. Many scholars felt that the term
sociolinguistics is limited in scope as it is associated with only certain types of
research which quantitatively analyzes various linguistic features and correlates
them with sociolinguistic variables. The term sociocultural linguistics on the
other hand, highlights the importance of interdisciplinary approaches
to language, culture and society.

In the United States, sociocultural linguists, have taken a broad approach to the
study of language and the social and cultural functions of language use. As
discussed above, generative and cognitive linguistics have been dominant in the
United States since the mid-twentieth century. However, American linguists tried
to bring their studies closer to other fields of social inquiry. In 1929, Edward
Sapir, though popular as a structuralist, urged linguists to move beyond diachronic
and formal analyses for their own sake and to “become aware of what their
science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general” (1929:207).

Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) studied the relationship between
language and our perception of reality and its representation in the human mind.
30
His work became famous as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and has two aspects: The Structuralists, Mentalists
and Sociocultural
linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism. The principle of linguistic Perspectives
relativity says that different people see the world in different ways; some people
see only one kind of water, others may see five different kinds of water and
therefore feel the need for having five different words for different kinds of water.
While a certain community may be happy with the words ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’,
another may have ten different words in this domain of kinship terms. There is
thus no natural or absolute way of labelling the world around us. According to
the theory of linguistic determinism, language provides the framework for our
thoughts and it is impossible to think outside this frame.

Another influential sociocultural linguist was Dell Hymes (1927-2009) who

established models for ethnographic study of language use. He extensively
researched on the languages of the Pacific Northwest. Though Dell Hymes worked
within the sociolinguistic tradition, he was one of the pioneers in establishing a
relationship between speech and social relations. Hymes argued that Chomsky’s
distinction between competence and performance had sidelined the importance
of the latter. He thus proposed the notion of communicative competence, or
knowledge necessary to use language in social context, as an object of linguistic
inquiry. The definition of language use varies across different communities and
hence Hymes’ early work focused on ethnographic inquiry into contrasting
patterns of language use within different speech communities. He initially worked
on “speech events” which were documented instances of language use studied
by a process which he termed “the ethnography of speaking” and later renamed
as “ethnography of communication” to reflect a larger focus on ways of
communication within a community of speakers which included nonverbal as
well as verbal behaviour. Hymes extensively analyzed folklore and oral narratives
with the aim of arriving at “the competence... that underlies and informs such
narratives” (Hymes 2003:vii). He created the Dell Hymes model of speaking
which has been extensively used in language education.

Stephen C. Levinson (born in 1947) is known for his work in the areas of culture,
language and cognition. His earliest work was with John Gumperz in interactional
sociolinguistics, where he studied the interaction patterns in a multilingual
community in India. He has written on pragmatics, and produced the first
comprehensive textbook in the field in 1983. He has been influenced by
the Gricean principles, which is a broad theory of communication that focuses
on the role of conversational implicatures. He worked with Penelope Brown on
language structures which are related to formality and politeness across the world.
This work was published as a book called ‘Politeness: Universals in Language
Usage’ (1978/1987) which is a foundational work in Politeness theory. His current
work focusses on aspects of linguistic diversity and its importance to cognitive
science. This has led to the development of new models of language
documentation. Levinson and Gumperz re-evaluated the notion of linguistic
relativity discussed by Sapir-Whorf in the early nineties. Levinson in his later
works highlighted the relationship of language and space which he argued was a
form of linguistic relativity where speakers of certain languages who used different
spatial systems solved non-verbal spatial tasks in distinct ways.

Thus, the sociocultural linguists emphasized the importance of culture and society
in the study of language. They critiqued the mentalists and developed the concept
of communicative competence which has been widely used in language education.
31
The Nature of Language Check Your Progress 3
1) What are the main aspects of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

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2) What is the contribution of Dell Hymes to sociocultural linguistics?

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2.5 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have traced the development of structuralism in Europe and
America. We have also discussed important concepts such as paradigmatic and
syntagmatic relations, langue and parole and diachronic and synchronic studies.
We discussed the work of some of the structuralists.

