МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

Брянский государственный университет им. академика И.Г.Петровского

Кафедра английского языка

УЧЕБНО-МЕТОДИЧЕСКОЕ ПОСОБИЕ

К КУРСУ

«ЛИНГВОСТРАНОВЕДЕНИЕ И СТРАНОВЕДЕНИЕ»

ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ СТАРШИХ КУРСОВ

СПЕЦИАЛЬНОСТЕЙ

«ИСТОРИЯ И АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК»,

«ИНФОРМАТИКА И АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК»

Брянск

2004

ББК ** **

Задачей пособия является помочь студентам неязыковых факультетов университета сформировать цельное представление об истории и культуре Великобритании, английском языке как средстве межкультурного общения в глобальном масштабе. Коммуникативный подход к изучению иностранных языков требует кардинальных изменений в содержании и методах преподавания. В частности, студентам следует дать дополнительную информацию о реалиях страны изучаемого языка, культуре и истории страны, нравах, обычаях народа, среде существования и менталитете носителей языка и обусловленных этими факторами особенностей их мировоззрения. Достижение коммуникативной компетентности позволит им свободно общаться с представителями других культур и знакомить иностранцев с высокой духовностью и богатым историческим наследием России.

Содержание

I. Предисловие…………………………………………………………………………….3

II. Введение. Предмет, задачи и цели дисциплины; её связь с историей страны и

другими лингвострановедческими науками………………………………………….4

III. Перечень тем курсовых работ (рефератов)…………………………………………...5

IV. Вопросы для контроля и самоконтроля за усвоением материала курса ……………8

V. Основная часть

Chapter 1. Language, its essence and functions………………………………………….9

1.1.What is language?.............................................................................................9

1.2. The functions of language…………………………………………………..13

1.3. The Sapir – Worf hypothesis……………………………………………….20

Chapter 2. The system of Indo-European languages…………………………………...21

2.1. General characteristics of Indo-European languages……………………….21

2.2. General characteristics of Germanic languages…………………………….26

Chapter 3. History of the English language…………………………………………….30

3.1. The periods in the history of the English language………………………...30

3.2. Origins of the English language…………………………………………….31

3.3. The Celtic element in the English vocabulary……………………………...32

3.4. The Roman Conquest and Latin Borrowings………………………………34

3.5. The Scandinavian Element in the English Vocabulary…………………….37

3.6. The Norman Conquest and the French Element in the English Vocabulary.39

3.7. Enrichment of the English Vocabulary in the Renaissance Period………...41

3.8. Borrowings of the 18^th – 19^th centuries……………………………………..42

3.9. Basic Characteristics of Modern English…………………………………...45

Chapter 4.The Present-day Language Studies………………………………………….55

4.1. The Vocational Side of Studies of Contemporary English…………………55

4.2. The Academic Side of Studies of Contemporary English………………….58

4.3. The Varieties of English and Ways of Studying Them…………………….60

4.4. The language of Literature………………………………………………….62

4.5. A Triple Bond between the Disciplines…………………………………….64

Chapter 5.Language and Representation………………………………………………..67

5.1. Two Conflicting Positions the “Universalist” versus the “Relativist”……..67

5.2. Vocabulary and Grammatical Differences between languages…………….68

5.3. Difficulties in the Relativist Position……………………………………….69

5.4. The “Interested” Character of Linguistic Representation…………………..69

5.5. Vocabulary and the Depiction of Gender…………………………………..70

Chapter 6. Pragmatics and its Relationship with other Sciences……………………….72

6.1. The Identity of Pragmatics………………………………………………….73

6.2. Speech acts………………………………………………………………….74

6.3. Felicity Conditions………………………………………………………….76

6.4. Indirect Speech acts………………………………………………………...76

6.5. Pragmatics and the Dictionary……………………………………………...77

6.6. Didactic and Pragmatic Approaches to English Language

Teaching Assumptions……………………………………………………81

Chapter 7. Language, Culture and Communication…………………………………….83

7.1. Sociocultural Aspects of Foreign Language Teaching……………………..83

7.2. Cultural Aspects in Foreign Language Teaching…………………………..97

a) Understanding the Other……………………………………………...98

b) Cultural Kernels………………………………………………………99

c) Cross-cultural Communication………………………………………100

d) Teachers of English………………………………………………….101

7.3. Teaching English at University Level…………………………………….102

7.4. Training LSP Teachers in Russia………………………………………….108

VI. Рекомендованная литература………………………………………………………..110

1. Лингвистическая

2. История английского языка

3. Страноведение

4. Словари

VII. Приложения…………………………………………………………………………..112

ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

Пособие предназначается для студентов старших курсов неязыковых факультетов БГУ, изучающих английских язык в качестве второй специальности.

Основу пособия составляют тексты по ключевым разделам языкознания, лингвистики, истории языка, лингвострановедения, страноведения, методики и других наук, помогающие студентам получить цельное представление о языке, его сущности, функциях, об особенностях отражения в национальном сознании носителей языка реального мира.

Названные тексты заимствованы из современных энциклопедических лингвострановедческих словарей английского языка, монографий и публикаций известных зарубежных и отечественных лексикографов и лингвистов в сборниках и научных трудах международных и всероссийских научных конференций, в которых довелось участвовать составителю пособия. Написанные преимущественно носителями языка тексты сохраняют авторский стиль, не подвергались адаптации и лишь в отдельных случаях несколько сокращены.

Изучение этих текстов имеет целью познакомить студентов со специфическими особенностями научного стиля, развить навыки критического мышления и, в конечном счёте, служить развитию навыков самостоятельной работы. С целью стимулирования научно-исследовательской работы студентов в пособии помещены вопросы для контроля и самоконтроля за усвоением материала по лингвострановедению и страноведению.

Широкий диапазон текстов позволяет учитывать специфику разных факультетов. Так, на историческом факультете, где студенты изучают историю зарубежных стран, в том числе, англо-говорящих, больше внимания следует уделить лингвистическим проблемам, тогда как для студентов ФМФ интерес представляет как страноведение, так и лингвистика.

С учётом возрастающих требований к повышению качества подготовки по иностранным языкам все выпускники российских вузов должны овладеть, по крайней мере одним иностранным языком, читать литературу по своей специальности, уметь общаться с представителями других культур, пропагандировать свою культуру и тем самым способствовать повышению престижа России на мировом уровне.

Следует отметить, что наиболее сложные лингвистические проблемы рассматриваются в лекционном курсе, обсуждаются на семинарских занятиях, в то время как страноведческие темы выносятся, в основном, на самостоятельную работу студентов.

Текущий контроль за усвоением курса по лингвострановедению и страноведению осуществляется преподавателем на лекциях и семинарских занятиях.

Итоговой формой контроля является зачёт по изученному материалу курса. Допуском к зачёту является написание курсовой работы или реферата по одной из тем по выбору студента. Реферат пишется в соответствии с приведённым ниже планом.

Во введении даётся обоснование выбора темы реферата, её актуальность, место, которое данная проблема занимает в курсе «Лингвострановедения и страноведения», а также её роль в овладении иностранным языком.

В основной части проводится анализ изученной зарубежной и отечественной литературы, даётся оценка разных точек зрения по обсуждаемой проблеме, после чего делаются собственные выводы.

В заключении следует изложить свои соображения или рекомендации, где и как (т.е. с каким контингентом обучаемых и на каком этапе обучения) целесообразно использовать полученную информацию и выводы в дальнейшей практической деятельности выпускника.

Список использованных работ заключает реферат, после чего может следовать «Приложение», содержащее дополнительный материал (таблицы, схемы, иллюстрации и т.п.).

Курсовая работа или реферат пишется на английском языке, её объём 25-30 страниц, при условии полного раскрытия темы, что проверяется на публичной защите, где студент обязан в отведённое время изложить основные положения работы и ответить на заданные ему вопросы.

Ниже приводится перечень тем, предлагаемых студентам (см. стр.9)

ВВЕДЕНИЕ

Предмет, задачи курса

Учебно-методическое пособие ставит своей целью восполнить пробелы студентов неязыковых факультетов университета в сфере лингвистики, лингводидактики, психологии, истории языка и культуры страны изучаемого языка. Читаемые на младших курсах теоретические дисциплины гуманитарного, социально-экономического и других блоков нередко имеют общий характер, и не всегда учитывают специфику будущей специальности студентов, порой дублируют друг друга.

Полноценное овладение иностранным языком как средством общения с носителями другой культуры наравне с практикой устной и письменной речи требует изучения определённого минимума теоретических дисциплин, определяемых государственным стандартом по иностранным языкам. В этом перечне дисциплин, на наш взгляд, нет самых важных или менее важных, принципиальное значение имеет их рациональное сочетание, последовательность изучения, их органическое единство.

Только системный подход в состоянии обеспечить прочное усвоение студентами теоретического материала курсов, позволит получить им цельное представление о языке как сложном социально-психическом явлении, его функционировании, овладеть мыслительно-речевым механизмом и научиться выражать свои мысли иноязычными средствами. Известно, что полноценное овладение иностранным языком предполагает наличие не только лингвистических, но и национально-культурных знаний о стране изучаемого языка.

Лингвострановедение представляет собой новое научное направление, сочетающее в себе, с одной стороны, элементы лингвистических знаний, т.е. изучение семантики языковых единиц, с другой, элементы страноведения, т.е. изучение реалий страны изучаемого языка. Следовательно, лингвострановедение ставит своей целью дать изучающему язык иностранцу базовые знания в объёме, по форме и содержанию приближающиеся к сумме знаний носителя языка. Другими словами, лингвострановедение способствует успешному овладению базой лингвистических знаний, обеспечивающих полноценную коммуникацию между участниками речевого акта, а также адекватное понимание иноязычных текстов из научно-публицистической и художественной литературы.

В науке о языке был и всегда остаётся актуальным вопрос, каким образом язык помогает человеку членить материальный мир, накапливать и передавать из поколения в поколение общественно-исторический опыт его носителей. В результате номинативной деятельности человека факты действительности преобразуются в слова, отражающие духовный мир отдельного человека и нации в целом. Словам присуща кумулятивная функция, они являются «коллективной памятью» носителей языка, памятником культуры, истории. Часто слова несут в себе экстралингвистическую информацию, нередко отсутствующую в словарях, однако хранящуюся в сознании носителей языка. Таким образом, лексические единицы словарного состава любого языка, подобно карте мира, отражают реальную действительность, однако, это отражение обусловлено национально-культурными, историческими и другими особенностями страны. Эволюция национального языка, история его становления неразрывно связана с социальной историей страны, её географическим положением, этническим составом населения, своеобразными традициями, культурой и менталитетом носителей языка. Следовательно, важнейшей функцией языка, наряду с коммуникативной, является передача культурно-исторического наследия от поколения к поколению, что объединяет нацию в единое целое.

Язык тесно связан с социальным и общественно-политическим строем и выполняет предназначенные ему культурно-политические функции. С его помощью формируется и проводится в широкие массы определённая государственная идеология. В её основе обычно лежит определённый набор краеугольных положений, сформулированных политической элитой в интересах господствующих классов или групп населения в целях создания определённого общественного мнения в поддержку проводимой государством внешней и внутренней политики. Идеология получает отражение в национальном языке преимущественно на уровне лексических единиц, словосочетаний, фразеологических выражений-идиом, поговорок, изречений, устойчивых словосочетаний. Именно устойчивые словосочетания, традиционные клишированные фразы, а нередко и целые предложения, следующие в определённой последовательности, оказывают решающую роль на процессы формирования выводов и принятия на этой основе практических решений и последующего претворения их в жизнь.

Идеологическая или культурно-политическая функция осуществляется различными языковыми средствами. Так в языке СМИ эта функция прослеживается особенно наглядно. Государственное телевещание, радио, пресса, журналы всегда отстаивают интересы государства или крупных финансовых, военно-промышленных объединений и структур.

При изучении иностранного языка студент часто сталкивается с целым рядом малопонятных ему фактов, относящихся не к лексике, грамматике или стилистике, а к исторической, социальной, бытовой и иным сферам. Проблемой интеграции таких компонентов культуры в процесс обучения иностранному языку (в частности при усвоении иноязычной лексики) занимается методика преподавания иностранного языка. В процессе обучения иностранному языку элементы страноведения сочетаются с языковыми явлениями, которые выступают не только как средство коммуникации, но и как способ ознакомления студентов с новыми для них реалиями. Наряду с овладением иностранным языком происходит усвоение культурологических знаний и формирование способности учитывать при этом особенности мышления носителей изучаемого языка.

Полноценному овладению иностранным языком в известной мере препятствует широко утвердившееся понимание языка как некоего единого целого. В действительности же любой язык, включая английский, представляет собой строго определённую иерархию систем разных уровней, каждая из которых обладает наряду с общими своими специфическими особенностями, требующими тщательного изучения. Наиболее важными разновидностями национального языка являются язык художественной литературы, научный язык, язык средств массовой информации, а также британский, американский, канадский и другие варианты английского языка.

Особый интерес для изучающих английский язык представляет художественная литература. Между историей страны, национальным языком и языком художественной литературы существует очень тесная связь. В произведениях художественной литературы находят отражение своеобразие и специфика богатого словарного состава английского национального языка. Как известно, изменения в словарном составе обусловлены происходящими в жизни общества социально-экономическими, политическими, культурными и другими изменениями. При создании художественных произведений писатели тщательно отбирают, как бы фильтруют словарный состав на основе характерных для того или иного периода социальных, философских или лингвистических критериев: нормативности языка, эталонов правильности, красоты и т.д. В классических произведениях английской литературы находят отражение прогрессивные идеи, проповедуются общечеловеческие ценности, морально-этические нормы поведения, подвергаются острой критике пороки общества и т.п., что позволяет студентам не только овладевать языком, но и глубже понимать мир изучаемого языка, менталитет его носителей, а также расширить своё мировоззрение.

Эффективная работа студентов с английской художественной, научно-публицистической и другой литературы невозможна без соответствующего лексикографического обеспечения. Особо значимую роль в овладении языком играют, наряду с двуязычными (переводными) и одноязычными (толковыми), учебные словари для российских студентов, изучающих английский язык в ка­честве иностранного . Их составители учитывают такие факторы как родной язык обучаемых, уровень их предшествующей языковой подготовки, жизненный опыт и другие социальные и психологические особенности. Составлением разнообразных словарей этого типа занимается учебная (по зарубежной терминологии «педагогическая») лексикография. Содержанием учебной лексикографии, находящейся на стыке традиционной лексикографии и методики преподавания иностранного языка, являются теоретические и практические аспекты описания активного ядра словарного состава английского языка, сочетаемостные свойства слов и их функционирования, в речи но­сителей языка. Системная интерпретация иноязычной лексики в этих словарях способствует её эффективному усвоению и позво­ляет успешно овладеть механизмом формирования и выражения мыслей в манере, свойственной для носителей иностранного язы­ка. Учебные словари дают не только всестороннюю семантическую характеристику иноязычных слов, но и показывают как и когда носители языка употребляют их в устной и письменной речи.

Поскольку, лингвострановедение ставит своей задачей не только обучение иностранному языку, но и знакомство с миром изучаемого языка, то наравне с лингвистическими словарями в учебном процессе следует шире использовать энциклопедические, лингвострановедческие словари, дающие студентам информацию о культуре народа, географии, экономике, политике страны. Следует отметить, что лингвострановедческие словари, которые представляют сочетание обычных двуязычных или одноязычных толковых словарей и энциклопедических справочников показывают то, как национальная культура отражается в сознании носителей иностранного языка, тем самым иллюстрируя тесную связь между языком и мышлением.

Следовательно, лингвострановедение тесно связано с такими дисциплинами как лексикология, стилистика, лексикография, теоретическая грамматика, история языка, английская литература, теория и практика перевода, методика преподавания иностранного языка и другие. Лексикология даёт системное представление о словарном составе языке языка, что позволяет, в частности, более успешно овладевать иноязычной лексикой. Стилистика как теоретическая дисциплина рассматривает проблему нормы в языке, обращая особое внимание на то, как правильно употреблять нужные слова и выражения в нужном месте для достижения поставленной автором цели. В отличие от лексикологии, описывающей словарный состав в целом, лексикография даёт достаточно полное и всестороннее описание каждой отдельной лексической единицы, включая её функционирование в устной и письменной речи. В то же время, лексикография как огромный комплекс словарей разнообразных типов создаёт необходимую базу для овладения иностранным языком и, в частности, для совершенствования практики перевода с иностранного языка на родной и наоборот.

Таким образом, логическая увязка упомянутых выше дисциплин позволит лучше организовать НИРС и на её основе активизировать самостоятельную работу студентов, мотивировать их активность в изучении иностранным языком. Успешное овладение иностранным языком возможно лишь при условии, когда полученные в теоретических курсах знания подкрепляются практикой преподавания и самостоятельной работой студентов с рекомендованной преподавателем современной художественной, научно-методической и публицистической литературой на иностранном языке.

Темы курсовых работ (рефератов) по лингвострановедению и страноведению для студентов 5 курса

1. What is language? Its origins and functions. Language families. Germanic languages.

2. The English language. Main stages of its development. Formation of the national language.

3. The English language. Its past, present and future.

4. The English language and linguistic representation of Reality.

5. Language of Literature, its influence on culture and Ideology, Mentality of a nation.

6. Language of Mass Media. Functions of Mass Media. Publicistic style and its peculiarities.

7. Pragmatics, its essence and relationship with other sciences-grammar, stylistics, lexicography etc.

8. Geographical position, Economy, Natural Resources of the UK/USA.

9. Customs, traditions, national festivals. Way of life of the UK/USA.

10. Political set-up, Constitution, Political Parties. Electoral system of the UK/USA.

11. Population, ethnic groups. Class system, racial and ethnic relation in the UK/USA.

12. Religion. The basic elements of Religion. The functions of Religion, types of religious institutions.

13. Administrative division of the UK. Local self-government bodies.

14. Secondary and higher Education in the UK/USA.

15. The Commonwealth, main stages of its history, its collapse.

16. European Union and NATO. Main stages of their Development.

17. History of Soviet (Russian) - British relations (XVIII-XX centuries).

18. The USA - USSR political and military relations in the WW II period.

19. History of the Second Front in Europe.

20. E.Hemingway. His politics, activities. His place and role in English literature. Women's portraits in his works.

21. G. Orwell. His politics and activities. His works: "1948", "Animal Yard". "Politics and the English language".

22. A.Huxley. His politics and literary activities. His book “Brave New World”

23. English dictionaries and their role in achieving intercultural and communicative competence.

24. Linguistic Representation of reality in synonymic (ideographic) dictionaries of the English and Russian languages.

Вопросы для контроля и самоконтроля

за усвоением материала курса:

1. Предмет, задачи и цели курса «Лингвострановедение и страноведение». Связь дисциплины с другими науками. Роль курса в овладении иностранным языком.

2. Основные этапы истории страны. Языковые реалии, связанные с важнейшими историческими событиями, культурно-историческими и социальными ассоциациями.

3. Государственное устройство и общественно-политический строй, система образования страны изучаемого языка. Особенности национальной культуры и самобытности носителей иностранного языка.

4. Национальный и социальный состав населения страны изучаемого языка. Демографические и социальные проблемы. Административно-территориальное деление страны. Роль местного самоуправления в жизни людей.

5. Английский язык, его место в семье индоевропейских языков. Основные этапы истории английского языка. Становление национального английского языка. Языковые реалии, связанные с важнейшими историческими событиями. Причины языковой экспансии.

6. Британское содружество – его становление, расцвет и распад. Военно-политические и экономические блоки и союзы – НАТО, Евросоюз, ВТО и др. Роль Англии и США в Европе и современном мире.

7. Научно-философское определение понятия «язык». Сущность языка и его основные функции. Язык как средство формирования мысли, общения, передачи культурно-исторического наследия от поколения к поколению и т.д.

8. Английский язык и отображение им картины реального мира в сознании его носителей.

9. Современный английский язык. Проблемы его изучения в современной лингвистике. Вопросы языковой политики в Англии и США. Перспективы развития английского языка.

10. Национальный язык и язык английской художественной литературы; взаимоотношения между ними.

11. Газетно-публицистический жанр, его особенности. Язык СМИ как одно из важнейших средств формирования государственной идеологии.

12. Новые подходы в методике преподавания и изучения иностранного языка. Обучение межкультурной коммуникации. Роль личности преподавателя иностранного языка в учебно-воспитательном процессе в вузе.

13. Англоязычная лексикография. Основные типы словарей: лингвистические, энциклопедические, лингвострановедческие и др. Роль лингвострановедческой и страноведческой компетентности в достижении взаимопонимания между представителями разных культур.

Chapter 1.L anguage, its essence and its functions

1. What is language?

F.M.Berezin

Interest in language, how it originated, how it works and develops, has existed from time immemorial. For a long time the word "language" was a general notion used to mean the entire communicative means of man. For many, this was the broadest way of regarding language. Whatever earlier approaches to the nature of languages there have been, we realize now that language is a product of human society and can exist only in human society.

There is no language outside society. Language can be understood properly if it is studied in close connection with the history of human society. Language reflects the character, mentality and social activity of the people who use it.

Language is human and only human. The latest research has shown that some species of animals also communicate, but they do not talk in the sense in which we usually use this word. People can also use other means of communication, such as red lights, or flags, but these signs are interpreted into language. Language is the normal form and means of communication and it is determined by the social, economic and cultural history of the people speaking it.

To define language with precision is far less easy than, for example, to define "acid" or other chemical terms. This is because many scientific researchers are interested in language—philosophers, psychologists, logicians, sociologists, as well as linguists. As language is closely connected with thinking and is considered a vehicle of thought it has fallen under the scrutiny of philosophers. Logicians study the laws of thinking and their reflection in language. Language is of social character by its origin and thus draws the attention of sociologists.

Here are some definitions of language that have been given by various scientists from several countries:

Hegel (1770-1831), the prominent German philosopher, said that "language is the art of theoretical intelligence in its true sense, for it is its outward expression."

F. de Saussure (1857-1913), the famous French linguist, defined language as a system of signs expressing ideas.

E. Sapir,(1884-1939), an outstanding American linguist, considered language to be a purely human and non-instinctive-method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.

The American linguist L. Bloomfield (1887-1949) stated that language enabled one person to express a reaction to another's stimulus. He considered language in terms of behavioral patterns like walking, eating, etc. According to this approach, this set of patterns can remain unused for a long period of time and then be called into operation by an appropriate stimulus.

Many definitions of language have been put forward, but those given above are enough to show that none of them are exclusive. They bring out different aspects of language and supplement on« another, but they do not give a comprehensive definition.

A correct understanding of the essence of language depends upon one's approach to the great fundamental questions of philosophy as a whole. The basis of all schools of philosophy is connected with the relation between thought and existence, spirit and nature.

Dividing the philosophers of all time into "two great camps",—idealist and materialist,- F. Engels showed that allegiance to one of these camps depends upon a correct solution of the question: "...in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?"

In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels declares the two main philosophic schools to be materialism and idealism. Materialism regards nature as primary and spirit as secondary; being is first, and thinking, second.

Philosophical materialism asserts that thinking, consciousness, being secondary in their character, nevertheless exist in reality in the same way, as different forms of movable matter. At the same time it indicates that just as one form of matter known as cerebrum stipulates the functioning of thought so this thought is accomplished in certain material form.

So, from the point of view of dialectical materialism secondariness of spirit, thinking, consciousness and primariness of matter is manifested in the fact that thinking, being closely connected with material physiological processes, can occur and occurs only by and with the help of language.

Alongside with the philosophical problem of the interrelation between thinking and language philosophical materialism; emphasizes the function of language as a kind of man's cognitive activity, as a means of transfer of experience, gained in the past, to the future generations.

Now the question arises why language is the most important means of human communication. The answer will become clear if we analyse non-linguistic means of communication.

The transmission of meaning, the conveyance of significant concepts, may be realized not only by language, but also with sign-posts, the Morse code, gesture language and signal fires, and so on, i.e., by devices that have nothing to do either with spoken language or with its written counterpart. African natives, for example, use drums as a long-distance telephone. The same goes for the smoke signals of the American Indians.

Some non-linguistic forms of communication come close to spoken language. The whistling language used by the natives of Gomera, in the Canary Islands, who can communicate in it over very long distances (about six miles), is one of these.

