This is related with sociolinguistics

1. Session Two
Topic: Knowledge of Language (p.3)
Note: This presentation comprises
of information compiled from multiple
sources, in addition to Wardhaugh and
Fuller’s (2015) ‘Introduction to
Sociolinguistics,’ for an enriched
understanding and better
comprehension. Thank you.

2. What do we mean by a ‘Code’?
• When two or more people communicate with each other, we can call the system
they use a code.
• A ‘code’ is therefore a linguistic system used for communication.
• It is a neutral term which can be used to denote a ‘language’ or its subordinate or
substandard variety, i.e. a ‘dialect’.
• Languages and their dialects are both, therefore, codes.
• Most linguists tend to define a language as the standardized code or standard
variety used in spoken and written form, whereas dialects are subordinate codes or
subordinate varieties that are spoken without a standardized written system.

3. • Despite the different, subordinate varieties of English spoken throughout the world, there
is a standardized written variety of English that can be understood by all users.
• We call that standardized form of English a ‘language.’
• Dialects can be defined as different, subordinate varieties of the same standard variety or
language that have evolved over time and in different geographical locations.
• We should also note that speakers who are multilingual, that is, who have access to two or
more codes, and who for one reason or another shift back and forth between these codes
in some form of multilingual discourse are also using a linguistic system, but one which
draws on more than one language.
• However, we should also note that the definition of multilingualism is a subject of
immense debate. On one end, one may define multilingualism as ‘complete competence
and mastery in another language.’ The speaker would presumably have complete
knowledge and control over the language to sound native. On the opposite end would be
people who know enough phrases to get around using the alternate language.

4. • In addition, there is no consistent definition of what constitutes a distinct language.
For instance, scholars often disagree whether Scots language is a language in its own
right or a dialect of English.
• Thus most students of linguistics conveniently use the term ‘code’ to refer to
contested varieties. A set of some very important questions arises at this point in
time.
• As speakers, what exactly do we mean when we say that we know a code? That we
know a language? That we possess enough competence to use that language?
• The answer to that is, this system being referred to as ‘code’ basically comprises of
‘grammar,’ to use a well-known technical term.
• All codes or languages have a grammar as their main framework. It could not be
any other way.

5. What sort of knowledge is linguistic knowledge
• People are language users: they read, write, speak, and listen; and they do all of
these things in natural languages such as English, Russian, Urdu and Arabic.
• The ability to use language, perhaps more than any other attribute, is exactly what
distinguishes humans from other animals.
• But what does it mean to know a language?
• When you know a language, you can speak (or sign) and be understood by others
who know that language.
• Five-year-olds already know their first language(s).
• The ability to use a language requires profound knowledge that most speakers don’t
know that they know.

6. • Many philosophers and linguists have been interested in knowing what accounts for
this knowledge that language users have with respect to their language.
• Many researchers have even suggested that language may be thought of as an
abstract system, characterized either as a set of some kind of rules or a theoretical
structure.
• It is but logical that if a language is spoken (even not written or signed), it must have
a phonetic and phonological system.
• Since it has words and sentences, it must have a syntax; and since these words and
sentences have meanings, there must obviously be semantic principles as well.
• In other words, each language must have an intricate system of knowledge that
encompasses sound and meaning as well as form and structure.

7. • Ordinary language users therefore possess knowledge of a complex system of rules or
principles of language.
• Knowing a language is a matter of knowing the system of rules and principles that is the
grammar for that language.
• To have such knowledge is to have an implicit internal representation of these rules and
principles, which speakers use in the course of language production and understanding.
• This knowledge is something that each speaker or user of their respective language(s)
‘knows,’ but two further important issues for linguists in this regard arise. They are:
(1) just what that knowledge of grammar specifically comprises of, and
(2) how we may best characterize it.

8. What Is Grammar?
• Grammar = the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of
their language
– Rules for combining sounds into words, word formation, making sentences,
assigning meaning
– When a sentence is ungrammatical in a linguistic sense, it means that it breaks
the rules of the shared mental grammar of the language

9. • In practice, linguists do not find it at all easy to write grammars because the
knowledge that people have of the languages they speak is extremely hard to
describe.
• Knowledge of a grammar differs in important way from knowledge of arithmetic,
traffic rules, and other subjects that are taught at home or at school: it is largely
subconscious and not accessible to introspection (that is, you can’t figure out how it
works just by thinking about it).
• There is no secret recipe, no best ingredient for accurate grammar.
• Anyone who knows a language knows much more about that language than is
contained in any grammar book that attempts to describe the language.
• Speakers of a language know what sounds right and what doesn’t sound right, but
they are not sure how they know.