In the next section we gave you the reasons why some scholars questioned the
structuralists and arrived at a generative framework. The work of the mentalists
was discussed along with some concepts like competence and performance and
universal grammar.

Finally, we looked at the work of sociocultural linguists and how they laid
emphasis on linking the study of language with culture and society. They
questioned the focus of the mentalists on innate competence of the native speaker
and highlighted that aspects of performance cannot be ignored when language is
studied in the context of how it is used.

2.6 KEY WORDS

Structuralism : An approach to the study of language which. considers
a language to be primarily a system of relations-i.e.,
the place of every element in language (speech sound,
word, etc.) is defined by the way it relates to other
elements in the language.
Generative grammar : A particular grammar of a particular language which,
in a purely mechanical way, is capable of enumerating
all and only the grammatical sentences of that
32 language.
Paradigmatic relation : Any relation between two or more linguistic items or The Structuralists, Mentalists
and Sociocultural
forms which are competing possibilities, in that Perspectives
exactly one of them may be selected to fill some
particular position in a structure.
Syntagmatic relation : A relation between two or more linguistic elements
which are simultaneously present in a single structure,
example /k/, /æ/ and /t/.
Langue : In Saussure’s classification, language is regarded as a
system shared by a community of speakers.
Parole : The particular utterances produced by particular
speakers on particular occasions.
Diachronic : Pertaining to language change over time. Example,
from old English to Middle English to Modern
English.
Synchronic : Pertaining to a language at a particular point of time.
Example studying English now would be a synchronic
study of Modern English.
Signifier : The form of a linguistic sign.
Signified : The meaning of a linguistic sign.
Mentalism : The belief that such unobservable phenomena such
as mind, thoughts, intentions, and mental processes
generally are objectively real, and hence can
reasonably be involved in scientific investigation and
be made the object of study.
Behaviourism : An approach in psychology which holds that
psychologists should study only observable and
measurable phenomena and should not appeal to
unobservable things like ‘mind’ and ‘intention’.
Sapir-Whorf : The hypothesis that the structure of our language
Hypothesis significantly affects the way we perceive the world.
Intuition : A judgement which you make about your own
language (whether something is grammatical or not),
what it means whether it is ambiguous or not, how it
is related to something else, and so on.
Competence : An idealization of a speaker’s knowledge of his/her
language, excluding such factors as slips of tongue,
memory limitations or distractions.
Performance : The actual linguistic behaviour of particular
individuals on particular occasions, including any
hesitations, memory lapses, slips of tongue or
processing difficulties arising from long or complex
structures.
Phonology : Pertaining to the sound system
Morphology : Pertaining to word-formation
Semantics : Pertaining to meaning
33
The Nature of Language Universal Grammar : The hypothetical structural properties which are
(UG) necessarily common to all human languages, both real
and possible, presumably because these properties are
part of the human language faculty.
Transformational : A theory of grammar developed by Noam Chomsky
grammar in 1950s and extensively modified by Chomsky and
others in succeeding decades.

2.7 SUGGESTED READINGS

Bloomfield, L. 1993. Language. New York: Henry Holt
Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton
Hymes, D. and J. Fought 1975 American Structuralism. The Hague: Mouton
Lepschy, G. 1992. Early Structuralism. In W. Bright (ed) International
Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Newmeyer, F.J. 1986. Linguistic Theory in America. New York: Academic Press,
Inc.
Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Languages. New
York: Harper Perennial
Rastogi, K. 1997. Structural Linguistics: Its Origin and Development. Delhi:
Penman Publishers
Saussure, F. de. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. McGraw Hill
Thomas, L. and Wareing, S eds. 1999. Language, Society and Power. London:
Routledge