Gesticulation as an aid to spoken language is universally used by all human communities on Earth, but to different degrees and with different symbolic meanings-' Differences in the meanings of gestures are often striking, and are governed by social convention. To the Russians, for instance, a downward nod of the head means "yes", and a shaking of the head from side to side, "no". On the other hand, the modern Czechs express "no" by a downward jerk of the head. The question why the language of gestures did not become universal instead of spoken language may be explained by the fact that it occupies the hands, while spoken language leaves the hands free for other tasks; it also requires light and a clear view, while spoken language can be used in the dark and through obstacles. Some Soviet linguists admit that there are common features between language and other sign-systems. These common features are the following:

(a) they serve as a means of expression, conveying ideas or feelings;

(b) they are of a social character, as they are created by society with a view to serving it;

(c) they are material in essence though their material form is different (sound-waves, graphic schemes, the Morse code, and so on);

(d) they all reflect objective reality.

But the differences between language and these sign-systems are more essential. They are as follows:

(1) Language is the total means of expressing ideas and feelings and communicating messages from one individual to others, used by all people in all their spheres of activity. All other sign-systems are restricted in their usage and limited in their expressive capacity. For instance, music conveys emotions, but it does not name them; it cannot express concepts and judgments, or transmit ideas. It embraces only those people who understand it and is limited to those musical works which have actually been created by composers. Other people can perceive this "sound system", but they cannot use it actively.

(2) Language conveys not only the essence of the facts, but the speaker's attitude towards them, his estimation of reality and his will. Language is connected not only with logical thinking, but with psychology of people too.

(3) All sign-systems apart from language are artificial, and they are created and changed by convention. They are made not by the people as a whole, but by a relatively small group of representatives of the given speciality.

The development of language does not depend upon the will of the members of society. Each generation adopts the language it is given historically, and the development of language may be characterized as a historical process with its own objective laws.

To sum up. All sign-systems are subsidiary to language. Each of them has its own advantages over language, such as precision, brevity, abstraction, clarity and so on. But none of them can replace language as the universal means of communication of people in all fields of activity, conveying ideas, thoughts, and emotions, and they cannot be called important for those reasons.

A great contribution towards solving this problem was made by I. P. Pavlov, the distinguished Soviet physiologist and psychologist. His discovery of conditioned reflexes and his description of the animal's new nervous connections with its conditions of life represent a great step forward in the development of the theory of reflexes. Pavlov regarded conditioned or temporarily acquired reflexes as a function of the animal organism specially adapted to achieve a more and more perfect equilibrium between the organism and its environment. Pavlov said: "When developing animal world reached the stage of man, an extremely important addition was made to the mechanism of nervous activity. In the animal, reality is signalized almost exclusively by stimulations and by the traces they leave in the cerebral hemispheres, which come directly to the special cells of the visual auditory or other receptors of the organism. This is the first system of signals common to man and animals. But speech constitutes a second signaling system of reality which is peculiarly ours, being the signal of the first signals. On the one hand numerous speech stimulations have removed us from reality, and we must always remember this in order not to distort our attitude to reality. On the other hand, it is precisely speech which has made us human... However it cannot be doubted that the fundamental laws governing the activity of the first signaling system must also govern that of the second because it, too, is activity of the same nervous tissue."

These theoretical generalizations of Pavlov's revealed the nature of higher nervous activity and led him to the concept of the first and second signaling systems, of which he regarded the latter as peculiar to the human brain.

But it was labour alone that created a new element, the appearance of which marked the birth of fully-fledged man, namely, society. And language, a doubly important medium having a close relationship to thinking and an essential social function, makes man human and fundamentally distinguishes him from the animals.

Language is one of the natural organic semiological systems, the basic and the most important means of communications between the members of a given speech community, for whom this system is a means of developing their thinking, of passing on their cultural and historical traditions from generation to generation This what the natural human language is for as our contemporaries understand it. It is necessary to add, that language as the medium of the literature as well as the history of ideas, is a vibrant, living phenomenon. It is subject to constant growth, change and decay which characterize all forms of life. When a language ceases to change, such as Latin did, we call it a dead language. Most of our languages, however, are in state of flux going in harmony with the dynamics and evolution of their respective users. Similar ideas on the evolution of a language were expressed by Russian philosophers, great thinkers of the XX century. According to J. Brodsky “language is the human being, particularly the poet that is the tool of language”. He stresses the role of literature and especially of poetry in gradual language development, shows relationship between language and literature highly praises poets and writers for their contribution to the language “maturity”.

2. The functions of language

The question "Why we use language?" seems hardly to require an answer. But, as is often the way with linguistic questions, our everyday familiarity with speech and writing can make it difficult to appreciate the complexity of the skills learned. This is particularly so when we try to define the range of functions to which language can be put. "To communicate our ideas" is the usual answer to the question and, indeed, this must surely be the most widely recognized function of language. Whenever we tell people about ourselves or our circumstances, or ask for information about other selves and circumstances, we are using language in order tо exchange facts and options. The use of language is often called "referential", "propositional", or "ideational". But it would be wrong to think of it as the only way in which we use language. Language scholars have identified several other functions where the communication of ideas is a marginal or irrelevant consideration. For instance, in “Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching” language is described as having three main functions: descriptive, expressive and social.

The descriptive function of language is to convey factual information. This is the type of information which can be started or denied and in some cases even tested, for example: It must be well below ten degrees outside.

The expressive function of language is to supply information about the speaker, his or her feelings, preferences, prejudices, and past experiences. For example, the utterance: "I'm not inviting the Sandersons again" may, with appropriate intonation, show that the speaker did not like the Sandersons and that this is the reason for not inviting them again. The social function of language serves to establish and maintain social relations between people.

For example, the utterance: "Will that be all, Sir?" used by a waiter in a restaurant signals a particular social relationship between the waiter and the guest. The waiter puts the guest in a higher role relationship.

Naturally, these functions overlap at times, particularly the expressive and the social functions.

The British linguist Halliday considers language as having three main functions:

a) the ideational function is to organize the speaker's or writer's experience of the real or imaginary world, i.e. language refers ю real or imagined persons, things, actions, events, states, etc.

b) the interpersonal function is to indicate, establish, or maintain social relationships between people. It includes forms of address, speech function, modality, etc.

c) the textual function is to create written or spoken texts which cohere within themselves and which fit the particular situation in which they are used.

A famous English linguist D. Chrystal has identified the following functions of language in his “Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language”.

Emotional expression

Mr. X carefully leans his walking stick against a wall, but it falls over. He tries again, and it falls a second time. Mr. X roundly curses the walking stick. How should we classify this function of language? It cannot be "communication of ideas", for there no-one else in the room.

Here we have one of the commonest uses of language-a means of getting rid of our nervous energy when we are under stress. It is the clearest case of what is often called an "emotive" or "expressive" function of language. Emotive language can be used whether or not we are alone. Swear words and obscenities are probably the commonest signal to be used in this way, especially when we are in an angry or frustrated state. But there also many emotive utterances of a positive kind, such as our involuntary verbal reactions to beautiful art or scenery, our expression of fear and affection, and the emotional outpourings of certain kinds of poetry.

The most linguistic expressions of consist of conventional words or phrases (such as By Gosh! Darn it! What a sight) and the semi-linguistic noises often called interjections (such as Tut-tut, Ugh, Wow, and Ouch). Also, an important function of the prosody of language is to provide an outlet for our attitudes while we speak. At a more sophisticated level, there are many literary devices of grammar and vocabulary which convey the writer's feelings.

However, in these more complex cases it becomes difficult to distinguish the emotional function of language from the "ideational" function described above.

Social interaction

Mrs. P sneezes violently. Mrs. Q says "Bless you!" Mrs. P says "Thank you." Again, this hardly seems to be a case of language being used to communicate ideas, but rather to maintain a comfortable relationship between people. Its sole function is to provide a means of avoiding a situation which both parties might otherwise find embarrassing. No factual content is involved. Similarly, the use of such phrases as Good morning or Pleased to meet you, and ritual exchanges about health or the weather, do not "communicate ideas" in the usual sense.

Sentences of this kind are usually automatically produced, end stereotyped in structure. They often state the obvious (e.g. Lovely day) or have no content at all (e.g. Hello). They certainly require a special kind of explanation, and this is found in the idea that language is here being used for the purpose of maintaining rapport between people. The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) coined the phrase "phatic communion" to refer to this social function of language, which arises out of the basic human need to signal friendship-or, at least, lack of enmity. For someone to withhold these sentences when they are expected, by staying silent, is a sure sign of distance, alienation, even danger.

The power of sound

In 1952, children skipping in a school playground were heard to chant:"Shirley Oneple, Shirley Twople, Shirley Threeple... " and so on up to "Shirley Tenple" (i.e. Temple). The instance clearly illustrates the "phonetic" character of children's rhythms and games. It is largely nonsense, and yet it performs an important function: the repetitive rhythms help to control the game, and the children plainly take great delight in it. "I like coffee, I like tea, I like radio, and TV..." - a typical ball-bouncing monologue.

There are many situations where the only apparent reason for a use of language is the effect the sound have on the users or listeners. We can group together here such different cases as the rhythmical litanies of religious groups, the persuasive cadences of political speechmaking, the dialogue chants used by prisoners or slaves as they work, the various kinds of language games played by children and adults, and the voices of individuals singing in the kitchen or the bath. Perhaps the clearest cases are the lyrics of popular songs and the range of phonetic effects which can be encountered in poetry. Unintelligible words and phrases are commonplace in the oral poetry of many languages, and can be explained only by a universal desire to exploit the sonic potential of language.

The control of reality

In an English church, a priest holds a baby over a font, and pours water on its head, saying I baptize you... All forms of supernatural belief involve the use of language as a means of controlling the force which the believers feel affect their lives. The various prayers and formulae which are directed at God, gods, devils, spirits, objects, and other physical forces are always highly distinctive forms of language. In some cases, the language might be regarded as a form of ideational communication, with a supernatural being as the recipient - but if so, it is a somewhat abnormal type of communication, for the response is usually appreciated only in the mind or behavior of the speaker, and there may be no evident response at all.

In other cases, the function of the language is to control matter, or the reality which the matter is supposed to represent. For example, a Roman Catholic Mass, the speaking of the words "This is my body is believed to identify the moment when the communion bread is changed into the body of Christ. Several other situations, apart from the magical and the religious, illustrate this "performative" function of language - such as the words which name a ship at a launching ceremony.

Recording the facts

A solicitor, preparing a case for a client, pulls down an old book of judgments from the shelf, and reads a report of a case which took place 25 years ago. What use of language is this? At first sight, it would appear to be "ideational"; but the situation in which the communication takes place is quite different in several respects.

When information is stored for future use, it is impossible to predict who is likely to use indeed, much of the material may never be referred to again. There is therefore no "dialogue" element in the communication. The information has to be as self-contained as possible to predict the demands which may one da\ be made upon it, and in most cases there is no way in which the user can respond so as to influence the writer. Accordingly, when language is used for the purposes of recording facts, it is very different from that used in everyday conversation-in particular; it displays a much greater degree of organization, impersonality, and explicitness.

This function of language is represented by all kinds of record-keeping, such as historical records, geographical surveys, business accounts, scientific reports, parliamentary acts, and public databanks. It is an essential domain of language use, for the availability of this material guarantees the knowledge-base of subsequent generations, which is a prerequisite of social development. Human progress is greatly hastened by the use of language in cultural transmission (one of its functions); the knowledge and experience acquired by one person can be passed on another in language; so that in part restarts where the other leaves off.

The expression of identity

The crowds attending President Reagan's pre-election meetings in 1984 repeatedly shouted in unison "Four more years!" What kind of language is this?

Such language is hardly informative to those who use it, but it plainly has an important role in fostering a sense of identity-in this case, among those who shared the same political views. Many social situations display language which unites rather than informs -- the chanting of a crowd at a football n-atch, the shouting of names or slogans at public meetings, the stage-managed audience reactions to television game shows, or the shouts of affirmation at some religious meeting.

Our use of language can tell our listener or reader a great deal about ourselves-in particular, about our regional origins, social background, level of education, occupation, age, sex, and personality. The way language is used to express the variables is so complex that is requires separate discussion, but the general point can be made here, that a major function of language is the expression of personal identify - the signaling of whom we are and where we "belong".

These signals enter into the whole of our linguistic behavior, so much so that it is often a problem distinguishing the function of language from that used for the communication of ideas. In a public meeting, for instance, Mr. A may make a speech in support of Mr. B, and it may be difficult to decide whether the reason for his speech is to make a fresh point, or simply to demonstrate to all concerned that A is on B's side. The arena of political debate is full of such maneuverings, as individuals strive to express their solidarity with (or distance from) each other.

The instrument of thought

A woman sits alone at a workbench, staring at a piece of equipment with a puzzled frown. She says: "So if I put red four there, and link it to blue three, that'll leave blue six free. Then I can use that for green four. Right," She sets to work.

People often feel the need to speak their thoughts aloud. If asked why they do it, they reply that it helps their concentration. Authors often make similar remarks about the need to get a first draft down on paper, in order to see whether what they have written corresponds to what they had I mind. The French thinker, Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), once said: "We only know just what we meant to say after we have said it.”

Perhaps the most Common use language as an instrument of thought is found when people reform mathematical calculations "in their head". Very often, this supposedly "mental" act is accompanied by a verbal commentary. However, it is not essential that language used in this way should always be spoken aloud or written down. Often, people can be seen to move their lips while they are thinking, but no actual sound emerges. Language is evidently present, but in a "sub-vocal" form. Several theories have proposed concerning the role of language as the instrument of thought-notably that of the Russian psychologist, Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934),who argued for a concept of "inner speech", a mental use of works to evoke a sequence of thoughts: Does all thought, then, require language?

Language and Thought

It seems that there is the closest of relationships between language and thought: everyday experience suggests that much of our thinking is facilitated by language. But is there identity between the two? It is possible to think without language? Or does our language dictate the ways in which we are able to think? Such matters have exercised generations of philosophers, psychologists, and linguists, who have uncovered layers of complexity in these apparently straightforward questions. A simple answer is certainly not possible; but at least we can be clear about the main factors which give rise to the complication.

Kinds of thinking

Many kinds of behavior have been referred to as "thinking", but not all of them require us to posit a relationship with language. Most obviously, there is no suggestion that language is involved in our emotional response to some object or event, such as when we react to a beautiful painting or an unpleasant incident: we may use language to explain our reaction to others, but the emotion itself is "beyond words". Nor do people engaged in the creative arts find it essential to think using language: composers, for example, often report that they "hear" the music they wish to write. Also, our everyday fantasies, day-dreams, and other free associations can all proceed without language.

The thinking which seems to involve language is of a different kind: this is the reasoned thinking which takes place as we work out problems, tell stories, plan strategies, and so on. It has been called "rational", "directed", "logical", or "propositional" thinking. It involves elements that are both deductive (when we solve problems by using a given set of rules, as in arithmetical task) anc inductive (when we solve problems on the basis of data placed before us, as in working out a travel route). Language seems to be very important for this kind of thinking. The formal properties of language, such as word order and sentence sequencing, constitute the medium in which our connected thoughts can be presented and organized.

Independence or identity

But how close is this relationship between language and thought. It is usual to see this question in terms of two extremes. First, there is the hypothesis that language and thought are totally separate entities, with one being dependent on the other. At the opposite extreme, there is the hypothesis that language and thought are identical-that it is not possible to engage in any rational thinking without using language. The truth seems to lie somewhere between these two positions.

Within the first position, there are plainly two possibilities: language might be dependent upon thought, or thought might be dependent upon language. The traditional view, which is widely held at a popular level, adopts the first of these: people have thoughts, and then they put these thoughts into words. It is summarized in such metaphorical views of language as the "dress" or "tool" of thought. The view is well represented in the field of child language acquisition, where children are seen to develop a range of cognitive abilities which precede the learning of language.

The second possibility has also been widely held: the way people use language dictates the lines along which they can think. An expressive summary of this is Shelley's "He gave men speech, and speech created thought," which is the measure of the universe (Prometheus Unbound). This view is also represented in the language acquisition field, in the argument that the child's earliest encounters with language are the main influence on the way concepts are learned. The most influential expression' of this position, however, is found in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

A third possibility, which is also, widely held these days, is that language and thought are independent-but this is not to say that they are identical. The identity view (for example, that thought is no more than an internalized vocalization) is no longer common. There are too many exceptions for such a strong position to maintain: we need think only of the various kinds of mental operations which we can perform without language, such as recalling a sequence of movements in a game or sport, or visualizing the route from home to work. It is also widely recognized that pictorial images and physical models are helpful in problem-solving, and may at times be more efficient than purely verbal representations of a problem.

On the other hand, these cases are far outnumbered by those where language does seem to be the main means whereby successful thinking can proceed. To see language and thought as independent, then, is so recognize that language is a regular part of the process of thinking, at the same time recognizing that we have to think in order to understand language. It is not a question of one notion taking precedence over the other, but of both notions being essential, if we are to explain behavior. Once again, people have searched for metaphors to express their views. Language has been likened to the arch of a tunnel: thought, to the tunnel itself. But the complex structure and function of language defies simple analogies.

3. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The romantic idealism of the late 18^th century as encountered in the views of Johann Herder (1774-1803) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1762-1835), placed great value on the diversity of the world's languages and cultures. The tradition was taken up by the American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) and resulted in a view about the relation between languages and thought which was widely influential in the middle decades of this century. The "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", as it came to be called, combines two principles. The first is known as linguistic determinism: it states that language determines the way we think. The second follows from this, and known as linguistic relativity: it states that the distinctions encoded in one language are not found in any other language. In a much-quoted paragraph, Whorf propounds the view as follow: "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds-and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way-an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our languages. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees". However, a weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is generally accepted. Language may not determine the way we think, but it does influence the way we perceive and remember, and it affects the ease with which we perform mental tasks. Several experiments have shown that people recall things more easily if the things correspond to readily available words or phrases. And people certainly find it easier to make a conceptual distinction if it nearly corresponds to words available in their language.

Aids to study the text:

1. What is language? Give several definitions to illustrate its essence.

2. Describe the interrelation between language and thinking.

3. Why is language considered the most important means of human communication? Give your arguments.

4. Comment on the various approaches to the defining of the functions of language.

5. Expand on the functions of language as pointed out by the English linguist D.Chrystal.

6. Dwell on the Sapir – Worf hypothesis and illustrate its essence.

Chapter 2. The system of Indo-European languages

1. General characteristics of Indo-European languages

It has been estimated that there are more than 2,700 distinct languages to be found in the world today, and all these fall into linguistic groups, which are part of linguistic families which may have appeared in different parts of the globe simultaneously.

It should be borne in mind that when people speak of linguistic families they do not use the term "family" in its genetic sense. The fact that people speak the same, or related, languages does not mean that there is a link of race or blood between them. It is therefore completely unscientific to establish any connection between racial origin and language.

It is often possible to show that languages are historically or genetically related, i.e. they descend from a common source, but when it comes to races we have no such an evidence. We cannot say, for instance, that the Mongolian race means the same as the Mongolian languages. Furthermore, it is quite probable that the Indo-European race never existed. In the course of the migrations of ancient peoples, numerous linguistic and racial mixtures took place. The linguistic map of the world shows that many non-Indo-European peoples of Europe and Asia ceased using their own languages and adopted the Indo-European languages. The Basque language, which is spoken in the north of Spain and the south of France, resisted the assimilation of Indo-European in the past and, thus, it is not genetically related to the Indo-European languages. On the other hand, there is no racial difference between the Estonians, for instance, who speak a Finno-Ugric language, and the Letts, who speak a language of Indo-European origin.

So, all the attempts to draw a parallel between race and language which were put forward at the end of the 19th century by chauvinistically-minded linguists were sharply criticized by progressive thinkers. In trying to reconstruct the original state of any linguistic family, linguists face many difficulties. The vital problem was the absence of any recorded history of languages entering the family on the one hand, and the vast language migrations on the other. Tribal migrations, which took place in the distant past, completely obscured the linguistic state of antiquity and resulted in disappearance of whole peoples and emergence of new tribes with their own languages.

But in considering the great migrations and the prehistory of language, we shall take as an example the Indo-European family, because a lot of information has been obtained about this linguistic group through the thorough work of investigators in many countries over a long period of time.

The name given to this family of languages, Indo-European, is based on the fact that it covered most of Europe and extended eastward as far as northern India. The people speaking this original language lived about 2,500 to 2,000 B. C.

In the 19th century, the original home of the Indo-European people was supposed to be situated in Central Asia, and that successive waves of emigration from there carried the various members of the family to Europe. This can be explained by the confusion of the primitive Aryans with the much earlier Indo-Europeans, and by the importance attached to the oldest Indo-European language, Sanskrit.

Recent researches show that it is possible to narrow down the territorial limits in Europe, within which the cradle of the Indo-European languages is to be found. It is known with reasonable certainty that the Italian and Greek peninsulas were colonized from the North. The occupation of France and the British Isles by the Celts from Central Europe took place comparatively late (500 B. C). The Iberian Peninsula remained predominantly non-Indo-European until Roman times, and in modern Basque a trace of pre-Indo-European speech still survives. The Eastern limit is indicated by the fact that before the two Asiatic migrations (Tocharian and Indo-Iranian), Indo-European must have been bordered to the east by an early form of Finno-Ugric, and there is some evidence of contact between these two families in the primitive period. There is reason to believe that the original centre of Finno-Ugrian expansion lay between the Volga and the Urals, and this gives us the furthest boundary, beyond which Indo-European was not to be found in its early stages. This leaves the central part of Europe, extending from the Rhine to Central and Southern Russia, and the greater part of this area had long been occupied by various Indo-European dialects. Some linguists consider that it is impossible to define the original Indo-European homeland to limits any narrower than these.

The information we have obtained about the Indo-European language-family is based mainly on linguistic evidence. The Indo-European vocabulary reveals a great deal in this respect, which is not surprising when one considers that if a single word occurs in all branches of the Indo-European family, it can be reasonably assumed that it descends from the original language. If that happens repeatedly with words of a certain type, it can be understood that whatever those words describe, they are part of the original Indo-European language. On the contrary, if certain types of words bear no likenesses in the Indo-European languages, it follows that the material circumstances which brought these words into being came relatively late. For instance, most Indo-European languages have common words for animals like bears and wolves, for plants like pine-trees, for phenomena like snow. But there are no common words for elephants, crocodiles, or palm trees.

Due to the analysis of these linguistic clues, it becomes possible to draw a vivid image of the Indo-European peoples as a race, concerning their way and conditions of life. Thus, these peoples lived in forests far from lakes, rivers or seas, because the same words naming such trees as birches, willows, and oak-trees can be found in all Indo-European languages. They had domestic animals like the horse, dog, sheep, pig, goose. At prehistoric times Indo-Europeans were apparently cattle-raising nomads and had a stone-age culture. Their instruments were mostly of stone, but they made some use of metals as well. Their religion is supposed to have been pantheistic, i.e. worshiping of Sky-father and Earth-mother. The Indo-Europeans must have been ardent and violent warriors for the considerable number successful conquests.

Thorough investigation of the customs and traditions of the oldest descendants of the Indo-European peoples enabled the scientists to arrive at fundamental conclusions concerning their social organization. Thus, the use of cattle for money was found among the early Slavonic peoples, the Irish and the early Romans.

The comparative method allows us to state that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was a highly inflective language. Nouns and verbs were characterized by rich paradigmatic variations. Nouns had at least eight case-forms— nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative, and instrumental. Many suffixes were involved in the formation of the Verb paradigm. Both nouns and verbs had distinct forms for the dual number. The forms of the pronouns already showed different roots, like me , and we, us in English. There were no separate inflexions for the passive, but only for the middle voice, which expressed the idea that the speaker was especially interested in the action denoted by the verb. The word order within the Indo-European sentence was free like in Greek and Latin. Subject, verb and object could occupy the primary position; attribute usually preceded substantive, as in “good man”, for example. Counting was based on ten; nevertheless traces of the duodecimal system remained. Whereas numerals from one to four were felt to function as adjectives, those above four were taken as nouns.

Shortly after 2,000 B. C. the Indo-Europeans, supressed by other tribes, had to make great migrations, and they began to spread in different directions. Some of them moved as far as south-eastern Asia, entering the Indian Peninsula through the Khyber Pass in the 2nd millennium B. C., probably before 1,500 B. C. This group spoke a language, which became known at a later stage as Sanskrit. On their way, these Indo-Europeans split up to such an extent so that to leave several related languages scattered along their route, in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and modern Iran.

One section seems to have gone directly westward, then down into the Balkan Peninsula, arriving at the coast of the Ionian Sea and giving us classical and then modern Greek. The Italic people were pushed from the Alps southwards. The Proto-Germans followed the Celts and left their languages all over northern Europe.