10. Generally speaking, this kind of complex knowledge of language exists in
two forms:

11. Prescriptive Grammar
– It contains rules about structure of language.
– It deals with what the grammarian believes to be right or wrong,
good or bad language use, and states that not following the rules
will generate incorrect language.
– The view of a prescriptive grammarian is that some grammars
are better than others.

12. – The type of grammar that is in a grade school grammar book is
called a prescriptive grammar, because it tells you what to do.
– During the Renaissance, a middle class of English speakers
wished to talk like the upper class, so they started buying
handbooks that told them how to speak “properly”.
– Bishop Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar
with Critical Notes (1762)

14. • Lowth decided that “two negatives makes a positive,” therefore
people should not use double negatives
– Despite the fact that everybody was already using double
negatives in English (and communication was just fine)
– Despite the fact that many languages of the world
require the use of double negatives

17. • Descriptive grammar is a true model of the mental
grammar of language speakers.
• It tries to capture and describe the regularities in
people’s linguistic behavior.
• In other words, a descriptive grammar describes the
linguistic rules that people use when they speak their
language.
• Having looking at the way a language is actually used
by its speakers, it then attempts to analyze it and
formulate rules about the structure.

18. • The point of view of a descriptive grammarian is that
grammars from every language and dialect are equal.
• Since it does not deal with what is good or bad language
use; forms and structures that might not be used by
speakers of Standard English would be regarded as valid
and included.
• Furthermore, according to the definition provided by
Edwin L. Battistella “Descriptive grammar is the basis
for dictionaries, which record changes
in vocabulary and usage.”

21. • One issue discussed by Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015, p.3) is that grammar books
tend to be written as prescriptive works; that is, they seek to outline the standard
language and how it ‘should’ be spoken.
• What sociolinguistics contrarily do is provide descriptive grammars of languages,
which describe, analyze, and explain how people actually speak their languages.
• One example of this difference can be found in the less/fewer distinction.
Prescriptively,
1) less should be used with non-count nouns, such as water, rice, or money, etc.
2) Fewer with count nouns eg, drops of water, grains of rice, pesos, students, girls.
So one can have less money or fewer pesos. Descriptively, however, this distinction
does not hold; less is often used with count nouns. Eg. This fruit has less calories.

22. • Chances are you will also hear people saying things like there were less students
present today than yesterday, although of course there may be some dialects of
English where this distinction is still commonly employed.
• While linguists are aware of prescriptive rules of language as dictated in reference
grammars, the focus of linguistics is not prescriptive rules but the rules inside the
heads of speakers which constitute their knowledge of how to speak the language.
• This knowledge that people have about the language(s) they speak is both
something which every individual who speaks the language possesses and also some
kind of shared knowledge.
• It is this shared knowledge that becomes the abstraction of a language, which is
often seen as something which exists independent of speakers of a particular variety.

23. • Today, most linguists agree that the knowledge speakers have of the languages they
speak is knowledge of something quite abstract.
• It is a knowledge of underlying rules and principles which allow us to produce new
utterances.
• It is knowing what is part of the language and what is not, knowing both what it is
possible to say and what it is not possible to say.
• Communication among people who speak the same language is possible because
they share such knowledge, although how it is shared and how it is acquired are not
well understood.
• Individuals have access to it and constantly show that they do so by using it properly.

25. SOURCES
PPT - Descriptive grammar of English [syntax & morphology] PowerPoint Presentation - ID:5479876
(slideserve.com)
https://www.slideshare.net/saba_kese/descriptive-vs
https://www.slideshare.net/remegiajavier/pedagogical-grammar-15364552
http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/Codeswitching
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism
http://people.umass.edu/moiry/Introduction.pdf
https://iep.utm.edu/knowlang/#H2
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/adam/files/what_is_language.ppt.pdf
https://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/descriptive-grammar.html#google_vignette
https://pediaa.com/difference-between-descriptive-and-prescriptive-grammar/