2.8 ANSWERS
Check Your Progress 1
1) The development of structuralism in linguistics:
Influenced by the work of great Swiss linguist Ferdinad de Saussure
(1857-1913)
Saussure’s principles defined much of the structuralist model of
linguistics and provided a landmark in the history of linguistics
In Europe, Saussure influenced various other schools of thought
Saussure’s concept of linguistic sign consists of two parts: a signifier
i.e. a label or name and a signified i.e. the concept
distinction between langue and parole which differentiates between the
linguistic system and its actual function or use
Saussure also discussed synchronic and diachronic linguistics
According to Saussure, the system of language works in two distinct
ways—combination and substitution. These two relations are called
syntagmatic and paradigmatic and represents the relationship between
signs which is associative
The works of Bloomfield (1887-1948) and Sapir (1984-1939) mainly
influenced structuralism in the United States
34
 European scholars were interested in ancient languages and the The Structuralists, Mentalists
and Sociocultural
development of modern European languages from them whereas Perspectives
American structural linguists were primarily interested in describing
and classifying the American Indian languages
American structuralism was influenced by scholars such as Boas (1858-
1942), Sapir (1984-1939) and Bloomfield (1887-1948). In Sapir’s work,
the most striking feature was the aspect of universality. He conceived
of language as a structure which is universal. Sapir refused to look at
language through mechanistic methods
Another important structural linguist was Bloomfield. His work was
closely related to behaviourism in psychology
American structuralism introduced a flat description of language
2) i) Saussure’s concept of synchronic and diachronic linguistics:
The study of language can happen at a particular point in time or
can be taken up as an evolution over time.
Synchronic linguistics studies language as a system in a particular
state, at a point of time while diachronic linguistics is the study of
language across time (evolution of language over time).
ii) According to Saussure, the system of language works in two distinct
ways—combination and substitution.
In the syntagmatic relationship units such as sounds, phrases,
clauses, sentences and discourse are chained together in a fixed
sequence and combination.
Paradigmatic relationship, refers to the relationship which holds
between units that are there and units that are not there but potentially
could have been.
iii) Saussure’s concepts of Langue and Parole:
Langue- when language is viewed as an abstract system used by a
speech community, in contrast to the actual linguistic behaviour of
individuals.
Parole- is actually using language both in speech or writing in
context
Check Your Progress 2
1) Mentalism became popular as a theoretical perspective which questioned
structuralism.
There are some major differences between the mentalists and the
structuralists—the most significant being Chomsky’s reinterpretation
of the goals of linguistic theory. While the structuralists’ goal of
linguistics was to construct inventories of the linguistic elements in
particular languages, along with statements of their distributions,
Chomsky, who was a mentalist, believed that the goal of linguistics
must be redefined to define specification of a universal grammar (UG).
This UG is innate to human mind. Mentalist linguists describe the mental
patterns of language or the internalized grammars that underlie linguistic
behaviour.
35
The Nature of Language Structuralism had an extreme formalizing tendency and thus introduced
a flat description and classification of language.
Mentalism involved understanding the nature of language. The universal
features (i.e. features which are inherent to language as a whole) which
constitute grammars of individual languages became the focus of
mentalists. This was done by taking recourse to intuition of native
speakers.
2) Competence is the native speakers’ innate knowledge about syntactic,
phonological, morphological and semantic patterning in their language.
Linguistic performance is the way language system is used in communication.
These are concepts of generative grammar which sees the theory of
competence as forming a central component of language
Check Your Progress 3
1) Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has two aspects:
linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism.
The principle of linguistic relativity says that different people see the
world in different ways; some people see only one kind of water, others
may see five different kinds of water and therefore feel the need for
having five different words for different kinds of water. There is thus
no natural or absolute way of labelling the world around us.
The theory of linguistic determinism propounds that language provides
the framework for our thoughts and it is impossible to think outside
this frame.
2) Dell Hymes worked within the sociolinguistic tradition and was one of the
pioneers in establishing a relationship between speech and social relations.
Hymes argued that Chomsky’s distinction between competence and
performance had sidelined the importance of the later.
He proposed the notion of communicative competence, or knowledge
necessary to use language in social context, as an object of linguistic
inquiry.

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