It should be borne in mind that the Indo-European speech on reaching Europe was granted no opportunity to spread across this area freely: it had to come in contact with Basque, Etruscan and other languages predominating on this territory.

It is certain that the Indo-European was not so monolithic a language as to be fully reconstructed by comparison. In 1880s, linguists revealed the existence of different dialects within the Indo-European parent language. At present we cannot do much about these differences; but it is important to recognize their existence. A period of dialect divergence preceded the final separation of the Indo-European languages from their parent stock, and these dialects had created separate languages even before the period of the great migrations.

The family of Indo-European languages as a whole is subdivided into ten major branches, in addition to which there used to have been others which died out without leaving any written records. The ten major branches and their main representatives are as follows: Indo-Iranian, which was later subdivided into:

I. Indian (its oldest form is Sanskrit). The main representatives of the modern Indian languages include Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Gipsy and some others).

II. Iranian , which is represented by such languages as Avestan or Zend ( the old form), the so-called Pahlavi (the middle form) and Baluchi, Pushtu, Kurdish, Yagnobi, Ossetic, and some other modern languages.

III. Baltic , which is divided into Lithuanian (the language spoken by some three million people in the Lithuania), the old texts of which go back to the 16th century, and Lettish, spoken by 2 million people.

IV. The Slavonic languages , which are subdivided into three large groups:

1. Eastern Slavonic where we find three languages:

a) Russian, spoken by more than 122 million people, the basis of a common and a literary language;

b) Ukrainian, called Little Russian before the 1917 Revolution, spoken by some 40 million people;

c) Byelorussian (white Russian), spoken by 9 million people.

2. Southern Slavonic which include:

a) Bulgarian, current mostly in Bulgaria among more than seven million people;

b) Serbo-Croatian, the language of the Serbs and Croats, about 12 million people, chiefly on the territory of former Yugoslavia, whose oldest texts date from the 11th century;

c) Slovenian, spoken by 2 million people, with its oldest texts dating from the 10th century.

3. Western Slavonic, the main representatives of which are:

a) Czech, used by about 10 million people in Czechoslovakia, with texts going back to the 13th century;

b) Slovakian;

c) Polish, spoken by about 35 million people, chiefly in Poland. Polish has a rich literature, the texts of which reach back to the 14th century.

Baltic and Slavonic are very closely related, though not as closely as Indo-Aryan and Iranian. There are some ancient divergences between them which make it possible to reconstruct a primitive Balto-Slavonic language.

Nevertheless in view of their many close resemblances it is convenient to group them together under the common name of Balto-Slavonic.

V. Germanic languages (see p. 26 )

VI. Italo-Celtic with two large groups:

1. Italic, the only language of which has survived is Latin; Latin has developed into the various Romance languages which may be listed as follows:

a) French, spoken by 60 million people in France and abroad (chiefly in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada);

b) Provencal, of various kinds, of which the oldest literary document dates from the 11th century;

c) Italian with numerous dialects, spoken by 51 million people in Italy itself and abroad;

d) Spanish, spoken by 156 million in Spain, the Fillipine Islands, Central and Northern America (except Brazil);

e) Portuguese;

f) Rumanian;

g) Moldavian;

h) Rhaeto-Romanic, spoken in three dialects in the Swiss canton, in Tyrol and Italy.

2. Celtic, with its Gaelic subgroup, including Irish, which possessed one of the richest literatures in the Middle Ages from the 7th century, Scottish and the Briton subgroup with Breton, spoken by a million people in Britanny and Welsh, spoken in Wales.

VII. Greek , with numerous dialects, such as Ionic-Attic, Achaean, Aeolic, Doric, etc. Literature begins with Homer's poems “the Iliad” and “the Odyssey”, dating from the 8th century B. C. Modern Greek is spoken in continental Greece, on the islands of the Ionian and Aegean Seas and by Greek settlements on the territory of Russia.

VIII. Armenian , spoken by three and a half million people in Armenia and in many settlements of Armenians in Iran, Turkey, etc. Literary Armenian is supposed to go back to the 5th century. Old Armenian, or Grabar, differs greatly from Modern Armenian or Ashharabar.

IX. Albanian , spoken now by approximately two million people in Albania. The earliest records of Albanian date from the 17th century A. D. Its vocabulary consists of a large number of words borrowed from Latin, Greek, Turkish, Slavonic, and Italian.

Two major members of the family which were discovered in the present century, are missing in these schemes. They are:

X. "Tocharian" , as it is called, which is preserved in fragmentary manuscripts in Chinese Turkestan, dating from the 6th to the 10th centuries A. D. It is divided into two dialects, which for convenience are termed A and B.

What has just been said may be summed up on the following diagram:

Linguistic evidence shows that close contact existed between the dialects of Indo-European. From the point of view of vocabulary, for instance, Indo-Iranian shared with Baltic and Slavonic a considerable number of words which may be found only in these languages and they supply important clues of the connection between these two linguistic families: the Sanskrit word svit "to be bright, white" has its cognate in the Old Slavonic language in the form of sviteti "to dawn".

During this period the contacts between languages were so wide that it was not only languages in the same family that had common elements, but non-Indo-European languages borrowed words from Indo-European languages too: for example, the Finno-Ugric mete "honey" was borrowed from the Sanskrit madhu , Finno-Ugric nime meaning "name" has its cognate form in the Sanskrit naman .

The prominent Russian linguist A. A. Shakhmatov showed that the earliest Finno-Ugric borrowings from their neighbours in south Russia show common Aryan rather than Iranian traits.

The study of close linguistic relations between the dialects of the Indo-European parent language is well underway now and the decipherment of newly discovered languages will contribute to the solution of this problem.

2. General characteristics of Germanic languages

The Germanic languages represent one of the branches of the vast Indo-European family of languages. Nowadays Germanic languages are spoken in many countries: German (in Germany, Austria, and in Switzerland), Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic, English (spoken, besides England, in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and partly elsewhere). In India English is considered the second official language.

In ancient times the territory of Germanic languages was much more limited. Thus, in the 1st century A. D. Germanic languages were only spoken in Germany and in territories adjacent to it, and also in Scandinavia.

Germanic has three distinct groups:

1. North Germanic or Scandinavian which includes:

a) Danish, b) Swedish, c) Norwegian, d) Icelandic; the songs of Edda written in Icelandic are important landmarks in world literature;

2. West Germanic with

a) English, spoken today by about 270 million people in the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada;

b) Frisian, spoken in the provinces of the Northern Netherlands, with their oldest literary sources dating from the 14th century;

c) German (spoken by about 83 million people) with two dialects—Low German occupying the lower or northern parts of Germany, and High German which is located in the mountainous regions of the South of Germany—which have many peculiarities in pronunciation;

d) Dutch, spoken by 12 million people;

e) Yiddish, now spoken by Jewish population in Poland, Germany, Rumania, Hungary. It is based upon some middle German dialects or a mixture of dialects blended with Hebrew, Slavonic and other elements;

3. East Germanic which has left no trace. The only representative of this group is Gothic, whose written records have been preserved in the fragmentary translation of the Bible by the bishop Ulfila. Some Gothic words spoken in the Crimea were collected there in the 16th century.

There are two Italo-Celtic large groups:

1. Italic , the only language of which has survived is Latin, although now it’s a dead language; Latin has developed into various Romance languages which may be listed as follows:

a) French, spoken by 60 million people in France and abroad (chiefly in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada);

b) Provencal, of various kinds, of which the oldest literary document dates from the 11th century;

c) Italian with numerous dialects, spoken by 51 million people in Italy itself and abroad;

d) Spanish, spoken by 156 million in Spain, the Fillipine Islands, Central and Northern America (except Brazil),

e) Portuguese,

f) Rumanian,

g) Moldavian.

2. Celtic , with its Gaelic subgroup, including Irish, which possessed one of the richest literatures in the Middle Ages from the 7th century, Scottish and the Briton subgroup with Breton, spoken by a million people in Britanny and Welsh, spoken in Wales.

Aids to study the text:

I. Answer the following questions:

1. What do we mean by a linguistic family?

2. On what principles are world languages divided into certain linguistic families and groups?

3. Is it possible and reasonable to draw a parallel between race and language?

4. What is the original home of the Indo-European language family and how did it spread?

5. What can be said about the vocabulary and the grammatical structure of the Proto-Indo-European language?

6. Will you draw a vivid image of the Indo-Europeans as a race?

7. What branches of languages can be singled out within the Indo-European family?

8. What place do Germanic languages occupy within the Indo-European family?

9. Could you illustrate the origins of Germanic languages and their present status?

10. Would you point out the distinct branches within the group of Germanic languages?

II. Study the scheme of languages in the Indo-European family (p.29) and do the following tasks:

1. Illustrate the long way the Indo-European languages have come up to modern times.

2. Discuss whether linguists give a univocal point of view concerning the number of branches and groups of languages within the Indo-European family? Compare the information given in the present chapter and the illustration presented by the authors of the Macmillan School Dictionary (see the scheme, p.29).

3. Dwell on the birth of the English language and trace its development.

4. Enumerate modern languages which originated from the same Indo-European parent-language. Discuss to what extent they have already drifted apart and whether it is easy enough to state their common routs today.

Chapter 3. History of the English Vocabulary

1. The Periods in the History of the English language

The history of the English language covers roughly 1200 years, comprising several distinct periods marked by different features, which might be taken as a ground for the division into periods.

The English scholar Henry Sweet (1845—1912), author of a number of works on the English language and on its history, proposed the following division of the history of English according to the state of unstressed endings:

The 1st period , Old English, is the time of full endings. This means that any vowel may be found in an unstressed ending. For example, the word sinzan 'sing' has the vowel a in its unstressed ending, while the word sunu 'son' has the vowel u in a similar position.

The 2nd period , Middle English, is the period of leveled endings. This means that vowels of unstressed endings have been leveled under a neutral vowel (something like [a]), represented by the letter e . Thus, Old English sinzan yields Middle English singen , Old English sunu yields Middle English sune (also spelt sone ).

The 3rd period , Modern English, represents the period of lost endings. This means that the ending is lost altogether. Thus, Middle English singen transformed into Modern English 'sing '. Middle English sone became Modern English 'son'.

This division is based on a feature both phonetic (weakening and loss of unstressed vowel sounds) and morphological (weakening and loss of grammatical morphemes).

Now we must define the chronological limits of each period. These are approximately the following: the OE period begins about 700 A.D. (the time to which the earliest writings in English belong) and lasts till about 1100. The ME period lasts from about 1100 till about 1500. The MnE period begins at about 1500 and lasts well into our own times. Within the MnE period it is customary to distinguish between, Early MnE (approximately 1500 — 1660) and Late MnE (approximately from 1660 till our own times).

It is easy to see that the approximate dates fixing the boundaries between the periods are very close to important events in the social and political life of the country: 1100 follows close upon 1066, the year of the Norman conquest, and 1500 is close to 1485, the year when the Wars of the Roses came to an end, which marked the decay of feudalism and the rise of capitalism in England. The end of the 15th century is also the time when the English nation arises. Thus division into periods based on a phonetic and morphological feature fits quite well into a conception of English history.

It should be emphasized that such dates as 1100 or 1500 cannot be taken literally: they are merely a convenient means of expressing the statement that by the end of the 11th and again by the end of the 15th century changes in the language have accumulated to an extent which makes it possible to state the beginning of a new period in its history.

2. Origins of the English language

The English language originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects, which made part of the West Germanic language group. The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain in the 5th century belonged, as ancient historians say, to three tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. These tribes poured in floods from the continent: the Angles came from Southern Sleswick, north of the Schlei River; the Saxons used to live to the South of the Angles, in modern Holstein; the Jutes lived to the North of the Angles, in Northern Sleswick, which is now part of Denmark. Closely connected with these tribes were the Frisians, who occupied the coast of the German Ocean between the Rhone and the Ems (now part of the Netherlands); and the Hauks, who lived between the Ems and the Elbe.

About the 4th century A.D. these tribes began spreading westwards; the Saxons appeared on the northern cost of Gaul (modern France), and some of their troops even penetrated as far as the mouth of the Loire, on the Atlantic coast.

The earliest mention of the British Isles dates to the 4th century B.C., when the Greek explorer Pytheas, of Massilia (now Marseilles), sailing round Europe, landed in Kent.

It was about mid-5th century when Britain was conquered by the Germanic tribes. An old saying names the year 449 as the year of the conquest, and Hengest and Horsa as the two leaders of the invaders. The Britons fought against the conquerors for about a century and a half— until about the year 600. It is this epoch that the legendary figure of the British king Arthur belongs to. The Angles occupied most of the territory north of the Thames up to the Firth of Forth; the Saxons, the territory south of the Thames and some stretches north of it; the Jutes settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight. Since the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain the ties of their language with the continent were broken, and in its further development it went its own ways. If is at this time, the 5th century, that the history of the English language begins. Its original territory was England (in the strict sense) except Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde (a region in the north-west). These western regions the Britons succeeded in holding, and they were conquered much later: Cornwall in the 9th, Strathclyde in the 11th, and Wales in the 13th century.

The Scottish Highlands, where neither Romans nor Teutons, had penetrated, were inhabited by Picts and Scots. The Scots language, belonging to the Celtic group, has survived in the Highlands up to our own days. Ireland also remained Celtic: the first attempts at conquering it were made in the 12th century.

3. The Celtic element in the English Vocabulary

When the Germanic tribes arrived at Britain, it was already inhabited be the Celtic tribes, who had invaded the country some centuries earlier. The time period from 8th – 7th cc. to the 1st century B.C. in the English history are marked by the invasion of the tribes generally known as Celtic tribes. The first Celtic tribes were the Gaels, but the Brythons arrived some two centuries later and pushed the Gaels to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall taking possession of the south and east. Then, after a considerable lapse of time somewhere about the 1st c. B.C. the most powerful tribe, the Belgae, claimed possession of the south and East while part of Brythons was pushed on to Wales though the rest stayed in what is England now, and probably gave their name to the whole country.

Accordingly various Celtic languages and dialects were introduced in the Indo-European vocabulary on the Isles. Celtic languages are divided into two main groups: the Gallo-Breton and the Gaelic. The Gallo-Breton group comprises Gallic, which was spoken in Gaul (modern France), and British, represented by Welsh (or Cymry) in Wales, Cornish in Cornwall (became extinct in the 18th century), and Breton in Brittany. The Gaelic group comprises Irish, Scots, so-called Erse, Manx, on the isle of Alan, between Scotland and Ireland. There are, however, very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary for there must have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celtic in Britain. Though in some parts of the island the Celts population was not exterminated and Celtic influence can be clearly felt. In other parts of the country it is quite meager.

Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources (Celtic dun meant 'hill'). Various designations of 'river' and 'water' were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Exe, Esk, Usk, Avon, Evan go back to Celtic amhuin 'river', uisge 'water'; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Some elements frequently occurring in Celtic place-names can help to identify them:

-comb 'deep valley' in Batcombe, Winchcombe;

-ton 'high rock' in Ton, Torcross;

-llan 'church' in Landaff, Llanelly;

-pill 'creek' in Pylle, Huntspill.

Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, make a compound place-names, e.g.

Celtic plus Latin

Man-chester

Win-chester

Glou-cester

Wor-cester

Devon-port

Lan-caster

Celtic plus Germanic

York-shire

Corn-wall

Salis-bury

Lich-field

Devon-shire

Canter-bury

Outside of place-names Celtic borrowings in OE were very few: no more than a dozen. Examples of common nouns are: OE binn (NE bin 'crib'), cradol (NE cradle), bratt 'cloak', dun (NE dun ‘dark coloured'), dun 'hill', cross (NE cross), probably through Celtic from the crux.

A few words must have entered OE from Celtic due to the activities of Irish missionaries in spreading Christianity, e.g. OE ancor 'hermit', dry 'magician", cursian (NE curse). In later ages some of the Celtic borrowings have died out or have survived only in dialects e.g. loch dial, 'lake', coomb dial, 'valley'.

4. The Roman conquest and Latin borrowings

In 55 B.C. the Romans under Julius Caesar first landed in Britain. This first appearance of the Romans had no further consequences: after a brief stay the Romans went back to Gaul. In the year 54 Caesar landed in Britain for a second time, he routed the Britons and advanced as far as the Thames. But this stay was also a short one.

Permanent conquest of Britain began in 43 A.D., under the emperor Claudius. The Romans subdued the Britons, and colonized the country, establishing a great number of military camps, which eventually developed into English cities. About 80 A.D., under the emperor Domitian, the Romans occupied the territory including the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In this period Britain became a Roman province and that lasted for almost 4 centuries. This colonization had a profound effect on the country (though not as profound as in Gaul). Roman civilization — paved roads, powerful walls of military camps — completely transformed the aspect of the country.

The Latin language superseded the Celtic dialects in townships and probably also spread over the country-side. In the 4th century, when Christianity was introduced in the Roman Empire, it also spread among the Britons.

The Latin language exerted considerable influence on different aspects of English: the OE alphabet, the growth of writing and literature.

Early OE borrowings from Latin indicate the new things and con­cepts, which pertained to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life.

Words connected with trade indicate general concepts, units of measurements and articles of trade unknown to the Teutons before they came into contact with Rome: OE ceapian, clap, ceapman and mansion, тап ип , man re ('to trade', 'deal', 'trader', 'to trade',

'trading', 'trader') came from the Latin names for 'merchant' — caupo and mango. Evidently, the words were soon assimilated by the language as they yielded many derivatives.

Units of measurement and containers were adopted with their Latin names: OE pund (NE pound), OE ynce (NE inch) from L pondo and uncia, OE mynet, OE flasce, ciest (NE flask, chest).

The following words denote articles of trade and agricultural products introduced by the Romans: OE win (from L vinum), OE butere from L butyrum), OE plume (from L prunus), OE ciese (from L caseus), OE pipor (from L piper), (NE wine, butter, plum, cheese, pepper).

Romnan contribution to building can be perceived in words like OE coper (NE chalk, tile, copper). A group of words relating to domestic life is exemplified by OE cytel, disc, cuppe, pyle (NE kettle, dish, cup, pillow), etc.

Borrowings pertaining to military affairs are OE mil (NE mile ) from L millia passuum, which meant a thousand steps made to measure the distance; OE weall (NE wall) from L vallum, a wall of fortifications erected in the Roman provinces; OE str э et from Latin strata via, — a "paved road" (these "paved roads" were laid to connect Roman military camps and colonies in Britain; the meaning of the word changed when houses began to be built along these roads, hence NE street.

Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names or components of place-names used by the Celts. L castra in the shape caster, ceaster 'camp' formed OE place-names which survive today as Chester, Dorchester, Lancaster and the like (some of them with the first element coming from Celtic); Lcolonia 'settlement for retired soldiers' is found in Colchester and in the Latin-Celtic hybrid Lincoln', L vicus 'village' appears in Norwich, Woolwich, L portus— in Bridport and Devonport. . Place-names made of Latin and Germanic components are: Portsmouth, Greenport, Greenwich and many others.

The third period of Latin influence on the OE vocabulary began with the introduction of Christianity in the late 6^th c. and lasted to the end of OE. Numerous Latin words which found their way into the English language during these 500 years fall into main groups:

1. words pertaining to religion;

2. words connected with learning.

The rest are miscellaneous words denoting various objects and concepts which the English learned form Latin books and from closer acquaintance with Roman culture. The total number of Latin loan-words in OE exceeds 500 years, this third layer accounting for over four hundred words.

The new religion introduced a large number of new conceptions, which require new names; most of them were adopted from Latin, some of the words go back to Greek prototypes:

OE

Apostol

Antefn

Biscop

Candel

Cleric

NE

Apostle

Anthemn

Bishop

Candle

Clerk

From Latin

Apostolus

Antiphona

Episcopus

Candela

Clericus

From Greek

Apostolus

Antiphona

Episcopos

Klericos

To this list we may add many more modern English words from the same source: abbot, alms, altar, angel, ark, creed, disciple, hymn, idol, martyr, noon, nun, organ, palm, pine ('torment^’ ), pope, prophet, psalm, psalter, shrine, relic, rule, temple and others.

After the introduction of Christianity many monastic schools were set up in Britain. The spread of education led to the wider use of Latin: teaching was conducted in Latin, or consisted of learning Latin. The written forms of OE developed in translations of Latin texts. These conditions are reflected in a large number of borrowings connected with educations and also words of a more academic, "bookish" character. Unlike the earlier borrowings scholarly words were largely adopted through books; they were first in OE translations from Latin. Other modern descendants of this group are: accent, grammar, meter, gloss, notary, decline.

A great variety of miscellaneous borrowings came from Latin probably because they indicated new objects and new ideas, introduced together with their Latin names by those who had a fair command of Latin: monks, priests, school-masters. Some of these scholarly words became part of everyday vocabulary. They belong to different semantic spheres: names of trees and plants — elm, lily, plant, pine; names of illnesses and words pertaining to medical treatment — cancer, fever, paralysis, plaster; names of animals — camel, elephant, tiger, names of clothes and household articles — cap, mat, sack, sock; names of foods - beet, caul, oyster, radish; miscellaneous words — crisp, fan, place, spend, turn.

The Latin impact on the OE vocabulary was not restricted to borrowing of words. There were also other aspects of influence. The most important of them is the appearance of the so-called "translation- loans” – words and phrases created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations. The earliest instances of translation-loans are names of the days of the week found not only in OE but also in other Old (and modern) Germanic languages:

OE Monan-d э eз (Monday) 'day of the moon', L Lunae dies, etc.

5. The Scandinavian element in the English Vocabulary

Under the year 787 three shiploads of Northmen landed upon the coast of Britain and invaded the country.

These invaders were Scandinavian tribes: The Danes, the Swedes. They inhabited the north of Europe (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden).

They started their invasion taking possession over the East of Britain and the Danish invasion resulted in the occupation of a great part of the territory by Scandinavian settlers. In the year 878 the English King Alfred the Great, by the Treaty of Wedmore was obliged to recognize Danish rule over a territory covering two-thirds of modern England; all Northumbria, all East Anglia and one half of Central England made up District called the Danelaw.

The effect of the Danish Conquest was a contribution of many Scan­dinavian words to the English vocabulary.

The criterion of sound in many cases may be applied in distinguish­ing Scandinavian words. Since in native English words the sk sound had regularly changed to sh and since the k sound before the vowels e and i had regularly changed to ch, the greater part of the Germanic words in English with the sk sound such as scare, skill, skin, skirt, sky and many words with the k sound before e and i, such as kettle, keg, kirk are to be assigned to Scandinavian origin.

In cases where the Scandinavian form of a word differed from the Eng­lish form, sometimes both forms survived with a different meaning.

The Scandinavian influence was especially marked in place-names in Northern England, Among the more common ones are those ending in-by (0. N. byr, a dwelling, village); in -beck (has been used as an inde­pendent word since 1300 especially in the North; 0. N. bekker, a brook, Ger. Bach); in-dale (O. N. Dalr, a valley, Ger. Thai); in thorp or-torp (0. N thorp, a hamlet, village); in -toft ( O. N, toft a homestead, enclosure) and in -twaite (0. N. veiti, a clearing).

In some cases when the English word and the Scandinavian agreed in form, the Scandinavian form has imported a new meaning to the English. Thus dream in О. Е. meant toy, but in Middle English the modern meaning of dream was taken over from O.N. draumr . The same is true of bread (formerly meaning a fragment or bloom (O. E. bloma, mass of metal), plough (О. Е. ploh, a measure of land); holm (О. Е. holm, ocean).

A number of common words which existed in Old English have been assimilated to the kindred Scandinavian synonyms only in form (e. g. sister descends not from the Old English sweoster, but from the O. N. syster. The same is true of such everyday words as birth, get, give, etc.

Sometimes the Scandinavians gave a fresh lease of life to obsolescent or obsolete native words. The preposition till, for instance, is found only once or twice in Old English texts belonging to the pre-Scandinavian period, but after that time it begins to be exceedingly common in the North, from whence it spreads southward. The same is true of the words barn, blend and dale.

A lot of Scandinavian law-terms entered Old English but as a consequence of the Norman Conquest when the conquerors took the Courts of Justice into their own hands; with the exception of law, by-law, thrall, crave, they disappeared from the language. The same is true of Scandinavian words relating to war and more particularly to the navy.

One of the most important importations was that of the pronominal forms they, them and their; these readily entered into the English system pronouns beginning with the same sound (the, that, this) and were felt to be more distinct than the old native forms which they supplanted. Indeed these were liable to constant confusion with some forms of the singular number (he, him, her) after the vowels had become obscured, so that he and hie and heora could no longer be kept easily apart. Although the th- forms must consequently be reckoned a great advantage to the language, it took a long time before the old forms were finally displaced. The dative hem still survives in the form 'em (take 'em), which is often by mistake taken to be a shortened form of them. One more Scandinavian pronoun is same, which was speedily associated with the native adverb swa (consequently, in this way, so that).

The Scandinavian element in English amounts to over 650 words. So, we find such everyday nouns of Scandinavian origin as husband, fellow, sky, skull, skin, wing, haven, root, skill, anger, gate, etc.

Among the adjectives adopted from Scandinavian, we find meek, low, scant , loose, odd, wrong, ill, ugly, rotten. The adjectives happy and seemly too are derived from Danish roots, not to speak of stor, which was common in Middle English for great, and dialectical adjectives like glegg (clear-sighted, clever) neat, and tidy. The one thing common to the adjectives then, is that they are all very commonplace, and the same impression is confirmed by the verbs. Such verbs as thrive, die, cost, hit, take, call, want, scare, scrape, scream, scrub, scowl, skulk, bash, drown, ransack, gape, etc.

From no other foreign source has the English language derived words so elemental in character. Scandinavian elements combine with native elements in hybrid compounds such as awkward and greyhound. Since these Scandinavian words are, as has been mentioned already, so nearly related to the Anglo-Saxon, and since they were borrowed so early and have consequently undergone changes in form and in meaning along with the Anglo-Saxon element, one may almost reckon them as belonging to the native stock of English words. In later periods of English, history the con­tact between English and Scandinavian-speaking peoples was never so close.

6. The Norman Conquest and the French element in the English Vocabulary

Down to the time of the Norman Conquest the Old English form of speech remained essentially the same. Up to this time the English lan­guage had been in contact with three other tongues which to some extent affected its vocabulary. These were: Celtic, the speech of the native Celtic inhabitants of England, Latin and then Norse. Of these Latin was the only one which at that time added any appreciable number of words to the literary language. Terms from Celtic or Norse may have been adopted into colloquial speech, but it is not until the break-up of Old English which followed the Norman Conquest, that they occur to any extent in writing. Some French words had entered English before the Norman Conquest (e.g. chancellor, pride, proud and a few more). Here also must be mentioned that a characteristic feature of almost all loan­words in Old English is that they were borrowed in a purely oral manner, were mostly monosyllabic and words (except for religious words and a few miscellaneous words borrowed in the 6th, and 7th centuries) of everyday use.

The effect of the Norman Conquest on the English vocabulary was very great but it did not make itself felt for a considerable period. For nearly one hundred and fifty years the two languages, Old English and Norman-French, existed side by side without mingling, French being the language of the government and the aristocracy, while English was redu­ced almost to the condition of a peasant's dialect, and ceased to be the literary language.

The largest class of words adopted into English between the conquest and the year 1200 are of an ecclesiastical character. The remaining words are almost all connected with government and war. In the 13th century the process of borrowing went on with great rapidity, and a great many French words were adopted into English. In the first place we find many additions, especially in the first half of the century, to the vocabulary of religion (e, g, devotion, patience, salvation, etc.).

Apart from the religious terms already mentioned, there are words connected with feudalism, the law, government and war. The campaigns of Edward I in the second half of the 13th century against the Welsh and the Scotch seem to have furnished his subjects with many new military terms. It is at this time that armour, battle, assault, conquer and pursue are first found in the vocabulary of English which gradually absorbed all the vocabulary of medieval culture.

An etymological analysis of the vocabulary of medieval culture will show, with surprising accuracy, the sources from which that culture was derived, and the channels through which it passed on its way to England. We find in the first place that practically all these words were borrowed from the French; that the French borrowed them from Latin and that, with the exception of some Arabic words, the ultimate source of almost all of them was Greek, They represent, indeed, the wrecks and fragments of Greek learning which had been absorbed into Roman civilization.

It is worth mentioning that many of the philosophical terms are a pro­duct of medieval scholasticism. In the 13th and 14th centuries the following words were used in English writings: absolute, essence, existence, matter and form, quality, quantity, general and special, object and subject, particular and universal, substance, intellect, etc. A large number of words were formed in Low Latin (and not borrowed from classical Latin) to express the subtle distinctions of the scholastic logicians, e. g. entity and identity, species, duration, etc, Scholastic words found their way into Anglo-French, and then into English.

By the end of the 14th century the English language had absorbed the greater part of the vocabulary of medieval learning and had been formed into a standard literary form of speech for the whole nation. But from the point of view of vocabulary, the 15th century marks a pause. England, exhausted and demoralized by its disastrous conflicts in France, and by the Wars of the Roses at home, had little energy to devote to the higher interests of civilization; literature languished and the vocabulary of this period shows but little advance over that of the previous age. Some medical and chemical terms were added to it; the poems of Lydgate at the beginning and the works printed by Caxton at the end of the century contain many new words; but we cannot find in them many signs of new conceptions or of any great additions to life and thought.

7. Enrichment of the Vocabulary in the Renaissance period

The 15th century made but few additions to the vocabulary of English thought and culture but the century that followed this period of intellectual barrenness was one of unexampled richness.

It was in this century that the effects of the revival of learning reached England and the study of classical Latin and Greek soon exercised a powerful influence on the language. Latin and Greek words began to appear in English, not borrowed through the medium of Low Latin or Medieval French, but taken direct from the classics. The result was an immense enrichment of the language. Anyone who will take the pains to look up in the Oxford English Dictionary the data of the earliest citations of words, will be surprised to find how many words now familiar were first introduced at this period. To discuss these new words in detail would be to discuss the cultural growth of England. In the medieval world the church had been the main channel through which the wisdom of ancient times had descended and the church had neglected those parts of old literature which could not be made to serve the interest of Christian doctrines. With the Renaissance came a shift in the estimate of values. Great importance was attached to the study of ancient culture and human life in all its aspects. The New Learning, relatively late in reaching England, when it did arrive, was welcomed with enthusiasm. In the world of learning a division of the broad general field of knowledge covered by the word philosophy came to be indicated by the new word physics (1589) or natural philosophy, as distinguished from ethics (1587) or moral philosophy. The use of the word physics in the modern sense is found later. The word physiology in its modern meaning appears in 1597. Algebra, derived through Low Latin from Arabic appears in 1551, mathematics in 1581. The influence of the New Learning naturally made itself felt in the terms of literature as well. There was a general revision of knowledge in this field of which some indication is offered by such words as blank verse, critic, drama and dramatic, elegy, epic, fiction, lyric, ode, poem, satire, sonnet, stanza. Under the influence of a revived knowledge of classical rhetoric appeared the newer terms: antithesis, metaphor, metonymy.

Latin words and Latinized forms of words were readily assimilated into the language of those trained in the Latin schools of the period. The popular assimilation of the borrowed terms, however, was a slow and laborious process. Many such terms, used at first only in the speech of the learned, slowly sank to the popular level and became essential elements in the common speech of later periods. The learned themselves did not escape error. To mistaken explanations of the origin of words is to be attributed, for instance, the spelling of the word island with an s inserted from mistaken association with the word isle, a word of French origin derived from the Latin insula. The word island comes from M. E. Hand, O. E. igland, ig, an island, and land, land.

We should mention the deposit of words left in the language by the various historical movements and events of the 16th century, for in­stance, the Protestant Reformation (the religious movement resulting in the establishment of Protestantism). It added many words to the vocabu­lary: evangelical, godly, in its modern sense (with the derivatives godliness and godless), pious, piety (an old word sometimes used for pity, its modern meaning being acquired from the Protestants), and sincere.

8. Borrowings of the 18^th – 20^th centuries

The vocabulary of politics continues to grow. The following words were added to it in the 18th century: minister, ambassador (in literature first used in 1709), ministry, Premier, Prime Minister, party (with the word used in its present meaning). Administration, budget, estimates also appear at this time. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th some of the vocabulary of the French Revolution entered the English language, for example, aristocrat, democrat, and the old word despot acquired its present meaning; despotism was enlarged from «the rule of a despot» to mean any arbitrary rule of unlimited power.

Among other words should be mentioned royalism, revolutionary, revolutionize, conscription. Section, in its geographical use, and the 19th century word sectional, are derived from the division of France into electoral sections under the Directorate.

Further we should mention the following words: bureaucracy, centralize, centralization, counter-revolution, decade (a period of ten days substituted for the week in the French Republican calendar of 1793. In English the word means «a period of ten years»), demagogic, demoralize, diplomatic, fraternization, fusillade, guillotine [Guillotine, the name of a physician at whose suggestion the instrument was employed in 1789. In English it is also the name of various cutting machines, e, g. a machine for cutting the edges of books, paper, etc., a machine for cutting sheet metal, an instrument to cutting the tonsils (surgical)]; indifferentism, interpellation, monarchism, nationalize, nationalization, propaganda, propagandism, propagandist, reaction repulsion exerted by a body in opposition to the pressure of another body (1644).

«We must also mention the 18th century contributions to the vocabulary of literature. Literature itself only acquired the sense of literary production in this century, and literary had till this time the meaning «alphabetical». Of new-formed words, or old words that acquired their present meanings between 1700 and 1800, may be mentioned copyright, editor, novelist, magazine, publisher, the verb to review and, last but not least, the press. With the Romantic Movement at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, and the increased interest in the past, many old and half-forgotten words were revived; e. g. bard (1450), chivalry, chivalrous, minstrel (1297), etc. Sir Walter Scott was the greatest of the word-revivers». The 19th century has provided the English language with a multitude of different terms, among which scientific and technical terms are especially numerous. In many cases these terms (coined in the 19th and 20th centuries) are of international currency, e.g. telephone, telegraph, television, radio, etc.

«The most striking thing about our present-day civilization is prob­ably the part which science has played in it. We have only to think of the progress which has been made in medicine and the sciences auxiliary to it, such as bacteriology, biochemistry and the like, to realize the difference that marks off our own day from that of only a few generations ago in everything that has. to do with the diagnosis, treatment, prevention and cure of disease. We have learned the names of new drugs like aspirin, iodine, insulin, morphine, strychnine... All these words have come into use during the nineteenth, and in some cases, the twentieth century. In almost every other field of science the same story could be told.

Many other words are associated with the automobile, e. g. carburettor, choke, gear, shift, bonnet (American hood), radiator, self- starter, steering wheel, throttle, etc. One may have a blowout or a flat, carry a spare, put the car in a garage, be fined for speeding or passing a traffic signal , etc.

An amusing example is the use of a technical expression “to step on it” (or step on the gas) , i.e. make the car go faster by depressing the accelerator, in colloquial American speech in the sense of to hurry up, e.g. Dont be so long, step on it!

The same principle might be applied to illustrate the words introduced by the moving-picture and radio. The words cinema and moving-picture date from 1899, while the alternative motion-picture is somewhat later. Close up film, newsreel, scenario, screen are now common, and recently sound pictures and talkies have replaced the silent drama.

While radiogram goes back to 1905, it is only with the spread of popular interest in wireless transmission that the vocabulary has been expanded from this source, The word radio in the sense of a receiving set dates from about 1925. Everybody is familiar with such expressions as antenna, aerial, broadcast, hook-up (American), listen-in, loud speaker, etc.

The 20th century permits us to see the process of vocabulary growth going on under our eyes, sometimes it would seem, at an accelerated rate. At the turn of the century we get the word questionnaire and in 1904 the first hint of television. In 1906 the British launched a particular battleship named the Dreadnought, and the word “dreadnought” passed into popular use for any warship of the same class. A year later we got the word raincoat and about the same time thermos-bottle (in England thermos-flask). This is the period when many of the terms of aviation that have since become so familiar first came in — aircraft, airman, aeroplane (in America airplane ), autogiro, biplane, dirigible, hydroplane, monoplane. About 1910 we began talking about the futurist and postimpressionist in art. At this time (after the world war) profiteer and in America prohibition arose with specialized meanings. Only yesterday witnessed the birth (in America) of air-conditioned, brain trust and technocracy, and tomorrow will witness others as the exigencies of the hour call them into being.

In the introduction and popularizing of new words, journalism has been a factor (especially in America) of steadily increasing importance. The newspaper and the more popular type of magazine not only play a large part in spreading new locutions among the people, but are themselves fertile producers of new words. The reporter necessarily writes under pressure and has not long to search for the right word. In the heat of the moment he is as likely as not to strike off a new expression or wrench the language to fit his idea. In his effort to be interesting and racy he adopts an informal and colloquial style, and many of the colloquialisms current in popular speech find their way into writing first in the magazine and the newspaper.

In this way we have come to back a horse or a candidate, to boost our community, comb the woods for a criminal, hop the Atlantic, oust a politician, and spike a rumor... Most of these expressions are still limited to the newspaper and colloquial speech, and are properly classed as journalistic.

We must recognize that in the nineteenth century a new force affecting language arose, and that among the many ways in which it affects the language not the least important are its tendency constantly to renew vocabulary and its ability to bring about the adoption of new words.

The imperialist war contributed many words to the English vocabulary. Most of them are slangy, for instance, blighty, a popular bit of British Army slang, derived from the Indian word wilayati (Arabic, through Persian to India where it means «foreign» and signifying England or home; it was often applied to a wound that was not very serious but was sufficient to get a man sent back to England); bus (an aeroplane), cold feet (disinclination to fight or to go to or remain at the front), cootie (a body-louse), egg (a bomb dropped by aircraft).

Some of the words that came into English between 1914 and 1918 as a direct consequence of the war then being waged between the imperialist powers were military terms representing new methods of warfare, such as anti-aircraft gun, air raid, battleplane, blackout , blimp (a small airship used to locate submarines) tank, whippet (a small tank), camouflage (the term caught popular fancy and was soon used for all kinds of disguise and misrepresentation). Old words were in some cases adapted to new uses, e. g. barrage (the word originally meant only an artificial barrier like a dam in a river); dud, generally a word for any counterfeit thing, was specifically applied to a shell that did not explode; ace acquired the meaning of a crack airman, especially one who had brought down five of the enemy's machines; sector was used in the sense of a specific portion of the fighting line. In a number of cases a word which had had but a limited circulation in the language now came into general use. Thus hand-grenade goes back to 1661, but attained new currency during the war. Other expressions already in the language but popularized by the war were dug-out, machine-gun, no-man's-land, periscope-, and even the popular designation of an American soldier, dough-boy, which was in colloquial use in the United States as early as 1867.

9. Basic characteristics of Modern English

1. simplicity of form.

Old English, like modern German, French, Russian and Greek, had many inflexions to show singular and plural, tense, person, etc., but over the centuries words have been simplified. Verbs now have very few inflexions, and adjectives do not change according to the noun.

2. Flexibility

As a result of the loss of inflexions, English has become, over the past five centuries, a very flexible language. Without inflexions, the same word can operate as many different parts of speech. Many nouns and verbs have the same form, for example swim, drink, walk, kiss, look, and smile. We can talk about water to drink and to water the flowers; time to go and to time a race; a paper to read and to paper a bedroom. Adjective can be used as verbs. We warm our hands in front of a fire; if clothes are dirtied, they need to be cleaned and dried. Prepositions too are flexible. A sixty-year old man is nearing retirement; we can talk about a round of golf, cards, or drinks.

3. Openness of vocabulary.

This involves the free admissions of words from other languages and the easy creation of compounds and derivatives. Most world languages have contributed some words to English at some time, and the process is now being reversed. Purists of the French, Russian and Japanese languages are resisting the arrival of English in their vocabulary.

English language studies can be viewed both synchronically and diachronically. The first approach is based on the description of the English language as a formal system at a particular period; the second is dealt with the changes in the formal system from period to period. But this is a somewhat narrow understanding of problem. A broader view considers the uses of the language in social context. They may belong to a lower (micro-) or higher (macro-) level of abstraction. The micro-level deals with the use of linguistic expression or forms including the communicative force of linguistic expression uttered in particular types of situation or the language variation connected with particular types of situation. On the contrary, the macro-level connected with the range of functions available to the language as a whole or to a variety within the language.

A through analysis of the social context in which English functions demands a knowledge of linguistic attitudes towards evaluations of and beliefs about the language, its varieties and specific features.

Nowadays the English language through changes and development has become an international language of communication. Many people speak it as their language and there is a great more for whom it is a second language.

The fortune of English is different in different countries throughout the world. In some countries it was survived the political and linguistic independence and has remained the mother tongue of some nations. It caters for the full range of functions required from the language today: beginning with the everyday communication and ending with the higher and loftier levels of sophistication. In other countries it has occupied the politically attractive neutral position and has become prominent as an official language of government, law, education and of interpersonal communication between those who have no other language in common. And lastly, it is the foreign language to be studied that gives access to science, technology, commerce and economic aid. The present status of English worldwide is the result of the economic and technological predominance of the United States and the English-speaking countries.

The language functions of English were not always as multiform and varied as today. English encountered other rival languages within the bounds of England. It was not in constant use among particular social classes and in some regions, as well as it was not at first the normal language for learned writing. Later on among various arguments against it were language instability and wide variation, deficiency of syntax and vocabulary, lack of desired rhetorical stylistic effects abounding in Latin. During the later period the vocabulary of English was expanded and a range of styles introduced. By the end of Renaissance period its deficiencies were minimized and English was considered to be in good shape, adequate for discourse. The standardization of English spelling, syntax and vocabulary was under way.

The 18^th century developed new ideas about English. By that time it was in a near-perfect condition, purified of its inconsistencies. But the scholars were worried about possible future deterioration and corruption by the uneducated. Writers feared that changes would make their works of imaginative writing unintelligible to public in the long run. The linguistic correctness was in the limelight of public attention with both social status and rhetorical requirements of language taken into account.

In the 19^th century social correctness was the subject of permanent discussion. The 18^th century writers were accepted as models to imitate. The idea of good English was in the air. This tradition has gradually continued into next century. Misuses and abuses of language have been made debatable in the society. It has also been made clear that that language can serve double purpose, that in manipulation of public consciousness through various devices to mislead, confuse and simulate negative attitudes. Linguistic engineering can be introduced to improve language standards, but there must be public awareness of possible corruptions that might influence human behaviour.

At the end of the 20^th century the existence of one undivided English language seems somewhat misleading. One may insist with certainty on the existence of different national varieties spoken in the United States and in England. The similar approach can be applied to other Englishes, like Indian English and Nigerian English gaining their recognition as local norms of speech independent from British English.

Differences that exist within each national variety of English can be viewed as regional, socio-economic, ethnic and educational, when they are recognized by the majority of speakers of this or that variety as distinctive. Then the separate varieties of the language begin to evolve: American English and Canadian English, Appalachian and Cockney dialects, Black English and Jewish English, standard English and non-standard English. Language differences reflect differentiation in sex and age. Specific language features are associated with particular groups. Some of these features provoke positive or negative attitudes to their users.

The English language is very much alive today due to the constant increase in number of speakers in the world. Despite the disintegration process, problems of comprehension between national varieties, pronunciation differences, there exists the written public language, a neutral variety understandable by al educated users: the mass media, the personal contacts maintain convergence and favour a common written language.

National and group variations go hand in hand with language variation, that is appropriateness for particular situations. Speech and writing, ments, academic article, newspaper reports – all these samples of human brain activity present the changing standards of appropriateness alongside with the plain English movements, the extended use of taboo words, the presence of informal styles instead of more formal, the disputed usages and so on.

Similarities in language strengthen social unity, divergences may be socially dangerous. Our perception of other people either promote understanding or lead to misunderstanding of them. Prejudices in the sphere of language affects our everyday attitudes to others. The latter, in its turn, influence the teaching of English in particular and education in general.

English has made steady inroads upon French as the language of diplomacy and of other international intercourse, and upon German as the language of science. In the latter case, Russian is beginning to offer competition, and in the former, French still offers sturdy resistance. Nevertheless, in the United Nations not only English but Chinese, Rus­sian and Spanish are recognized as official languages. Perhaps the turn of the tide came with Versailles Conference of 1919, where the two repre­sentatives of the English-speaking countries, Wilson and Lloyd George, had no French, whereas the French spokesman, Clemenceau, spoke English fluently — with a strong American accent. Thus English became the language of negotiation, and it has been heard round council tables with increasing frequency ever since.

All over the Far East, English has been a lingua franca since the Eighteenth Century, at first in the barbarous guise of Pidgin English, but of late in increasingly seemly forms, often with an American admixture. In Japan it is the language of business. In India and Pakistan, it not only competes with Hindu-Urdu in business, but is often the language of politics. Those Indians who know it, says Sir John A.R.Marriott, “are the only persons who are politically conscious. Indian nationalism is almost entirely the product of English education; the medium of all political discussion is necessarily English”. It is, adds R.C.Goffin, “the readiest means of obtaining (a) employment under the government; (b) employment in commercial houses of any standing, whether Indian or foreign; (c) command of the real lingua franca of the country — for Hindustani is of very little use in the south; (d) knowledge of Western ideas, both ancient and modern. ... English in other ways has shown itself a useful instrument for a country setting out to learn the habits of democracy. It is most convenient for the politician, for example, to be able to employ a language with only one word (instead of three or even four) for you. ... There is no country today where a foreign language has been thoroughly domesticated as has English in India.” The Indian Congress Party had hoped to replace English by Hindi within a few years of independence. But they now recognize that for generations to come it will be the medium through which their countrymen acquire the science and technology of the modern world. And the experience of India is being repeated as each of the former British colonies becomes an independent nation. Paradoxically, the liquidation of the British colonial empire seems destined to bring a wider dissemination of the English language.

It has become a platitude that one may go almost anywhere with no other linguistic equipment, and get along almost as well as in large areas of New York City. My own experience may be cited for whatever it is worth. I visited, between the two wars, sixteen countries in Europe, five in Africa, three in Asia and three in Latin America, besides a large miscellany of islands, but I don’t remember ever encountering a situation that English could not resolve. I heard it spoken with reasonable fluency in a Moroccan bazaar, in an Albanian fishing port and on the streets of Istanbul. In part, of course, its spread has been due to the extraordinary dispersion of the English-speaking peoples. They have been the greatest travelers of modern times, and the most adventurous merchants and the most assiduous colonists. Moreover, they have been, on the whole, poor linguists, and so they have dragged their language with them, and forced it upon the human race. Wherever it has met with serious competition, as with French in Canada, with Spanish along our southwestern border and with Dutch in South Africa, they have compromised with its local rival only reluctantly. If English is the language of the sea, it is largely because there are more English ships on the sea than any other kind, and English ship captains refuse to learn what they think of as the barbaric gibberishes of Hamburg, Rio and Marseilles.

But there is more to the matter than this. English, brought to close quarters with formidable rivals, has won very often, not by mere force of numbers and intransigence, but by the weight of its intrinsic merit. “In riches, good sense and terse convenience (Reichstum, Vernunft und gedrangter Fuge)”, said Jacob Grimm nearly a century ago, “no other of the living languages may be put beside it”. To which the eminent Otto Jespersen adds: “It seems to me positively and expressively masculine. It is the language of a grown-up man, and has very little childish or feminine about it”. Jespersen then goes on to explain the origin and nature of this “masculine” air: it is grounded chiefly upon clarity, directness and force.

Jespersen then proceeds to consider certain peculiarities of English morphology and syntax, and to point out the simplicity and forcefulness of the everyday English vocabulary. The grammatical baldness of the language, he argues (against the old tradition in philology), is one of the chief sources of its vigor.

The prevalence of very short words in English, and the syntactical law which enables it to dispense with the definite article in many constructions “where other languages think it indispensable, e.g., life is short, dinner is ready” — these are further marks of vigor and clarity, according to Jespersen. “First come, first served”, he says, “is much more vigorous than the French Premier venu, premier moulu, or Le premier venu engrene, the German Wer zuerst kommt, mahlt zuerst, and especially than the Danish Den der kommerforst til molle, farforst extrao”. Again, there is the superior logical sense of English — the arrangement of words according to their meaning. “In English”, says Jespersen, “an auxiliary verb does not stand far from its main verb, and a negative will be found in the immediate neighborhood of the word it negatives, generally the verb (auxiliary). An adjective nearly always stands before its noun; the only really important exception is where there are qualifications added to it which draw it after the noun so that the whole complex serves the purpose of a relative clause”. In English, the subject almost invariably precedes the verb and the object follows after. Once Jespersen had his pupils determine the percentage of sentences in various authors in which this order was ob­served. They found that even in English poetry it was seldom violated; the percentage of observances in Tennyson’s poetry ran to 88. But in the poetry of Holger Drachmann, the Dane, it fell to 61, in Anatole France’s prose to 66, in Gabriele D’Annunzio to 49 and in the poetry of Goethe to 30. All these things make English clearer and more logical than other tongues. It is, says Jespersen, “a methodical, energetic, business-like and sober language, that does not care much for finery and elegance, but does care for logical consistency and is opposed to any attempt to narrow life by police regulations and strict rules either of grammar or of lexicon”. Even when we concede the effects of Jespersen’s personal bias and of the illusion of inevitable progress which he inherited from the Nineteenth Century, we must still recognize the facts on which his opinions are based.

Several years ago Walter Kirkconnel undertook to count the number of syllables needed to translate the Gospel of Mark into forty Indo-European languages, ranging from Persian and Hindi to English and French. He found that, of all of them, English was the most economical, for it took but 29,000 syllables to do the job, whereas the average for all the Teutonic languages was 32,650, that for the Slavic group 36,500, that for the Romance group 40,200 and that for the Indo-Iranian group (Bengali, Persian, Sanskrit, etc.) 43,100. It is commonly believed that French is a terse language, and compared with its cousins, Italian and Spanish, it actually is, but compared with English it is garrulous, for it takes 36,000 syllables to say what English says in 29,000. “If it had not been for the great number of long foreign, especially Latin, words”, says Jespersen, “English would have approached the state of such monosyllabic languages as Chinese”.

For these and other reasons English strikes most foreigners as an extraordinarily succinct, straightforward and simple tongue — in some of its aspects, in fact, almost as a kind of baby talk. When they proceed from trying to speak it to trying to read and write it they are painfully unde­ceived, for its spelling is as irrational as that of French, but so long as they are content to tackle it viva voce they find it loose and comfortable, and at the same time very precise. The Russian, coming into it burdened with his six cases, his three genders, his palatalized consonants and his compli­cated pronouns, luxuriates in a language which has only two cases, no grammatical gender, a set of consonants which (save only r) maintain their integrity in the face of any imaginable rush of vowels, and an outfit of pro­nouns so simple that one of them suffices to address the President of the United States or a child in arms, a lovely female creature in camera or the vast hordes of television and radio. And the German, the Scandinavian, the Italian and the Frenchman, though the change for them is measurably less sharp, nevertheless find it gratifying too. Only the Spaniard brings with him a language comparable to English for clarity, and even the Spaniard is afflicted with grammatical gender.

The huge English vocabulary is likely to make the foreigner uneasy, but he soon finds that nine-tenths of it lies safely buried in the dictionaries, and is never drawn upon for everyday use. That the language may be spoken intelligibly with even less than 1,000 words has been argued by C.K.Ogden, the English psychologist. Ogden believes that 850 are sufficient for all ordinary purposes, and he has devised a form of simplified English, called by him Basic (from British American Scientific International Commercial), which uses no more. Of this number, 600 are nouns, 100 are adjectives, 100 are “adjectival opposites”, 30 are verbs and the rest are particles, etc. Two hundred of the nouns consist of the names of common objects, e.g., bottle, brick, ear, potato and umbrella; the rest are the names of familiar groups and concepts, e.g. people, music, crime, loss and weather. No noun is admitted (save for the names of a few common objects) “which can’t be defined in not more than ten other words”. The reduction of verbs to 30 is effected by taking advantage of one of the prime charac­teristics of English (and especially of American) — its capacity for getting an infinity of meanings out of a single verb by combining it with simple modifiers. Consider, for example, the difference (in American) between to get, to get going, to get by, to get on, to get onto, to get off, to get ahead of, to get wise, to get religion and to get over. The fundamental verbs of Basic are ten in number — come, go, put, take, give, get, make , keep, let and do. “Every time”, says Ogden (writing in Basic), “you put together the name of one of these ten simple acts (all of which are free to go in almost any direction) with the name of one of the twenty directions or positions in space, you are making a verb” — and, point out his critics, creating a new lexical unit whose meaning is unpredictable from the meanings of its parts, and therefore a greater problem to the stranger than an undisguised new word might be. In addition to its 850 words, of course, Basic is free to take in international words that are universally understood, e.g., coffee, engineer, tobacco, police and biology, and to add words specially pertinent to the matter in hand, e.g., chloride and platinum in a treatise on chemistry. It is interesting to note that of the fifty international words listed by Ogden, no less than seven are Americanisms, new or old, viz., cocktail, jazz, radio, phonograph, telegram, telephone and tobacco, and that one more, check, is listed in American spelling.

Whether Basic will make any progress remains to be seen. It has been criticized on various grounds. For one thing, its vocabulary shows some serious omissions — for example, the numerals — and for another its dependence upon verb phrases may confuse rather than help the foreigner, whose difficulties with prepositions are notorious; also, the superficial simplicity of its vocabulary conceals a multitude of homonyms with lexical and semantic pitfalls. Spelling is still a cruel difficulty to a foreigner. But Ogden waves this difficulty away. For one thing, he argues that his list of 850 words, being made up mainly of the commonest coins of speech, avoids most spelling problems; for another, he believes that the very eccentricity of the spelling of some of the rest will help the foreigner to remember them. Every schoolboy, as we all know, seizes upon such bizarre forms as through, straight and island with fascinated eagerness, and not infrequently he masters them before he masters such phonetically spelled words as first, tomorrow and engineer. In my own youth, far away in the dark backward and abysm of time, the glory of every young American was phthisic, with the English proper name, Cholmondeley, a close second. Ogden proposes to let the foreigners attempting Basic share the joy of hunting down such basilisks. For the rest he leaves the snarls of English spelling to the judgments of a just God, and the natural tendency of all things Anglo-Saxon to move toward an ultimate perfection. Unluckily, his Basic now has a number of competitors on its own ground, and it must also meet the competition of the so-called universal languages. Some of these languages, notably Esperanto and Novial, show a great ingenuity, and all have enthusiastic customers who believe that they are about to be adopted generally. There are also persons who hold that some such language is bound to come in soon or late, though remaining doubtful about all those proposed so far.

But this is only a hope, and no man now born will ever see it realized. The trouble with all the “universal” languages, leaving out their parochial devotion to the Latinate vocabulary and their blithe unconcern with all the languages of Asia and Africa, is that the juices of life are simply not in them. They are the creations of scholars drowning in murky oceans of dead prefixes and suffixes, and so they fail to meet the needs of a highly human world. People do not yearn for a generalized articulateness; what they want is the capacity to communicate with definite other people. To that end even Basic, for all its deficiencies, is better than any conceivable Esperanto, for it at least springs from a living speech, and behind that speech are some 260,000,000 men and women, many of them amusing and some of them wise. The larger the gang, the larger the numbers of both classes. English forges ahead of all its competitors, whether natural or unnatural, simply because it is already spoken by so many educated, or at least technically competent, people. A few years ago, Dr.Knut Sanstedt, general secretary to the Northern Peace Union, sent a circular to a number of representative European publicists, asking them “what language, dead or living or artificial” they preferred for international communications. Not one of these publicists was a native or resident of the British Isles, yet out of fifty-nine who replied thirty voted for English. Of the six Swedes, all preferred it; of the seven Norwegians, five; of the five Hollanders, four. Among the whole fifty-nine, only one man voted for Esperanto.

Aids to study the text:

1. What distinct periods can be singled out in the history of the English language?

2. Illustrate the origins of the English language

3. What are the main ways of enriching the Vocabulary of a language?

4. What borrowed elements are widely represented in the English Vocabulary?

5. Dwell on the Celtic element of the English Vocabulary.

6. Speak on the Roman Conquest and its consequences. Outline the role Latin borrowings in the English vocabulary.

7. Illustrate the linguistic result of the Scandinavian Invasion.

8. What linguistic changes did the Norman Conquest bring? Point out the role of the French element in the Vocabulary of the English language.

9. Present the facts concerning enrichment of the vocabulary in the Renaissance period.

10. Will you describe borrowings of the 18^th – 20^th centuries?

11. What are the basic features of Modern English?

12. What can be said about varieties and variations of Modern English?

13. Why does the English language strike most foreigners by its simplicity?

14. How can we characterize the vocabulary of Modern English?

15. Why is English considered a universal language?

16. Discuss the future of the English language.

17. Give some comments on the texts (see pp. 112 – 114).

Chapter 4. The Present-day Language Studies

What, is meant by 'Contemporary English'? According to professor P.D.Strevens 'Contemporary English' is a label, not a technical term. It is not the name of a single, self-evident subject, but rather a convenient label to refer to some particular branches of English studies, reinforced by the attitudes and techniques of modern linguistic thought.

The scope of the Chair of Contemporary English likewise embraces new grammatical descriptions. It includes two main kinds of work, each in a sense independent yet interlinked. They are, first, the study of the present-day language, and second, the study and teaching of English as a foreign language, the 'academic' and 'vocational' aspects respectively. The vocational programme is an application of the theories and the attitudes of the academic work and of the data which will be derived from it, and although the vocational programme - the study and teaching of English as a foreign language - will often seem more spectacular, will attract more money from outside sources, and will seem to the public to be more obviously 'useful' in a short-term sense, nevertheless it is wholly dependent upon the academic programme. Without the academic, the vocational could not exist in terms acceptable to a university, since it would lack the essential strength of theory and of data which the academic study of Contemporary English can provide for it; whereas the academic programme itself has its own independent existence.

1. The vocational side of studies of Contemporary English

In recent years the number of people learning English and using English for various purposes, but not speaking it as their mother tongue, has grown to an astronomical size. Estimates vary around the figure of two hundred million overseas users of English, with great diversity of quantity, quality and motives in then use of the language. By far the most urgent set of problems, naturally, relates to the teaching of English to this vast population; but to forestall the hasty conclusion that the function of Contemporary English is training overseas teachers of English, it is necessary to make two points; first, these are by no means the only problems; and second, the contribution lies elsewhere than in the area of classroom methods, education theory and normal pedagogical training.

Professor P.D.Strevens considers that the main contribution in Britain is of three kinds: first, giving academic and professional training to university and training-college staff from the countries concerned so that they can raise the standards of their own institutions when they return home; second, preparing British graduates as university staff and trainers of teacher-trainers;, and third, providing the best possible academic content for these courses of professional training and their overseas counterparts. It is the third of these sub-divisions that is the most relevant to their own interests in Contemporary English at Leeds.

As this point we approach a delicate question of doctrine in the matter of teaching foreign languages. It will be obvious that the problems of English as a foreign language are fundamentally similar to those of French as a foreign language, or Russian, or Chinese, and until comparatively recently the attitudes and techniques used by British teachers going abroad to teach English were similar to, and even based upon, the older, more conventional attitudes towards teaching foreign languages in this country which were current before the War. Similar methods used to be current in the United States, until America reached a point of crisis, during the War. They were faced with a sudden need to teach practical language ability in English and in several other languages to immigrants and to soldiers; they decided that conventional methods were not efficient or effective, enough for the purpose, and so they cast around for other means.

Out of this operation, reinforced by a traumatic reaction to the launching of the first Russian satellite, there emerged in the United States an attitude towards language teachers which said, approximately, 'Make them good structural linguists and the problem will be solved'. This point of view was widely held for a number of years. In Britain, on the other hand, at roughly the same period, the converse doctrine held sway: 'Make them good teachers, and the problem will be solved'. It is now clear to most people that neither of these exclusive attitudes is the best solution. It turned out, on the American side, that only those linguists who were also good teachers could make really effective use of the sophisticated linguistic materials they were given to teach with; while on the British side, even the best classroom teachers were handicapped by the rudimentary linguistics which underlay much of the teaching material used. In the nineteen-sixties, both attitudes have been modified. Some American institutions are increasing the methodology component of their courses, while some British professional training courses are illuminating their admirable methodology with a sound linguistic background. The point of this sketchy and compressed summary of recent history in teaching English is that it shows the genesis of our own outlook at Leeds, which is that there must be a marriage of the two components.

In other words, the teaching of English as a foreign language has become a joint activity, containing on the one hand both education and methodology (which are most properly provided, as at Leeds, by the specialists in Education), and on the other hand a sound background of linguistic thought and up-to-date descriptions of the present-day language (which are properly provided by the specialists in language and in English). There may well be some overlap in functions: this is largely a question of the number of specialist staff that any given institution can afford; but the principle is clear.

The particular projects which Leeds is building in this domain and to which Contemporary English contributes are of three main kinds. First, there are the professional qualifications which teachers of English overseas can take, and which involve collaboration between the School of English, the Department of Education and the Institute of Education.

Then there are longer-term proposals for links with university centres overseas, in America, Africa, and Asia. These links, when they can be achieved, will enable the countries which have problems of this kind to benefit in their own vocational programmes from the fruits of the academic side of Contemporary English at Leeds. In addition, they should give practical expression to the ideal (much talked-of but rarely achieved) of collaboration in this field between Britain and America.

The third kind of project concerns the development of mass media and technical aids for teaching purposes. Just as stylistics is an area in the academic programme where Contemporary English overlaps with another branch of English studies, to their mutual enrichment, so also there is an area in the vocational programme where Contemporary English overlaps with the pedagogical arts. It is no accident that specialists in Contemporary English should everywhere be called upon to assist in the exploitation of television, radio, language laboratories, audio-visual aids, and teaching machines, for the purposes of teaching English. It is simply a reflection of the fact that these -devices by themselves, effective though they may be in principle, are of little use unless they are programmed by specialists in language and in English.

We are called in, then, by those who teach English as a foreign language, to provide the theoretical basis and the best possible description of English, as part of the total language-teaching job. But the profession of teaching English as a foreign language is only one particular case of the general category of teaching foreign languages; and to the extent that teaching English as a foreign language can be shown to have improved in effectiveness by the marriage of our theory and description with the best possible teaching methods and techniques, to that extent we are likely to arouse the interest of those who teach foreign languages other than English.

There is at present in Britain a wave of interest in the teaching of foreign languages in the primary schools. New social and political pressures make it virtually certain that before long some European languages will be taught to all children, and from an early age, instead of only to a small proportion of children, late in their school career, as at present. But to many teachers this is a dangerous experiment: 'Who knows', many of them ask, 'whether young children can learn languages, without suffering psycho­logical harm'? The answer is that some of those who teach English as a foreign language know, because they have been doing it for years in Africa and elsewhere.

There is yet a further extension of these collaborations. Many of those who teach English language in schools in Britain are unhappy about the aims and syllabuses of their profession, and about the text-books they have to use. It is a remarkable fact that a number of text-books designed to describe the present-day English language to foreign learners have suddenly begun to sell in quantity at home. Two trends seem to be at work, as far as one can judge: first, many teachers are seeking descriptions of English that relate to the way it is actually used, in speech and writing, today; and there are few works that meet this specification. And second, many teachers want to present a description that rests on a coherent framework of theory and description. Here I am back at my starting-place, the academic study of the pre­sent-day language; but the point I am making, is that Contemporary English can contribute to the teaching of English as a foreign language, to the teaching of foreign languages in general, and to the teaching of English in Britain.

2. The academic side of studies of Contemporary English

The academic programme as distinct from the vocational programme has its own independent existence. It is subdivided into two main parts: first, the subject of study and second, the methods used.

Start with the methods of study appropriate to Contemporary English. These methods rest upon the two disciplines sometimes called 'the linguistic sciences’, namely, phonetics and linguistics. According to professor P.D.Strevens ’linguistics' is a theory of language: an understanding of how language works. With this theory and the descriptive categories which it imposes professor P.D.Strevens with his colleagues in Education can describe any form of spoken or written English, and they can relate it to all other aspects of language behaviour. Naturally, in the course of describing English one hopes to go further and to analyse grammar, lexis or phonology to a deeper level of detail, or 'delicacy'; and this entails a close knowledge of the particular structures and systems that operate in the present-day language. But these are in a sense extra to the first requisite, which is a theory of language, and an understanding of how language works, of now all languages work.

In defining the field of Contemporary English professor P.D.Strevens acknowledged that it is not a single subject but a grouping of some branches of English studies. But there is nevertheless a unity in the grouping: the underlying similarity shared by all the varied aspects of Contemporary English that he describing springs from the sharing of a comprehensive theory of language. Every one of the teaching and research projects in Contemporary English begun or now being planned, both at Leeds and in other British universities, has as its basis this outlook on language.

At this point professor P.D.Strevens with his colleagues in Education may conveniently look at the projects which they envisage for Contemporary English at this university. One essential piece of development is in the field of grammar. Their frequent need to describe this level of the language to undergraduate and postgraduates students is at present frustrated by the paucity of grammatical descriptions in acceptable terms.

They are interested, too, in phonological problems, especially in the interpenetration of phonology and grammar. Everyone knows from his own experience that changes of intonation (to take a simple instance) can carry changes of a grammatical kind, as in the difference between He's coming on Friday? and He's coming on Friday. There are a great many other relations between these two levels, which few people have studied in detail.

Another basic project which is already under way concerns the relations between language and context. Some of the choices between possible alternative forms of English are determined by features of the context. Mr S.P. Gorder is investigating this question and has begun by a preliminary study of the language used in highly restricted situations. One situation he chose was a tobacconist's shop, where throughout most of a working day he sat and observed the forms of language used there. It became quite clear (as indeed we should anticipate, if we gave thought to it) that the precise language used was not the same for all speakers, but was divided into a small number of types, selected according to the relations between the customer and the shopkeeper. The analysis of total situations and of the language used in them is a difficult problem but one which they shall attempt to reduce for the light it throws upon language behaviour as a whole, and upon the complex, interlocking patterns of varieties of English.

In the field of lexis professor P.D.Strevens with his colleagues in Education is driven to make statements about the patterns of occurrence and co-occurrence of words and other lexical items in very large samples of text. This is a statistical operation for which certain computer techniques are very well suited.

To sum up, their programme in Contemporary English must include research and investigation in all areas of the language. They have made a start and will extend as staff and finance permit. This is not simply a pious statement of intent: on the contrary, their teaching programme lacks some of the basic data, so that they is driven by the pressure of the day-to-day teaching to investigate as widely and yet as deeply as they can the nature of the present-day language.

Thus, the academic content of Contemporary English stands in its own right as a respectable and rapidly expanding branch of university studies. It exists independently of any practical applications and would continue even if there were no demand for applied or vocational programmes.

But the subject of study, can be summarized as 'the present-day English language, in both written and spoken forms'.

3. The varieties of English and ways of studying them

The language called 'English' is not one single, unified language. Large numbers of different sub-languages of English co-exist.

Contemporary English accepts every manifestation of the present-day language as' being a fit subject for study; but it follows from this acceptance that a prior task presents itself, the task of studying the kinds of variation that exist within the language. We need to study varieties of English before we can study any single variety. Let me name some examples of different varieties of English: the written English of the Admiralty Manual of Seamanship is different from the English of motorcar insurance policies, or from a knitting pattern, or from a соokеrу book, or from a textbook on electronics. The spoken English of a commentary on a boxing match is different from that of a sermon. And both these sets of examples, spoken and written, would be different yet again if they originated in the United States of America rather than in Great Britain. Of course, everyone is aware from his own experience that differences exist between dialects, or accents, or styles, or fields of discourse: what is not universally realized is, first,

that: all these varieties are equally lit subjects for study - in other words, that we are not seeking some notional ideal of 'good English' which is to be described while all other kinds of English are to be ignored - and second, that we now have an effective framework of categories for analysing and describing the kinds of difference that occur.

There are, several ways of approaching the study of varieties of English: in particular, one may either follow the lead of J.C. Catford and concentrate upon the performer (that is, the speaker or writer), in which case one relates the variety of English to his per­sonal identity, where he comes from, his social status, his role in the situation, his relation to those he is addressing, and so on; or one may follow MA.K. Halliday and concentrate upon the language itself, in which case one deals with the dialect, with the subject of the dis­course, with speech as a different kind of event from writing, with different 'modes' within each (journalism, the formal lecture, diary-writing, and so on), and with the 'styles of discourse' that depend upon the relations between the participants in any piece of language.

This is a branch of Contemporary English that borders on sociology and anthropology, since the constraints upon the language of an individual are part of his learned behaviour and part of his total cultural patterns. This may seem a long way from the traditional tasks of describing the phonemes or the grammar or the lexis of a particular variety of English, but it is necessary just the same that a framework for describing varieties of English should be found in order that the particular variety being described should first be precisely identified.

Once we have selected a particular variety of present-day English for study, what do we include within our description of it?

Within the kind of description professor P.D.Strevens proposes four main sections, which he called phonology, grammar, lexis, and context. To explain fairly simply what is meant. First, phonology. This is not quite the 'phonetics of English' of the traditional kind - that associated, for example, with the name of Professor Daniel Jones. Phonology starts with the same data but takes it to a further degree of abstraction. The phonology of a variety of English includes not simply the inventory of the speech-sounds used in it, but this inventory further analysed to show systematic groupings and to show all the functional units of sound, right up to the largest unit of all, the tone-group (that is, the intonation unit). And then in addition, a phonological statement includes the relations between these units. Thus, the phonology of that variety of English which he uses (roughly Standard English as to grammar, R.P. as to accent) would describe a system of five ton с groups; each tone-group consists of one or more feet, one of which will be the 'tonic' foot; each foot consists of one or more syllables, which are each either stressed or weak; each syllable consists of one or more phonemes, which can occur only in certain permitted arrangements.

In addition to the phonology of the variety of English being studied, the description must include a statement of the grammar. (Under the heading of grammar professor P.D.Strevens includes all those phenomena which have traditionally been separated into morphology and syntax.) This level of language, too, is to be described in terms of the units of grammar found to occur (for example, sentence, clause, phrase or group, word, morpheme), the classes and sub-classes of each and the patterns of arrangement which they take up in structure, and the relations between the members of the hierarchy.

A statement must also be made of the lexis (that is, roughly, the vocabulary) of the variety of English being studied. Here he is interested not only in the items that occur (the words, groups of words, expressions) but in the company that each one keeps, in the co-occurrence of some words and the mutual exclusiveness of others. To take a trivial example, in the register of astronomy items like star, planet, constellation will almost certainly occur with considerable frequency; but the item horoscope will almost certainly not occur at all. In astrology, on the other hand, a different grouping will occur, in which horoscope and the names of the signs of the Zodiac do collocate with the other terms which we expect to find in astronomy. Of course, this is perfectly obvious, and the reason for producing an example is not to suggest that we can now talk about word-groupings where previously we could not; the reason is rather to suggest that our techniques for doing this now have greater precision, accuracy and delicacy than they previously displayed.

The task of description is nearly complete, once we have covered phonology, grammar, and lexis, but we still have to include a statement of the contextual features of the variety of English we are dealing with. We must state the circumstances under which this variety occurs, and any limiting or defining features, such as restriction to a particular subject (as with the word horoscope, for example), or occupation, or social class; or even a more restricted set of contexts such as those which define the language of detergent advertising, or newspaper head­lines, or the instructions on the labels of fireworks.

These, then, are the components of a complete description of any variety of contemporary English: phonology, grammar, lexis, context. And all varieties of English in use today are fit subjects for study. One of our problems is that once our eyes are opened to the great range of varieties that exist, and once our prejudices are broken down to allow us to study any variety, not simply the conventional notion of what constitutes 'good. English', we then also discover what an immense task of description lies before us.

4. The language of literature

The language of literature is one particular variety of English to which we must pay special attention. The appreciation of literature and the evaluation of literary merit are activities with their own procedures and techniques which do not in general impinge on Contemporary English. But one aspect of the total study of literary texts is the detailed analysis of the language used in them, and of those linguistic devices which produce particular literary effects. This requires techniques of language analysis such as those employed by Contemporary English in other branches of its study. Here, then, is a real possibility of bridge-building, provided that we are clear from the outset that it is a joint effort, with the building proceeding simultaneously from both ends, and aimed at the same point in the middle. In other words, the specialist in contemporary language must work with and towards the specialist in literature, and the specialist in literature must work with and towards the language specialist.

It is worth stressing that those who attempt this task must be specialists. The field of Contemporary English has suffered from more than its fair share of well-meaning but ill-informed amateurs. Simply because one speaks the language there is no reason to suppose that one can produce, without further training, an insightful analysis of the complex interplay of patterns that make up our language.

For most people, it is only by experience, by training the sensibility, by learning the art of delicate discrimination, that insight into literature can become habitual. One kind of discrimination involved is the discrimination of the patterns of language; but this requires some detailed knowledge of what the patterns of language actually consist of, at all levels, and of how they interweave. Just as grammarians and specialists in linguistics are not automatically capable of making sensitive and illuminating statements about literary effect and artistic merit, so, too, the literary specialist if he expects his remarks about language to be of weight and worth must find a basis of linguistic understanding.

The essential point is that there is an important area of overlap between language and literature. It is possible to carry out studies in literature without touching the linguistic aspects of creative writing; it is equally possible to carry out studies in Contemporary English without touching the language of literature. But for either discipline to be full and complete it must take notice of the other.

Descriptions of English until recently have been largely prescriptive, they have been related to the written language, and they have used categories of description borrowed from Latin, not based on a general theory. This made it difficult to describe any other kind of English than the particular prescriptive model of written prose that was the subject of conventional grammatical description, since no adequate descriptive categories existed for other kinds of written English, or for any kind of speech. Yet it is precisely in literature that the linguistic patterns are at their most subtle and sophisticated, where the levels of sound, grammar, and lexis interpenetrate in the most complex and original ways. Our newer descriptions of English will at least remove this serious methodological impediment, since we believe them to be capable of embracing any and all of the possible patterns and variations of the language. There remains a whole set of relations between the literary text and the linguistic statement - relations of genre, argument, intent, and other devices - for which no adequate framework of description yet exists.

One further area of study deserves to be mentioned, and that is the extension of English studies into the realm of the mass media of communication. This is a terrain vague, in the sense that it is new, undefined, and not obviously the responsibility of any single discipline. It is related to education, to sociology, to literature, and drama, to journalism, and to language. Contemporary English obviously has an interest here, although not an exclusive interest.

5. A triple bond between disciplines

In the first place there is a bond between science and humanity. There are three ways in which the study of language is in contact with science: two of them are rather trivial, but one is fundamental. The trivial contacts include, first, the use of scientific equipment and therefore of scientific modes of observation and measurement in the study of language; and second, the converse of this, the use by established scientific disciplines of linguistic concepts and techniques. As examples of the first I can cite instrumental and acoustic phonetics, the use of computer techniques for grammatical and lexical analysis, research into the physiology and psychology of language, and similar work. As examples of the second I should mention communications engineering, machine translation and
speech pathology.

The non-trivial link, which lies in the nature of the linguistic theory which professor P.D.Strevens has mentioned as the unifying feature of Contemporary English. He is not one who tries to equate linguistics with the physical sciences, but it remains a fact that the the­ory and description which inform British linguistics are in the normal line of general scientific method. Consequently our attitudes towards techniques of observation, towards our data, towards theory, description, models, measurement, experiment, are scientific at base, even though the subject of our study, language, is inherently capable of being original, creative, artistic, beautiful, miraculous. There is no antagonism be­tween the two outlooks upon language, and professor P.D.Strevens has always found his appreciation of the humane aspect of language heightened and extended by the contact. This is the first bond between the disciplines.

The second bond is a bond between language and literature. It is possible to study Contemporary English without studying the language of literature, and it is possible to study literature without studying the language used in literary works. But to carry out either task thoroughly means accepting the overlap and exploiting it. Here is an area where two disciplines interconnect, and where each can hope to contribute to the other. This is the second bond.

Finally, there is the obvious contact between the academic and the vocational spheres; between the programme of analysis and description of English on the one hand, and the programme in teaching English as a foreign language on the other. And this is the third bond.

Aids to study the text:

I. Answer the following questions and give your arguments:

1. What is meant by “Contemporary English”? Define its notion, its contents, aspects of study.

2. What does the Chair of Contemporary English at Leeds deal with? What are their main kinds of work?

3. Describe the academic side of studies of Contemporary English. Why is it so important? What are the main parts? What do you understand by the “subject of study” and methods used?

4. What are the relations between the “academic” and “vocational” aspects? Can they exist without each other?

5. Comment on the terms “the English language”, “sublanguages”, “varieties”.

6. What are the ways of approaching the study of the varieties of English? What do the varieties have in common?

7. What are the components of a complete description of any variety of Contenporary English? Give some comments on each of them.

8. Will you name the most important varieties of English? Give their specific features.

9. What methods are used in study of Contemporary English? What is their essence?

10. What can you tell about relationship between the academic content of Contemporary English and applied or vocational programmes for the study and teaching of English as a foreign language?

11. What does Strevens say about a doctrine in teaching English? What attitude towards language teachers prevailed in the UK and the USA in the nineteen sixties? What is meant by “a marriage of the two components”?

12. What are the main ways of raising English language teaching standards in Britain and abroad?

13. What does the author mean by “a triple bond between the disciplines”? Give your comments on the interrelation between disciplines.

II. Read, mark and discuss in pairs the following Strevens’ statements about the aims pursued by foreign learners of English:

- As the medium of the literature and culture of English speaking countries;

- For access to scholarly and technological publications;

- To qualify as English teachers, translators and interpreters;

- To improve their chances of employment or promotion in such areas as the tourist trade, international commerce or programmes for economic or military aid.

What statements of your own can you add to the list? Give your comments.

Chapter 5. Language and Representation

We see, hear and otherwise experience so largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. ( Edward Sapir).

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our (Benjamin Lee Whorf).

Language enables us to talk with each other. At the same time it enables us to talk about something. It provides us with not just a mode of interaction, but also with a capacity for representation. Now we turn to the IDEATIONAL possibilities of language. It is these which provide us with the means for apprehending and comprehending, to ourselves and with others, the world in which we live.

We are immediately faced, however, with a fundamental question: do all human languages represent the world in the same way; or do different languages (by virtue of their different vocabularies) provide different ways of experiencing and understanding the world, in much the same way as different kinds of speaking practice make possible different modes of relation?

1. Two Conflicting Positions the “Universalist” versus the “Relativist”

Fundamentally, we can understand the way in which language represent the world to us in terms of two opposing positions. According to one view, human beings generally (whatever their culture or language) are endowed with a common stock of basic concepts-"conceptual primes" as they are sometimes known-out of which more elaborated conceptual systems and patterns of thought can be constructed. Language, according to this view, is merely a vehicle for expressing the conceptual system which exists independently of it. And, because all conceptual system share a common basis, all language turn out to be fundamentally similar. They will all, for instance, find some way of expressing such, conceptual primes as relative height (e.g. "up" vs. "down"), relative distance (e.g. "near" vs. "far"), relative time (e.g. "now' vs. "then"). According to this position, thought determines language; and consequently separate languages represent the world in closely equivalent ways. We might characterize this view as the "universalist" position.

The alternative position maintains that thought is difficult to separate from language; each is woven inextricably into the other. Concepts can only take shape if we have the words and structures in which to express them. Thinking depends crucially upon language. Because the vocabularies and structures of separate language can vary so widely, it makes no sense to posit conceptual primes of a universal nature. Indeed, it is not at all likely that different languages represent the world in equivalent ways. On the contrary, habitual users of one language will experience and understand the world in ways peculiar to that language and different from habitual users of another language. The latter viewpoint might be termed the "relativist" position.

2. Vocabulary and Grammatical Differences between languages.

In support of the relativist position it is clear that the continuum of experience is differently dissected, by the vocabularies of different languages.

Some of the most striking differences, between the vocabulary of separate language show up in the arrangement of colour terms. Whereas English operates with eleven basic colour terms ("black, "white" "red", "green", "yellow", "blue", "brown", "purple", "pink", ^/ "orange" and "grey"), some languages operate with more, some with less. Russian for example, deploys twelve, the former making a distinction, between two types of blue. The way in which the colourspectrim is segmented can thus vary quite dramatically from language to language.

However, the really fundamental differences between languages operates at more than the level of vocabulary; they operate within the structural patterns of the language itself. Thus, differences between languages may be found in the way they are structurally patterned to handle such basic notions as time, cause and effect, agency, spatial relations, and so on. The linguist with whom the relativist claim is most associated — Benjamin Lee Whorf proposes "a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic background are similar, or can in some way be calibrated... Users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different, views of the world."

3. Difficulties in the Relativist position

Over forty years have elapsed since Whorf wrote these words. Yet, with occasional shifts in the terms of debate, controversy around these issues has remained strong ever since. Evaluating the respective merits of the relativist and universalist position would really require a book. There are it mast be admitted, certain basic difficulties in the relativist position. In its extreme form it assumes distinctions in experience and under­standing on the basis of linguistic distinctions. So it assumes, for example, that Russians experience the colour spectrum, particularly in the domain of “blueness", rather differently than English speakers do, because the linguistic terms are different in this respect language is not an absolute straitjacket - it does not totally constrain our ways of seeing and experiencing. I would still want to claim, as Whorf states, that language plays an active and crucial role in sharing (though not completely determining) the processes of representation, by "pointing us toward different types of observation" and "predisposing certain choices of interpretation".

4. The “Interested" Character of Linguistic Representation

What the relativist position emphasizes, then, despite certain difficulties associated with it, is that the world is not given to us directly and straightforwardly in experience. In apprehending, comprehending and representing the, world we inevitably draw upon linguistic formulations. One might say that because of this we always see it slightly askew. But it is not so much a question of "bias" that is at stake here. What it amounts to in fact is that there is no absolutely neutral and disinterested way of apprehending and representing the world. Language always helps to select, arrange, organize, and evaluate experience, even when we are least conscious of it doing so.

In this sense representation is always interested: the words chosen are selected from a determinate set for the situation at hard and have been previously shaped by the community, or by portions of the community, to which the speaker belongs.

5. Vocabulary and the depiction of gender

We can see something of the interested nature of representation by looking at the distribution of English vocabulary items around the notions of "woman" and "man", "female" and "male". In a study, based primarily on American English, it was found, for example, that there were more words for men than there were for women. Despite this kind of imbalance, however, there were many more words for a woman in her sexual aspect than there were for a sexually active man. Thus, for women there are in excess of 200 expressions such as "pint", "Judy", "tart", "skirt", "piece", "bitch", " tight-bitch", "slag", "scrubber", "piece-of-ass", "cunt", "bird", "broad", "lay", "pick-up", "prick-teaser" and so on. Many of the terms sound pejorative. An equivalent list for men is much more difficult to compile but would include less than fifty items such as "stud", "dirty-old-man", "randy-old-goat", "philanderer", "Casanova", "trick", "lecher", and so on. Not only are there fewer of them in total but proportionally less of them are explicitly pejorative. Some, indeed, have the option of actually being honorific.

Why should "woman-as-sexual-being" require such a proliferation of lexical items? Such terms can hardly be said to be representing reality in disinterested ways. The items themselves, of course, give same kind of clue to their origins. They mostly have resonances of certain all-male subcultures: the adolescent male peer croup, the locker room and the building site subculture. As such they are mare likely to be used by men of women than women of men. Also, there is an overriding tendency in items of this type towards metonymic representation, where a part is made to stand for the whole: it can be an anatomic element ("ass", "cunt"); or an element of dress (""skirt"); it can be an element of the act itself ("lay", "screw"); or a preliminary to it ("pick-up"). The cumulative effect of these metonyms is to objectify and depersonalize in a reductive fashion.

Obviously, not all men, necessarily use such items. And those that do so will probably use them only in certain restricted context. And even than, the items will not always and inevitably be used in a reductive and objectifying fashion. But the presence in the language of such a skewed distribution of lexical items generates and confirms a pressure in favour of modes of representation that ultimately help to produce women as a commodity for consumption (cf. "tart").

A similar pattern of representation seems to be in play around paired items in the language, where by derivation the pairs were once roughly equivalent in meaning except for a difference in gender. Such pairs include the following:

Bachelor Spinster

Courtier Courtesan

King Queen

Lord Lady

Master Mistress

Sir Madam

Thus, one meaning for "king" and "queen" is monarch or sovereign, male and female respectively. But, whereas the farmer has retained, exclusively its honorific orientation towards "pre-eminent" the latter item is now available for use in designating "a male homosexual who dresses and acts effeminately", in which sense it is quite likely to be used derogatorily. Similarly, "master" and "mistress" could once be used equivalently to refer to the male and female heads of a household. More, recently, however, mistress came to be used almost exclusively to designate "kept woman" or "illicit lover". In like manner "courtesan" now refers exclusively to "high class prostitute"; and "madam" is just as likely to refer to "woman brothel keeper", unless it is being used of a child ("she's a right little madam").

It is quite normal, of course, for words to change their meaning. Nor is it at all unusual for some words in some situation to be used for pejorative purposes. It is striking, however, that words associated with women should be consistently downgraded in this way. Such a tendency lends support to the claim that English, at least, is systematically skewed to represent women in a subordinate’s position.

Aids to study the text:

1. What do we mean by “the ideational possibilities of language”?

2. In what terms can we understand the way in which language represents the world to us?

3. What’s the essence of the “Universalist” position to judge the connection of the world and language?

4. What point of view does the “Relativist” position express on the issue in question?

5. Illustrate the difficulties in the Relativist position.

6. How does the Relativist position describe the “interested” character of linguistic representation?

7. What vocabulary and grammatical differences between languages can be fairly pointed out?

Chapter 6. Pragmatics and its relationship with other sciences

When we speak or write we want to be understood and respected. We want to convey our meaning and we want to do it in a way that will command admiration, To accomplish these ends we must know the meanings of words, their connotations, implications, and we must know how to combine words effectively into sentences.

What does one want to know about a word? First of all, what it means; also how it is spelled, how it is pronounced, and what its origin is. But a dictionary can help us to understand the meaning of a word. But the only way to understand a word fully is to see it in use in as many contexts as possible. This means that anyone who wants to improve his vocabulary must read a great deal and must make sure that he understands what he reads. But there is no short cut to this kind of knowledge.

The function of grammars and dictionaries is to tell the truth about language. Not what somebody thinks ought to be the truth or wants to sell somebody else as being the "best" language, but what native speakers actually do when they talk and write.

Good usage is matter of combining-the rules of grammar and acceptable meanings of words with an appreciation of our relationship with the addressee None of us can afford to be complacent about our command of English. It is in ordinary talk to ordinary people on ordinary matters that we are most at home, linguistically and otherwise.

Problems arise as soon as the context as somewhat out of the ordinary. We suddenly need to address a cousin about the death of her husband. This is when we may -or should- pause and wonder about idiom, good usage, and the most appropriate way of putting things. There is the risk of sounding too colloquial, too flippant. There is the converse risk of seeming ponderous, distant, pompous, unnatural. Here we should deal with pragmatics.

Pragmatics is defined by modern dictionaries as the study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used. Pragmatics includes the study of:

a) how the interpretation and use of utterances depends on knowledge of the
real world;

b) how speakers use and understand speech acts;

c) how the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between
the speaker and the hearer.

Pragmatics is sometimes contrasted with semantics which deals with meaning without reference to the users and communicative functions of sentences.

1. The identity of pragmatics

Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others. In theory, we can say anything we like. In practice, we follow a large number of social rules (most of them unconsciously) that constrain the way we speak. There is no law that says we must not tell jokes during a funeral, but it is generally 'not done'. Less obviously, there are norms of formality and politeness that we have intuitively assimilated, and that we follow when talking to people who are older, of the opposite sex, and so on. Writing and signing behaviour are constrained in similar ways.

Pragmatic factors always influence our selection of sounds, grammatical constructions, and vocabulary from the resources of the language. Some of the constrains are taught to us at a very early age - in British English, for example, the importance of saying “please” and “thank you”, or (in some families) of not referring to an adult female in her presence as “she” . In many languages, pragmatic distinctions of formality, politeness, and intimacy are spread throughout the grammatical, lexical, and phonological systems, ultimately reflecting matters of social class, status, and role. A well-studied example is the pronoun system, which frequently presents distinctions that convey pragmatic force - such as the choice between tu and vous in French.

Languages differ greatly in these respects Politeness expressions, for instance, may vary in frequency and meaning. Many European languages do not use their word for “please” as frequently as English does; and the function and force of thank you may also alter (e.g. following the question 'Would you like some more cake?^’ , English “thank you” means ‘yes', whereas French “merci” would mean "no"). Conventions of greeting, leave-taking, and dining also differ greatly from language to language. In some countries it is polite to remark to a host that we are enjoying the food; in others it is polite to stay silent. On one occasion, at a dinner in an Arabic community, the present author made the mistake of remarking on the excellence of the food before him. The host immediately apologized, and arranged for what was there to be replaced!

Pragmatics is not at present a coherent field of study. A large number of factors govern our choice of language in social interaction, and it is not yet clear what they all are, how they are best interrelated, and how best to distinguish them from other recognized areas of linguistic enquiry. There are several main areas of overlap.

Semantics. Pragmatics and semantics both take into account such notions as the intentions of the speaker, the effects of an utterance on listeners, the implications that follow from expressing something in a certain way, and the knowledge, beliefs, and presuppositions about the world upon which speakers and listeners rely when they interact.

Metalinguistics is an independent study, which has as its task the examination of all the interrelations and points of contacts, which come into existence between the language and the culture of the people speaking the language. Metalinguistics thus claims to replace traditional semantics.

Stylistics and sociolinguistics. These fields overlap with pragmatics in their study of the social relationships which exist between participants, and of the way extralinguistic setting, activity, and subject-matter can constrain the choice of linguistic features and varieties.

Psycholinguistics. Pragmatics and psycholinguistics both investigate the psychological states and abilities of the participants that will have a major effect upon their performance - such factors as attention, memory, and personality.

Discourse analysis. Both discourse analysis and pragmatics are centrally concerned with the analysis of conversation, and share several of the philosophical and linguistic notions that have been developed to handle this topic (such as the way information is distributed within a sentence, deictic forms, or the notion of conversational 'maxims'.

As a result of these overlapping areas of interest, several conflicting definitions of the scope of pragmatics have arisen. One approach focuses on the factors formally encoded in the structure of a language (honorific forms, tu /vous choice, and so on) Another relates it to a particular view of semantics here, pragmatics is seen as the study of all aspects of meaning other than those involved in the analysis of sentences in terms of forth conditions. Other approaches adopt a much broader perspective. Thе broadest sees pragmatics as the study of the principles and practice underlying all interactive linguistic performance - this including all aspects of language usage, understanding, and appropriateness Textbooks on pragmatics to date, accordingly, present a diversity of subject matter and a range of partially conflicting orientations and methodologies which proponents of the subject have yet to resolve. However, if we take diversity of opinion to be a sign of healthy growth in a subject, it must be said that few other areas of language study have such a promising future

2. Speech acts

The British philosopher J. L. Austin 911-60) was the first to draw attention to the many functions performed by utterances as part of interpersonal communication. In particular, he pointed out that many utterances do not communicate information, but are equivalent to actions. When someone says 'I apologize ..’,’.’I promise ...'/I will' (at a wedding), or 'I name this ship...', the utterance immediately conveys a new psychological or social reality. An apology takes place when someone apologizes, and not before. A ship is named only when the act of naming is complete. In such cases, to say is to perform. Austin thus called these utterances performatives, seeing them as very different from statements that convey information (constatives). In particular, performatives are not true or false. If A says 'I name this ship ...', В cannot then say 'That's not true'!

In speech act analysis, we study the effect of utterances on the behaviour of speaker and hearer, using a threefold distinction. First, we recognize the bare fact that a communicative act takes place: the locutionary act. Secondly, we look at the act that is performed as a result of the speaker making an utterance - the cases where 'saying = doing', such as betting, promising, welcoming, and warning: these known as illocutionary acts, are the core of any theory of speech acts. Thirdly, we look at the particular effect the speaker's utterance has on the listener, who ma> feel amused, persuaded, warned, etc., as a consequence: the bringing about of such effects is known as a perlocutionary act. It is important to appreciate that the illocutionary force of an utterance and its perlocutionary effect may not coincide. If I warn you against a particular course of action, you may or may not heed my warning.

There are thousands of possible illocutionary acts, and several attempts have been made to classify them into a small number of types. Such classifications are difficult, because verb meanings are often not easy to distinguish, and speakers intentions are not always clear. One influential approach sets up five basic types

• Representatives. The speaker is committed, in varying degrees, to the truth
of a proposition, e. g. affirm, believe, conclude, deny, report.

•Directives. The speaker tries to get the hearer to do something, e. g challenge, command, insist, request.

• Commissives. The speaker is committed, in varying degrees, to a certain
course of action, e.g. guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow

• Expressives, The speaker expresses an attitude about a state of affairs, e.g
apologize, deplore, congratulate, thank, welcome

•Declarations. The speaker alters the external status or condition of an object or situation solely by making the utterance, e.g. / resign, I baptize, You're fired, War is hereby declared.

3. Felicity conditions

Speech acts are successful only if they satisfy several criteria, known as 'felicity conditions'. For example, the 'preparatory' conditions have to be right: the person performing the speech act has to have the authority to do so. This is hardly an issue with such verbs as apologize, promise, or thank, but it is important constraint on the use of such verbs as fine, baptize, arrest, and declare war, where only certain people are qualified to use these utterances. Then, the speech act has to be executed in the correct manner: in certain cases there is a procedure to be followed exactly and completely (e.g. baptizing)', in others, certain expectations have to be met (e.g. one can only welcome with a pleasant demeanor). And, as a third example, 'sincerity' conditions have to be present: the speech act must be performed in a sincere manner. Verbs such as apologize, guarantee, and vow are effective only if speakers mean what they say; believe and affirm are valid only if the speakers are not lying.

Ordinary people automatically accept these conditions when communicate, and they depart from them only for very special reasons example, the request Will you shut the door? is appropriate only if

(a) the door is open

(b) the speaker has a reason for asking,

(с) the hearer is in a position to perform the action.

If any of these conditions does not obtain, then a special interpretation of the speech act has to apply. It may be intended as a joke, or as a piece of sarcasm. Alternatively, of course, there may be doubt about the speaker's visual acuity or even sanity!

4. Indirect speech acts

Some speech acts directly address a listener, but the majority of acts in everyday conversation are indirect. For example, there are a very large number of ways of asking someone to perform an action. The most direct way is to use the imperative construction {Shut the door), but it is easy to sense that this would be inappropriate in many everyday situations - too abrupt or rude, perhaps. Alternatives stress such factors as the hearer's ability or desire to perform the action, or the speaker's reasons for having the action done.

These include the following:

I'd be grateful if you'd shut the door.

Could you shut the door? Would you mind shutting the door?

It'd help to have the door shut.

It's getting cold in here. Shall we keep out the draught?

Now, Jane, what have you forgotten to do?

Brrrl

Any of these could, in the right situation, function as a request for action, despite the fact that none has the clear form of an imperative. But of course, it is always open to the hearer to misunderstand an indirect request - either accidentally or deliberately.

Teacher: Johnny, there's some chalk on the floor.

Johnny: Yes, there is, sir.

Teacher: Well, pick it up, then!

5. Pragmatics and the Dictionary

For many years the overriding concern of English language teachers was that their stu­dents should learn to speak and to write English correctly. More recently, serious attention has been drawn not only to the correct, but to the appropriate use of language. This shift of em­phasis has taken place under the influence of studies in pragmatics.

Traditionally, dictionaries and grammars are concerned with what words, phrases, and sen­tences mean. Pragmatics, on the other hand, is the study of how words are used, and what speakers mean. There can he a considerable difference between sentence-meaning and speaker-meaning. For example, a person who says "Is that your car?" may mean something like this: "Your car is blocking my gateway -move it!" - or this: "What a fantastic car - I didn't know you were so rich!"-or this: "What a dreadful car-I wouldn't be seen dead in it!" The very same words can be used to complain, to express admiration, or to express disapproval.

This Dictionary will often help you by giving examples of typical speaker-meanings. Look, for example, at the following Usage Note at the entry for way.

• USAGE .............. By the way.

Although this expression seems to suggest that you are going to add unimportant information, in fact it is often used to introduce a subject that is really very important to you; By the way, / wonder if we could discuss my sal­ary some time?\ By the way, do you think you could lend me £10? —see also incidentally (USAGE)

In general, the context-in which the words are spoken, or the way in which they are said (For example, their intonation) will tell us which of, the possible speaker-meanings is intended. But between speakers of different languages or people of different cultures, serious misunderstandings can occur. For example, it is common for a British teacher to say to a student: "James, would you like to read this passage?" Although the sentence is a question about what James likes, the teacher is not asking about James's wishes, but is telling him to read. A foreign student could easily misunderstand the teach­er's intention, and reply; "No, thank you". This would strike the teacher either as being very rude, or as a bad joke. In other words, the reply would be inappropriate.

Misunderstandings are particularly likely to occur with words such as please, whose mean­ing cannot be explained by the normal method

1 . How formal is the situation (is it a business meeting, a class discussion, or a picnic)?

2 . How well do we know the people we are addressing (are they friends, workmates, or complete strangers)?

3 . If we are talking to strangers, how similar are they to ourselves (e.g. are they people of a similar age, of the same sex, of a similar social background, of the same profession)?

4 . Are we talking to people who are in a superi­or, equal, or subordinate relationship (e.g.our boss, a colleague, or a waiter)?

5 . How great is the demand we are making on them {e.g. are we asking to borrow a pencil or a car)?

Do we have the right to make a particular demand (e.g. teachers can require a student to write an essay, but not to clean their car)?

People of different cultures will answer these questions differently. Thus it is less of an "imposition" to ask for a cigarette in Eastern Europe (where they are very cheap) than in some parts of Western Europe (where they are expensive). And the point should be made that different English-speaking cultures vary among themselves, just as they differ from non-English-speaking cultures. For example, it can be less of an "imposition" to borrow someone's car in the United States "than it is in Great Britain.

People from different cultures will attach differ­ent values to the same factors. For example, a teacher has a higher status in some countries than in others. In some cultures, people are very deferential to their parents: the idea of parents being polite to their young children, as often happens in American or British middle-class homes (e.g. a mother's saying "Peter, would you mind shutting the door, please?") will seem very strange. Finally, the importance attached to factors such as differences of sex, age, and social status varies enormously from culture to culture.

Of dictionary definition; or with words such as surely, for which a definition giving the meaning of the word out of its context can easily be misleading.

For example, please is a conventional marker of politeness added to requests. But it cannot be simply equated with items such as bitte in German or dǒzo in Japanese. Unlike these words, please cannot be used in reply to thanks (e.g. by a hostess giving a visitor a drink). And moreover, please is a minimal marker of polite­ness, which in some situations can actually be less polite than its absence! For example, "Will you please sit down?" is more likely to be used in addressing a naughty child than in address­ing an important visitor to one's office. "Mind your head, please" is inappropriate because "Mind your head" is a warning, not a request: it is the kind of remark which is meant to benefit the hearer, rather than the speaker. These examples show how difficult it is to explain the meanings of some words without giving details of [he context in which it would be appropriate or inappropriate to use them.

Many linguists and language teachers would argue that the most serious cross-cultural mis­understandings occur at the level of speaker-meaning (i.e. pragmatics). If foreign learners make grammatical errors, people may think they do not speak English very well, and make allowances for them. But if learners make pragmatic errors, they risk (as in the case of "Will you please sit down?") appearing impo­lite, unfriendly, or even aggressive. Converse­ly, some learners (e.g. some speakers of oriental languages) may make the mistake of appearing over-polite, which in turn can cause embarrass­ment, or can even give an impression of sar­casm. The study of pragmatics may thus be seen as central to the foreign student's need to communicate, and it is perhaps surprising that up to now no serious attempt has been made to incorporate pragmatic information into a dic­tionary for foreign learners of English.

Part of (he explanation lies in the fact that pragmatics is a comparatively new field of study. But more relevant is the fact that we cannot formulate rules of pragmatic usage in the way that rules are formulated in grammar. The best we can offer is a set of guidelines, because so many factors influence the way we speak and how polite or indirect we are. The sorts of questions we must ask ourselves are: In spite of the difficulties of generalizing, we attempt in this dictionary to capture "guide­lines" of pragmatic usage by three means:

1 . By Usage Notes forming part of the alphabetic entries for words (see, for example, the Usage Notes under actually, afraid, all right, (I) mean, please, surely).

• USAGE .. . In conversation actually can be used to soften what you are saying, especially if you are correcting someone, disagreeing, or complaining: "Happy Birthday, Tom." "Well. Actually my birthday was yesterday. " But it can be used with the opposite effect, if you speak With sarcasm: I didn't ask your opinion, actually .

2 . By Language Notes covering more general pragmatic topics, which cannot be limited to the treatment of individual words, and which affect the meaning, in context, of many different words or phrases. (See, for example, the Language Notes for Apologies (p 38), Criticism and Praise (p244). Invitations and Offers(p556), and Thanks (pl097).)

3 . By comments and examples within the entries for individual words, showing how they are used in context. This example at quite shows how it can be used to show annoyance:

(shows annoyance) If you've quite finished interrupting, perhaps I can continue.

And this example at respect shows how it is used in a fixed phrase to express polite disagreement: (used formally to introduce an expression of disagree­ment) With (t he greatest) respect/Wit h due respect, I think you 're wrong.

What we can reasonably attempt to show in these Notes is the way in which pragmatic questions are resolved in some typical situa­tions, for a (hypothetical) "average" speaker of British or American English. The Notes are designed to help overcome problems of inappropriateness, whether these are caused by lin­guistic or by cultural differences.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is the beginning of Pragmatics connected with?

2. What conditions produced Pragmatics?

3. What are the chief contributions of the active type dictionaries to Pragmatics?

4. In what way is Pragmatics reflected in active type dictionaries?

5. What information do the learner’s dictionaries give to English language learners?

6. Which of two opposing lexicographical principles (the descriptive or prescriptive) is accepted by the learner’s dictionaries?

6. Didactic and pragmatic approaches to English Language Teaching Assumptions

Contrary to P.O. Strevens who distinguished sub-languages or varieties of English within the English language M. Berns, an American professor at Purdue University from Indiana develops the idea of the Concentric Circles of World Englishes. She speaks about three circles, namely:

1) Inner circle, including such countries as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and USA where English is considered a primary language.

2) Outer circle, including the former main colonies dominions and dependent territories such as Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Nigeria and some others (14 in number) where English is official , state or semi-official language, which has norm developing status and extended functional range.

3) Expanding circle includes many other countries of the world, which have no close ties with the so-called Inner circles like China, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Russia.

The full characteristics of the abovementioned circles and characteristics of World Englishes is seen from the following table.

The Concentric Circles of World Englishes (adapted from Kachru 1985)

OUTER CIRCLE Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania,

Zambia, Philippines.

INNER CIRCLE Characteristics of

Australia English

Canada primary language

New Zeland norm-providing

United Kingdom

USA

EXPANDING CIRCLE

China

Egypt

Indonesia an international language

Israel performance variety norm-

Japan dependent

Korea

Nepal

Saudi Arabia

Taiwan

Zimbabwe

Former countries of the USSR

One of two/ more codes – official, state, associate, language status – norm-developing, extended functional range

On the basis of this conception the author tries to formulate the corresponding attitude to a doctrine of English language teaching. Her assumptions are based on the following ideas in didactic and pragmatic approaches.

Didactic approach means that:

1. Everyone learns English in order to interact with native speakers;

2. English is inextricably linked to the culture of the UK or the USA;

3. Using English means dealing with the realities of Great Britain or the United States,

that is, with British or American ways of doing, thinking, and being.

Pragmatic approach implies that:

1) Not everyone learning English will interact with native speakers. In fact, they are more likely to interact with speakers from other expanding circle countries as well as from outer circle countries.

2) English is not associated with inner circle countries alone, but can be used to express social and cultural meanings not a part of the lives of British or Americans.

3) Using English can mean dealing with local realities, local ways of doing, being, and thinking as well.

Aids to the study of the text:

1. What is the task of Pragmatics?

2. Discuss the identity of Pragmatics.

3. What areas of overlap of Pragmatics and other sciences can be pointed out?

4. Is it reasonable to contrast it with Semantics?

5. What are the relations of Pragmatics with other sciences?

6. Is Pragmatics of great practical value for Lexicography?

7. What do we usually study in speech acts analysis?

8. What types of illocutionary acts does influential approach set up?

9. What do we mean by felicity conditions?

10. Describe the essence of indirect speech acts.

11. Dwell on the connection of Pragmatics and dictionary.

12. What approach to the English language is suggested by Berns?

13. Illustrate the essence of pragmatic approach to the English language.

Chapter 7 . Language, Culture and Communication

1. Sociocultural Aspects of Foreign Language Teaching

S. Ter-Minasova

The history of the former Soviet Union has provided Foreign Language Teaching with an extremely interesting experience. Indeed, FLT in the USSR was an experiment - enormous in scale and with amazing consequences -in how to teach a foreign language if learners (and teachers, of course) are completely cut off from the world where this foreign language is used naturally. "Completely" in this context means just that, with no leakage in the form of radio, television, native speakers, books, newspapers, language teaching materials, no hint of what is called the culture of the nation in the broad, anthropological sense of the word, where "culture" does not mean "arts" but means "the way people live" (what and how they eat, how they work, how they rest, what kind of homes they have, etc.). The experiment was very "pure": for most people the fear of being accused of "communication with foreigners" (an official term), i.e. potential enemies (an official term) was too great to allow them to use the scanty opportunities which might occasionally arise. It was safer to sit quietly behind the Iron Curtain and learn the language of Shakespeare and Dickens through their works, which were ideologically proper and approved of by the authorities (so-called "contemporary English" was represented by John Galsworthy's "The Forsyte Saga"). For a long period of time in Russia teaching foreign languages had only one purpose: reading classical authors.

Then, about 20 years ago, with science and technology progress, there came the idea that a foreign language could be an indispensable means of professional communication, as a tool of the trade. So legions of specialists of all kinds put aside Dickens and Galsworthy and read nothing but special, or LSP (Language for Special Purposes) text.

After this era of the complete triumph of LSP there came the present-day extreme of "communicative approach" and a foreign language is seen first and foremost as a means of everyday communication. Consequently, FL courses took the form of a set of everyday, mundane topics: "registering in a hotel", "hiring a car", "going to a restaurant" ("bank", "post-office", etc.)

Thus, Foreign Language Teaching, like any other sphere of human activities, developed through going from one "fashion" extreme to another.

In the rush of all these "fashions" the function of language as a tool of culture has been ignored.

However, this aspect of FLT is extremely important for many reasons.

1 .Language reflects the world of its users. The vision of the world of a nation is conveyed by its language, the latter reflecting not only geography, climate, mode of living, but also the moral code, relations between people, the system of values, determined by socio-historical factors. Thus, culture in the broad, anthropological sense of the word is reflected by language.

2. Language accumulates and stores the culture of a nation, and passes it on from generation to generation, or, for that matter, from nation to nation.

3. Language shapes its user, imposing on him/her the vision of the world and the culture of human relations reflected and stored in it.

4. The use of language largely depends on the background knowledge of the user, that is why cultural studies are indispensable in foreign language learning and teaching. Without the cultural background knowledge of the world where it is naturally used the language turns into a dead language which was so convincingly proved by the history of the Soviet Union.

As well known, language is the main, the most explicit, the most obvious official and socially acknowledged means of communication. The life and development of any human society is based on communication through language (which does not exclude, of course, other ways of communication).

Developing communicative skills (the latest 'fashion" in The world of FT teachers and learners) is a difficult problem everywhere but it is particularly complicated in this country where for so many years Foreign Language Teaching was generally oriented on recognition while production was neglected.

And although both recognition and production skills cannot be developed without the background knowledge of the world of the language under study, it is speech production, the actual use of language which makes the importance and inevitability of the sociocultural component so evident. Indeed, it is a great misunderstanding to believe that in order to use language, to produce speech, both written and oral, it is enough to know words as lists of meanings and rules of bringing them together in speech (that is, grammar and syntax). The problem is that the idea of meaning as a reference to reality invariably leads one out of the world of language into the world of reality. Consequently, bringing words together means bringing objects of reality together. The real worlds may coincide in some physical features but the visions of the world by different peoples representing different speech communities do not coincide.

Now, before going any further, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between man, language and the world.

Let us begin with the man - language relationship. It is obvious that these two concepts are intertwined: man and the language he uses. There is no way to study man except through his language. Man is a point where all disciplines called humanities meet (humanities study all the problems connected with the human being). But the principal way for a man to express himself and to exchange the results of the studies is through language. So man cannot be studied without language and language should not be studied without man. Consequently, when you study language you must always take into consideration the speech community in question, the real people who use it and all the infinite speech acts which reflect the social structures, reflect the world. So man and language are very closely bound.

The language - world relationship is the next point. Language reflects the world surrounding the language-user - this is common knowledge. The concept of a language picture of the world is well-known too. Indeed, language does reflect what is seen, heard, felt - experienced - by the people who use the language. That is why through dead languages it is possible to reconstruct the picture of dead worlds. It is very interesting to conduct an archaeological dig(excavation) through language. That is what anthropological linguistics is trying to do. Naturally the language picture of the world is different for every nation ( the Russian picture of the world is different from the Spanish, English, American or any other where the worlds them - selves are different!) Of course, they overlap because there are universal parts of these pictures that reflect the features of the real world common to different nations. But there are also aspects of there worlds which are different: climate, geography, history, mode of life, etc. Those things which do not exist in the picture have no words for them. For instance, in Russian there are lots of words which have become borrowings from Russian into other languages (it is natural: no thing - no word for it): troika, samovar, balalaika. The things are uniquely Russian and so are the words. The same can be said about sovietisms: bolsheviks, kolkhoz, Soviets. These products of Russian history came into existence in the Russian world, so the words denoting them were borrowed by other language. All this is quite obvious. Now a more subtle point must be specified. We keep talking about words of a language reflecting the world. However, actually, there are three levels: 1) the level of reality, of the real world which is objective and exists regardless of man, 2) the level of thinking, the level of our ideas about this world, 3) the level of speech – words.

Thus, when we speak of language, of words, very often we do not realize that a word reflects an object through a concept. A concept is an abstraction, the concept of a table is an abstract idea, a generalization. The definition of the word gives you this idea: " a table - a flat surface, usually supported by four legs, used for putting things on". (Cambridge International Dictionary of English). This is the concept of a table in our culture. In other cultures the same concept may be represented in a different way. In Turkmenistan, for instance, a table is a piece of cloth on the floor. People there do not sit at a table, they lie at it. They bring our kind of tables only for European visitors. Tables of our culture may have four legs, or three, or one, or no legs at all, it may be anything which is used as a table, which represents the concept of a table. And it is only after the concept that the word comes. Thus, the reflection of the world by language is not a simple mirror - like act. It creates a picture of the world and not a photograph. A photograph is neutral, objective and gives a mirror-like reflection of the world (if it is not an artistic photograph of course). Language creates a picture of the world. Pictures, however, may be painted by realists, impressionists, modernists, etc. And sometimes the picture is quite far from reality because it comes from concepts - both collective and individual - of the artist's mind, it reflects the artist's vision of the world determined by so many factors. These factors make the artist see the world in this particular way. The same with languages. It is not a simple, mechanical process of taking photographs. Every nation has its own vision of the world which is reflected by its language and depends on various factors.

The most crucial of them is what may be broadly called “culture”. This word is widely used in different ways, and it is important to make its meaning implicit in this context. "Culture" in the broad, anthropological sense of the word is defined as the way the people of a community see the world around them, their way of thinking, behaving, reacting to the world and to other people. Culture is manifested by intellectual, moral and physical attributes.

The world of reality, the real world, so many times referred to, is given to people by both their physical experience and the sociocultural experience. That is how the culture life of the society comes in. Sociocultural structures underlie linguistic structures. Language reflects sociocultural structures and relations, because it refers to objects through concepts.

That is why the cultural background of a language is so important and a language cannot be presented or studied, or taught, as the case may be just as a list of meanings of separate words and the rules of grammar. "...languages are not mere collections of labels or nomenclatures attached to preexisting bits and pieces of the human world, but that each speech community lives in a somewhat different world from that of others, and that these differences are both realized in parts of their cultures and revealed and maintained in parts of their languages" (J.B.Carroll, The Study of Language, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, Chapter 4). Language is part of culture (and culture is part of language) and it is impossible to use it as a means of communication (i.e. for the now so popular communicative purposes) without solid cultural background knowledge.

The sociocultural component of language is far from being confined to kilts and balalaikas, that is to words denoting exclusively some national things that have no equivalents in other languages. In Russian this kind of lexis is about 6-7% of the words which are widely and actively used.

Let us investigate the situation with words which do have equivalents in other languages and refer to the same - universal - objects of reality. They are often seen differently by different speech communities.

Indeed, we look at the same things but, as we do it through the prism of the language we happen to have been born into, they are represented by every language in a way peculiar to this particular language. For instance, where Russians see two colours (голубой и синий) English-speaking people see one: blue. Russians look at a certain object of reality and see it as one thing called "рука" while English-speaking people looking at the same object perceive it as two quite different things: arm and hand. The same with "нога", on the one hand, and leg and foot on the other. The Russian word "пальцы" covers such different (from the English point of view) objects as fingers, thumbs and toes. There are very many examples of this kind, when you compare two or more languages, and many problems of translation arc caused by this. Language imposes the vision of the world on the user. Words are like pieces of a mosaic. When you learn a language you take a piece from your mosaic and try to adjust it to a different mosaic. But your piece may be bigger or smaller or it may have a different shape. If language were a photograph, it would be possible to divide it into squares and the squares would be interchangeable. The life of foreign language teachers, interpreters, translators would be much easier. But we have pictures, not photographs, as every, nation's vision of the world is determined by so many factors peculiar to this particular nation: its history, geography, culture, mode of life, mentality, etc. Even every family has its own language, its own phrases which are understood only by the members of the family. Two lovers may have their own language idiolect reflecting their own world. And to understand them one needs comments, explanations, etc.

A concept is not a simple, direct reflection of the object and the line connecting them is not straight, it is rather a zigzag. In the same way a word is not a simple reflection of a concept: between these two there is another zigzag. That means that there is quite a distance, (that of two zigzags) between the word and the object.

A word, originally coined to denote a concrete object, being used by members of the speech community lives its own life and develops together with it acquiring all kinds of stylistic (which also means sociocultural) connotations, as well as purely national, sociocultural ones that are immediately connected with customs, beliefs, the way of life.

The following example illustrates the situation when the knowledge of meanings of words does not help to understand the language.

An emigrant from Poland to the USA wanted to open a bank account. In the bank he was asked: "Do you want a checking account or a savings account?". He knew all the words but the social concepts were unknown to him. He did not know the social structures underlying the words though he knew their meanings very well. It is evident that the knowledge of "mean­ings" of words, i.e. the knowledge of mother-tongue "equivalents" of for­eign words is definitely not enough either for speech production or some­times even for speech recognition.

Let us now discuss such common everyday words like parts of the day which have "equivalents" in every language but we mean to compare English and Russian: утро - morning, день - day, вечер - evening, night. At the level of concepts the difference is quite striking. The English "morning" is much longer than the Russian "утро": it takes 12 hours and lasts from midnight till noon covering the whole of the Russian ночь (from midnight to 4 a.m.), утро (from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m.) and part of the Russian день (from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.).

The difference between the Russian word день and the English day is even more striking. First of all, there are two English words - day and afternoon covering the piece of the Russian mosaic language picture of the world occupied by the word "day". Then, they vary in usage: Good day! - may be used as a dismissing phrase showing displeasure, irritation, etc. Strangely for Russian students of English the translation of a most common Russian greeting Добрый день! is rather good afternoon than good day. The following English contexts with the word ''day " have no correspondence with the word день: I'll go there one day – когда-нибудь, he began his days in a small town - жизнь, in my day - время, it made my day - осчастливить.

Thus, objects live their lives at the level of reality, concepts - at the level of thinking, and words - at the level of speech. At this level the word immediately develops its range of collocability. In other words, it begins to like some words, to collocate with them and to dislike some others. This statement is of great importance because it explains why words must be taught and learnt in their most natural, habitual contexts, in set word-combinations. This principle is essential because the problem is hidden from native speakers and cannot be seen at the level of one language: it becomes evident at the bilingual level. The English word "book" and the Russian word "книга" refer through more or less the same concept to the same object but their speech lives are different.

For instance, a very common English word-combination, actually a compound word: a “cheque-book” can not be translated into Russian as “чековая книжка ” though all dictionaries will give you “книга” as the translation of the “book. A similar situation is characteristic of the following conventional English word-combinations with the word book. All of them are given by dictionaries of English as illustrations of the use of the word, but are not translated into Russian with the word "книга" and have other - quite different - equivalents: a reference book - справочник, a ration book -карточки, to do the books – вести счет, to be in smb's good/bad books –быть на хорошем/плохом счету. At the same time most common phrases with the Russian word "книга" are untranslatable because either the concept does not exist in the English-speaking world (книга жалоб) - (book of complaints),- книга почета - (book of Honour)) or the idea itself is alien to the English mentality ("любите книгу – источник знаний" - love the book - a source of knowledge), "книга – лучший подарок" - (a book is the best present). It is untranslatable because grammatical categories are different (articles - a book? the book?) and social backgrounds are different too. "Книга – лучший подарок", "любите книгу" - all this was meant to teach people to believe that spiritual values are superior to material ones.

The pairs of words: “head” - "голова" and “hair” - "волосы" refer to the same objects through the same concepts. The difference between the two languages becomes obvious at the level of word combinations: “to wash one's hair” is translated into Russian as “мыть голову (to wash head). The word-combination "green eyes" is not equivalent to зеленые глаза though they both seem to refer to the same object. However, зеленые глаза sound beautiful, romantic, attractive while green eyes have negative connotations and imply envy, ill feelings, etc., which comes from Shakespeare who called jealousy - "a green-eyed monster".

Another example - political terms. They are just empty shells which are filled with different content by different parties and different regimes.

Thus, those words which seem to be equivalent in different languages can hardly be regarded as such, if the full volume of their semantics including the sociocultural component is taken into consideration. This statement is of utmost importance for solving problems of translation.

The skill of translating does not consist in finding word equivalents because these, as has been shown above, are quite rare.

In both target and source languages functional equivalents of a thing meant must be found and taught. These functional equivalents may be linguistically expressed by various language units: monolexemic words, polylexemic word-combinations (collocations, sequences) and even sentences.

Vocabulary – запас слов (the store of words);

push – от себя (from yourself);

pull –к себе (to yourself);

wet paint – осторожно окрашено (careful - painted);

happy birthday – поздравляю с днем рождения (I congratulate you on your birthday);

moth – ночная бабочка (night butterfly);

tin – консервная банка (a jar for preserves);

to imprison – заключать в тюрьму (to put into gaol);

back of the head – затылок;

conforming to the laws of nature – закономерный.

The difference between words of different languages which seem to denote the same objects and/or concept is most obvious and vivid at the level of word combinations. The best illustrations of this may be found in bilingual dictionaries. Very often a Russian (or English) head word is translated by an English (or Russian) "equivalent" which is hardly ever used in the illustrations of the use of the word, that is, in word combinations.

For example, записка - note; деловая записка - memorandum; докладная записка - report; любовная записка - love letter;

These statements, no matter how obvious they may seem, are very important for foreign language teaching practice. When foreign learners combine words - orally and in writing- to produce speech (to communicate) they usually follow their mother tongue's collocational patterns which often results in all sorts of errors. That is why foreign language learners must keep in mind that they should learn words not through translations of their meanings (that is, references to bits of reality and concepts) but in their most natural, habitual, typical of the target language contexts.

Thus, the language reflects the world which is its "passive" function but it shapes the user of the language which may be regarded as its "active" function. Many language facts pass unknown, unnoticed, we take them for granted without realizing that they form us, our relations with other people, our attitude to life, etc.

A very important sphere of the influence of language on its user comes from the informative-instructive layer of vocabulary, from all those signs of different kinds which surround people in a so-called civilized society, regulating every step, giving instructions, warnings, requests - and at the same time creating a certain world-view of the user and shaping him/her into a representative of this society.

The same ideas, the same content may be expressed differently by the two languages and these different ways of linguistic expression both reflect the difference in social thinking and the difference in upbringing of the members of the respective speech community.

For example, wet paint and осторожно - окрашено (be careful - it is painted) are functional equivalents but the English variant merely states the fact while the Russian language shows more concern appealing to the public: осторожно - be careful, mind...

Beware of the dog is the English version of Осторожно – злая собака (Be careful - a fierce dog, mind a fierce dog) but, again, the difference lies in the attitude to the reader of the notice. The English visitor is warned about the presence of a dog. The Russian visitor is frightened by a fierce dog. This is a cliché and it is used even if the dog is not fierce, and sometimes even when there is no dog at all but bad people must be frightened away.

There exist many various ways in which language shapes its users socioculturally at different levels of language study. Let us begin with most obvious cases. Thus, in the sphere of grammar the difference in the forms of pronouns inevitably influences the national characters of speakers of English and Russian differently. Indeed the well-known fact that in Russian, as well as in many other European language there are two pronouns: one for the 2-nd person singular - "ty", and one for the 2-nd person both singular and plural - "vy" while in English the same form "you" is used for both, cannot help influencing relations between language-users. Russians can express a wide variety of emotions by using "ty" or "vy" as well as subtle nuances in relations between people. The use of "ty" may be an insult or a compliment, "vy" may express deep respect and admiration or derision and hatred. "You" as the only form of address in English is devoid of all these connotations, it reflects the same kind of relations among users of the language irrespective of their age, social position, personal feelings, etc. Thus, Russians, having "ty" and "vy" have a chance to be more emotional, while the English, having only "you", have to be more formal, indifferent and polite. The situation is even more delicate and complicated with those languages which, like Russian, have the same pair of personal pronouns but their connotations, the peculiarities of their use in speech arc 'quite different. For example in a story which was used to teach Swedish a girl got to a police court because she had some problems with her passport. A policeman there, who interrogated her, called her du (ty) which in Swedish was a good sign because it showed that the policeman was not keeping his distance, he was talking on equal basis. The Russian students were surprised because in this sort of situation in Russia the use of ty would have caused an opposite reaction. If a militiaman calls one "ty" it is a bad sign showing humiliation and even an insult.

Here is another well-known example from the field of morphology: the Russian language abounds in diminutive and affectionate suffixes to such an extent that English-speaking people simply cannot imagine it. This possibility of expressing an almost infinite variety of shades of love, affection, sympathy cannot but result in shaping the personality of a Russian speaker. Thus, the popular stereotyped image of a Russian as a big burly and coarse "bear" is challenged by the variety of affectionate suffixes in "the Russian bear's" mother-tongue (я тут попал в госпиталек). In the sphere of syntax the difference between the two languages is very clear as English has a very rigid word order while Russian allows of many liberties and variations. I would not go so far as to draw a conclusion that because of that users of English are orderly and disciplined while Russians are undisciplined but versatile though, probably, this fact adds to the respective national characters. However, as this problem requires special investigation which, I have not undertaken, I would like to draw attention to another significant language fact. In collocations even the rigid word order may influence the user's attitude to people.

For instance, "ladies and gentlemen" is a set phrase, and the word order emphasizes respect to women. However, it is only correct at a certain social level - at the level of "ladies" and "gentlemen". One step down the stair of social relations, and the same "thing-meant" is linguistically expressed in the reverse order: "men and women". In other words, at the social level where males are men, they come first, at the social level where males are gentlemen they come last.

In Russian it is exactly the same: Дамы и господа corresponds socioculturally and stylistically to Ladies and gentlemen , while мужчины и женщины is equivalent to men and women . The phrase: мальчики и девочки (boys and girls) is realized as a cliché if you try to reverse the order: девочки и мальчики (girls and boys) does not "sound smooth" at all.

The English phrase "my wife and I " is used in this particular order. In Russian both variants can be used: Моя жена и я (my wife and I), я моя жена (I and my wife) but the most common phrase is мы с женой (word-for-word translation: we with).

The most vivid and obvious examples illustrating the active function of language as a tool of culture naturally come from lexis - words, word-combinations, phrases, set expressions. The role of the latter which are, by definition, closely bound, regularly reproduced in speech is of special importance as they represent the common core of the language. Indeed, they are so often used that they become pan and parcel of human mind, consciousness, mentality which are. to a great extent, formed by them, though it is hardly ever realized.

The specific - national - vision of the world is reflected by them, on the one hand, and imposed by them on the language-user, on the other.

For instance, let us discuss the English set phrase “poor but honest” , "But" implies that the poor are expected to be dishonest. The corresponding Russian expression is бедный, но гордый (poor but proud). It, on the contrary, presupposes that the poor cannot be proud, they occupy the lowest place in the social hierarchy and therefore there is nothing to be proud of.

The Russian language, reflecting the Russian national character, abounds in words and word-combinations with the words denoting the country where you were born and grew up or with which you are historically connected: родина , отечество , отчизна . All of them as well as collocations (word-combinations) with them are quite lofty in style and add a certain solemnity to speech. The Russian language has a tendency to overstatement, while English has quite a reputation for its orientation on understatement. Consequently, it is no wonder that the English equivalent of the old Russian motto: за Бога, царя и отечество Is for God, my country and the tsar, where отечество is translated as country though the word fatherland/motherland does exist in English. The translation of Russian человек без родины is a man without a country. Russians feel more personal about their country and they call it наша страна (our country). Russian students of English are invariably surprised when they discover that English-speaking people generally use this country instead of our country. In Russian эта страна, в этой стране (this country) implies either that you are a foreigner or that you are very displeased with your country and show it openly.

In many ways the English language is more polite, more concerned about the feelings of the individual member of society than the Russian language. It is historically and socially determined, because the ideology of the Soviet Union was based on a concern for the collective, on the one hand, and an open neglect of the individual, on the other.

The English language is busy finding such new forms of linguistic expression which do not hurt the individual's feelings about race, age, sex, health, social status, etc.

Here are some examples of changes within the last 20 years in British and American English illustrating this point.

Old age pensioners > senior citizens;

Red Indian > Native American;

Negro > coloured > Black > African American / Afro American;

Invalid > handicapped > disabled > physically challenged.

Some of the changes are caused by political and or ideological reasons, by the wish to embellish the unpleasant facts of social life with euphemisms. For instance, poor people -> the disadvantaged; unemployed > unwaged: slums > substandard housing; bombing > air support; collateral damage > civilians killed accidentally by military action ;killing the enemy > servicing the target.

The development of the women's liberation movement is causing noticeable changes at different levels of language studies.

Indeed, words with "sexist" morphemes are ousted by neutral ones: chairman > chairperson; cameraman > camera operator; foreman > supervisor.

This last aspect - the commercial concern - is very important in a commercially oriented society. The cases described above illustrate the point: the attention to the feelings of passengers is based on the wish to attract. In the world of shopping the same trend is evident: that of taking every step (including linguistic steps) to attend to customers' needs, to spare their feelings, to attract the customer by a very careful choice of words.

For example, shop assistants never fail to mention the positive qualities of the goods they sell: real, genuine, natural, leather, uppers,(about shoes). At the same time, they skillfully avoid unpleasant opposites: if uppers are real genuine, natural then soles must be artificial, synthetic, not natural. But these words have negative connotations for the customer. Therefore none of these words is ever used in this kind of context. Instead, the pleasant-sounding word man-made is the habitual choice.

The Russian language in the USSR never cared about customer's feelings. In a situation of shortages of food and consumer goods there was no need for advertisements or language tricks. So the opposite of натуральный (natural) is just искусственный (artificial) or even синтетический (synthetic). Even now, the sudden avalanche of western goods of all kinds and the flood of western or western-type advertisements with their clumsy un-Russian translations have not changed the linguistic situation in the direction under discussion.

Russian food products are still stamped "годен до (дата) " which means eatable till, and then comes the date. It makes the product look uneatable the next day after the given date. The carefully chosen English Best before (date) does not prevent the customer from or buying – or eating! – the product as it implies that it is still good after the date – just not the very best.

Thus, to sum up, the difference between Russian and English comes from the difference in ideologies. Soviet Russia was oriented on the neglect of the individual and the support and development of the collective, therefore the Russian language shows no concern for the individual. The English language, on the contrary, concentrates its concern on the individual - sometimes naturally, sometimes commercially. However, the result is the same regardless of the cause - whether it comes from the heart or from the mind: under the influence of their language English-speaking people are more polite - at least publicly, socially - with one another, show good will and concern openly, verbally, with decent manners and a smile. It may have very little to do with their actual feelings but that is quite a different subject.

It is obvious that the difference between the sociocultural background of both societies (their vision of the world, mentality, ideology, national character) is quite significant. In some respect the American sociocultural ways reflected and formed by American English are closer to the Russian than to the British ones. This, by the way, when thoroughly investigated, may be used as objective proof of the popular idea (or, myth?) (at least, with Russians) that Americans and Russians have a lot in common.

Indeed, American ideology looks suspiciously similar to (surprise, surprise...) Soviet Russian ideology. The direct, loud, overstated propaganda of the advantages of the system, regime and ideology of the respective countries - the USA and USSR- the open, emphasized patriotism, the sacred cults of state emblems, the flag (here Americans surpass Soviet Russians), slogans -all these features are demonstrated by language facts. Be­ing no politician or politologist one can see all this reflected by both languages. At the same time all these trends are very un-British, so in this respect the sociocultural differences between British and American English are greater than between American English and Russian.

Here are some examples illustrating the above statements. The persistent American set expression "Proud to be American" is close to the Soviet Russian; Советское – значит лучшее (Soviet means excellent).

The good old term, so famous or sometimes notorious all over the world: made in USA seems to sound too simple, ordinary, understated, so now more and more American goods have the somewhat overstated label: crafted with pride in USA. I found one on a pair of socks, and the contrast between the object and the wording reminded me very vividly the good old days in the Soviet Russia. It is next to impossible, however, to imagine a label like this in British English. This kind of blowing their own trumpets would be quite pro-Soviet Russian but quite un-British.

Slogans, in which the Soviet Russian used to abound, are popular in American English as a tool of mass culture: security is everybody's business, quality is everybody's job, etc.

Such a conventional, common American greeting as Have a nice day! aroused ironic remarks from British colleagues. The remarks concerned the too categorical character of "the American imperative", as the British put it. I must admit that it sounds pleasant to the Russian ear which is accustomed to public language imperatives but for the British ear it must be toned down

However, in spite of all these differences, it seems possible in this paper to discuss sociocultural aspects of ELT using a kind of universal English as the material for discussion without specifying the variety.

This aspect of the general problem of language as a tool of culture is also very important in the sphere of foreign language teaching because together with a foreign language or, rather, through a foreign language one penetrates into the world and culture of peoples using the language. So the learner of a foreign language, shaped already by the mother tongue, is being reshaped in the process of learning.

In this respect teachers of foreign languages who learn and teach these languages for many years are quite a vivid proof of this theoretical statement. Having worked in this field for more than 30 years I witness - in the same way as anybody working in this field - the difference between English, German and French departments of Russian educational institutions reflect very obviously the sociocultural influence of the languages they are associated with.

In the same way emigrants, even if they speak the language of their new country perfectly, are easily recognized by their old compatriots because they were once formed socioculturally by their mother tongue. Again I know this from my own experience of recognizing Russian emigrants all over the western world by their sociocultural mentality, reactions to situations, attitude to things and people and many similar features formed largely by the Russian language.

Talking about the dependence of the use of language on the knowledge of the world of its users it is important to dwell upon one more important aspect of the general problem of interaction of language and culture.

As has been mentioned above, the idea of the world picture reflected by language has been discussed by linguists and teachers for quite a number of years. And it always meant the primary world picture that is reflected by the language of native speakers. However, it is possible to introduce the concept of the secondary picture of the world that foreign speakers of a language create in the process of foreign language learning which, in its turn, determines their speech-production and communication. The second­ary picture of the world is often based on the people who use it as their mother-tongue. This image is created by various social and cultural factors: mass media, songs, stories by travelers, jokes, etc.

2. Cultural Aspects in Foreign Language Teaching

Frederika Klippel

The question of culture learning within or in connection with foreign language is being widely discussed at the present time. I would like to look at this question in the context of FLT at schools. As a teacher trainer involved in preparing teachers of English for their work in language classrooms, at all types of schools at all levels, I would like to tie theory to practice. And for me, theoretical considerations of the place of cultural studies within foreign language learning have to apply to teaching-learning situations which involve pupils, of all ages, being taught general English language courses by non-native teachers of English. It is vital to keep this in mind if we want our theories to have an impact, to change and to improve English language learning.

One might look at the cultural side of foreign language teaching from two perspectives. The first is the outward view. In this we try and place English language teaching in our school system within a global framework of English language teaching worldwide. On the one hand, this perspective needs to take into account the role of English as the international language. Critical voices refer to 'linguistic imperialism' and 'linguicism'. On the other hand, English language teaching as foreign language teaching is part of teaching about the world, of global education, and should also reflect global issues. More and more foreign language educators urge the language teaching profession to take up the challenges of peace education, of education for human rights, of education for the environment and of education for language rights, most recently in a report prepared for UNESCO.

The second perspective is the inward view. It focuses on the relationship between language learning and culture learning. Foreign 'language learning implies and embraces culture learning. As foreign language educators and teacher trainers, we have to be aware of this relationship and suggest ways in which it may be reflected in English language teaching curricula and methods.

It seems to be generally accepted that language learning" and culture learning are linked. Learning a language therefore implies learning something about culture as well. One might even say that learning about another culture in depth is only possible by learning the language as well.

Cultural learning in the foreign language classroom touches three spheres: empathy and understanding, knowledge and communicative skill. A foreign language course which incorporates all three aspects trains its learners for intellectual competence and is likely to be an enriching experience.

Understanding the other

A great deal of thought has been given to analyzing the other, or the foreigner, in a range of academic disciplines: sociology, ethnology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychology, to name but a few. It is difficult to see in which way these theories may be applicable to foreign language learning in schools. School learning differs in significant ways from personal encounters with other cultures and with foreigners which form the foundation of philosophical and other studies. Further and more essentially, foreign language learning in schools is for children and adolescents, whose perceptions and reactions are not necessarily the same as those of adults. This important caveat should be kept in mind when we consider what it means to strive for an understanding of the other in our teaching.

The way in which we come into contact with the 'other' may play an important role. So far, I have tacitly assumed that meeting the 'other', the foreigner, happens as a personal encounter between individual people. But meeting the foreigner in the English Language classroom occurs mostly — and for a majority of pupils exclusively — through the medium of texts and pictures and the work of the teacher with these materials. Learning theory has taught us that experimental learning is superior to book learning in terms of retention and involvement, but we know little of the effects of these types of learning in terms of retention and involvement, the development of perception and understanding in children. It is important for teachers to know how children see cultural differences when they occur in factual or in fictional texts, in films or in role plays, or in real-life situations and personal encounters. It is even more important for teachers to know how they can help children in their learning and understanding. Especially with younger pupils, the teacher's personality and attitude towards the 'other' will certainly colour her pupils' perceptions and reactions.

Aiming for an understanding of the 'other' in foreign language teaching points to the educational dimension of foreign language learning. Helping learners achieve intercultural sensitivity, establishing a willingness to understand, creating an open-minded attitude towards their own and the target cultures, taking their feelings and perceptions into account: in all these ways foreign language teaching can contribute to the personal growth of the learners and pave the way for lifelong intercultural learning. Yet in the classroom teaching attitudes and feelings are always connected with some topic or situation. Cultural awareness needs information and discussion to grow. This brings me to the second aspect, that of knowledge.

Cultural kernels

The problem of material selection is a very serious one for English Language Teaching. For a start there are quite a number of different Englishes spoken in our present world, then there are many different English-speaking cultures to choose from. What should school children be taught about this array of English-based or English— using cultures? Is it necessary for them to be familiar with, e.g. the geography of Britain, American pop culture or the history of Australia? Or should we restrict our teaching to the everyday life in one of these countries? We may find answers to these questions when we put the acquisition of knowledge about the target cultures into the general context of teaching for intercultural competence by using English.

A foreign language learner will be able to arrive at a more balanced view of the target culture if she or he knows something about it. However, receiving information in a foreign language class is no guarantee for developing cultural awareness, empathy and a willingness to understand. There seems to be no straightforward causal relationship between knowledge and attitude. Pupils with low scores in ethnocentricity are typically those who know a lot about the target country, but who are also interested in subjects like geography and history. The reverse is also true: markedly ethnocentric ideas come from pupils with little interest in and little knowledge about the target culture.

There is another point to consider in connection with factual knowledge when aiming for intercultural understanding. It is, as a rule, greatly helped along by going back to basic human experiences. This might be a point where attitude and knowledge — both about one's own and the target culture — can profitably intersect. Taking basic human experiences, cultural kernels, as the starting point, we may be able to develop thematic units for intercultural learning within foreign language teaching. In English language classrooms cultural kernel topics would have a dual purpose: on the one hand, they could provide information on the target cultures; on the other hand, they could motivate the learners to look at their own culture too. Decisions as to what target cultures to include, whether to contrast Germany and Britain, for instance, or whether to adopt an international stance, are dependent on the age group, the location and, perhaps, the type of school.

The main purpose of any general foreign language course is to enable the learners to communicate in this new language. And here lies a second very important function of knowledge about the target cultures: it is also strategic knowledge. It helps learners to grasp something about the other culture and to become aware of their own cultural values and practices; it also helps them to survive better, i.e. with fewer misunderstandings and breakdowns, in cross-cultural communication.

Cross-cultural communication

The study of intercultural communication deals with the effects which cultural diversity has on interpersonal contact. Knowledge about other cultures and cultural awareness are often seen as subservient to the general aim of intercultural communication. Applied linguists are working on a general theory of intercultural communication. Consequently, many focus on that type of intercultural communication which is not culture-specific, but occurs in all kinds of cross-cultural interaction. It is evident that for this type of communicative skill, knowledge about a certain target culture is not essential. What is important is an insight into the culture-dependent nature of communicative styles and behaviors. A number of strategic skills need also be acquired if the intercultural communicator wants to identify and correct misunderstandings, or if she has only a very basic foreign language repertoire to draw on.

In my view there are a number of drawbacks to a general English language course at schools which concentrate on communicative training based on cultural awareness. Let me pick out two. The first problem is that of content. Twenty years of communicative language teaching have shown that it is not enough just to talk, one must talk about something. Children are naturally curious about their peers in other countries. They want to learn something about the target countries.

The second problem concerns the learners' language performance. If we try and make communicating in the foreign language a conscious process of choosing words and phrases not only on the basis of their grammatical and lexical accuracy and communicative appropriateness, but also on the basis of their cultural connotations, we raise the barrier for speaking. The timid and the sensitive especially will be even more afraid to say something for fear of being wrong, if they have to monitor not only grammar and vocabulary but also, cultural adequacy. Any foreign language teaching before the individual personality becomes more stable, must weigh the gains in cultural awareness against the losses of spontaneity and willingness to speak. A lot will depend on the actual realization of intercultural aims at the different levels.

Teachers of English

Teachers are the mediators of the foreign cultures, they are also the best models their pupils have of successful and confident intercultural communicators. The teacher's functions do not lie solely in the dispersion of linguistic knowledge and the training of skills: teachers are also vital for creating motivation for their subject. The teacher's personal involvement with other cultures can greatly stimulate the learners' interest. The younger the learners, the more important the teacher.

Teaching English for intercultural competence in the areas of attitude, knowledge and skill outlined in this paper requires teachers who can bring the foreign culture into the classroom. That does not mean that a teacher needs to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all English language cultures plus his own; neither does it mean that teachers of English have to be bilingual. But it does imply that an English teacher remains curious and willing to learn about English speaking cultures, that he or she has embarked on this lifelong road of discovery and is willing to let the learners share some of this experience. If teaching the English language for intercultural competence is meaningful for the teacher on a professional as well as on a personal level, then it may become meaningful for some of her pupils as well. It is the task of foreign language teacher training, mainly at the universities, to establish courses of study where the students are prepared for this kind of English language teaching. Intercultural aspects and their didactic application deserve to be given room in teacher training if we want the next generation to learn English in a wider intercultural context.

Answer the following questions:

1. What are the two perspectives of foreign language teaching through culture?

2. How does “meeting the other” occur in the English language classroom?

3. How does the problem of material selection tell on the learners’ progress in learning English?

4. What are the main drawbacks of an English language course?

5. What is the role of a foreign language today?

3. Teaching English at university level

S. Ter-Minasova

When I am asked by my British colleagues: "Is it true that teaching English in Russia has become a most important educational problem?" I answer: "No, it is not". It is not an educational problem any longer. It is a most important social problem.

English-speaking people do not fully realize the significance of teaching English to foreigners for the simple reason that they are the lucky owners of the language which has become the most important means of international communication.

They get this generous gift from their English-speaking parents and acquire the knowledge of their mother tongue effortlessly while millions of foreigners spend years trying to master the language which they desperately need for their work. That is where the social aspect comes in.

English is learnt in Russia not for fun, not as a luxury or as prestigious evidence of culture, education and the social rank of parents, not even so much as a means to open a new world. It is all that, but that is not the main thing.

The knowledge of English has become an objective social need because for millions of people the English language is now a tool of their trade. Businessmen, tradesmen, engineers, scientists and scholars all over the world must know English because it is the international means of exchange of information and experience.

Russian people have always been keen on studying foreign languages in general and the English language in particular, especially after the Second World War. Nowadays, with iron curtains being lifted, doors to other countries opened, travelling by private invitation allowed, partnerships in trade, business and science encouraged, the ever-increasing thirst for the English language is turning into a demand to be taught it as soon as possible.

Technical problems and barriers of distance separating peoples do not exist any longer because scientists worked hard and did their bit. Politicians - at long last — are beginning to do their duty and break down the political barriers of bureaucracy, formalism, mutual mistrust and old feuds.

As these serious and difficult obstacles are being overcome, a new barrier appeared - the language barrier. Foreign language teachers have 'found themselves in the focus of public attention. It is their turn to do their duty.

Under such circumstances, teachers of English become, on the one hand, more important and, on the other, more vulnerable. This is because they cannot fully satisfy this ever-increasing cry for help.

Universities crown the system of education in all European countries therefore it is the university teachers of foreign languages who must find the solution to this urgent social and educational problem. We are now in the centre of public attention.

The situation with foreign language teaching in Russian Universities is in some ways different from that of many European countries. In Russia, students in all specialities have foreign languages on the curriculum as an obligatory subject for three to four years out of the average five years of the full course. Thus, our students not only want to learn foreign languages, but also have to learn them because students of any subject, any discipline must learn a foreign language as part of their syllabus.

At the beginning of the university course of foreign language teaching it is necessary to formulate its actual and realistic aims and tasks. Students must know from the start what variety of the foreign language, and to what extent, they are going to master it.

Many people get bitterly disappointed and lose interest in foreign language studies because they were not duly informed that it is not possible (if you are not a genius, but these are scarce) in the limited period of learning - 2- 4 hours per week for 2-3 years -to master a foreign language, to acquire all the various skills: reading special literature, newspapers, fiction, writing scientific papers, understanding the lyrics of songs, everyday speech, etc.

The tasks of foreign language teaching must be formulated from the beginning. In Moscow University these tasks are very humble: to teach students a foreign language for special purposes, i.e. as an actual means of communication among specialists of different countries, meaning both - oral and written kinds of communication. In other words, foreign language teaching is oriented towards mastering skills for professional communication, and teaching language for special purposes (LSP).

Another important aspect to be taken into consideration is distinguishing between passive, aimed at recognition (reading, comprehension) and active, aimed at production (speaking, writing) forms of language use. The distinction is essential because these two forms require different means and methods of teaching and - most importantly — different teaching materials.

Teaching methods must be learner-oriented. In other words, foreign language teaching is concerned, first and foremost, with satisfying the real needs of the students and not with revealing the knowledge of the teacher. The intensive and efficient teaching of grammar, vocabulary, translation, etc. must be scientifically grounded and concentrate only on those items which students actually need for the purposes specified at the beginning of the university course.

This is an important statement which in theory is universally accepted but in practice is hardly ever followed.

For instance, teaching grammar is a very essential part of foreign language teaching. However, very often grammar is taught par excellence, in its full splendour, regardless of the actual aims of teaching, of the actual skills to be acquired. Paradoxically, teachers concentrate their (and the students') efforts on those complicated and cumbersome grammar structures which are hardly ever used. The difference between seeing a difficult grammatical form in the text and actually using it is often disregarded and different grammar points are taught with equal enthusiasm. Teaching communication for special purposes must be based on the previous Linguistic analysis of special texts resulting in recommendations for teaching those grammar forms and structures which are most characteristic of these texts. Another urgent problem is a good grammar book. Most textbooks repeat the same definitions which are colourless and difficult to understand because they are "universal", i.e. written regardless of the nationality of the learner. Grammar books must take into account on the one hand the peculiarities of the "LSP" in question, and, on the other, the characteristic features of the grammar of the student's mother tongue. I need hardly say that what is difficult about the English language for Russians may be easy for Italians and vice versa.

This concerns Grammar books and Grammar commentaries, explanations and exercises in all kinds of foreign language courses.

The problem of teaching vocabulary may seem to be, theoretically speaking, easier. LSP teaching implies teaching the vocabulary of a special text. However, there are no easy points as far as living human languages are concerned. Indeed, the vocabulary of a special text consists of three strata, three layers: general words, scientific words, and terms. Basic general words must have been learnt before the University. Terms are the gist, the essence of the speciality and are usually better known by students than by 'teachers. The emphasis, consequently, is on the scientific vocabulary which is, as it were, the skeleton of every special text. However, the general vocabulary is never taught properly at school and has to be acquired at the University level, especially now that the demand for so-called colloquial language has become so great since the prospects of direct, live contacts with foreigners have become so real. This is one more problem to think about.

A very important point in any language course is the actual words to be studied, the topics to be discussed and learnt, the thematic choice of language to be activated.

The educational experience of a language course is determined, first and foremost, by the thematic and situational value of the layer of language to be studied. And the most important parameter here is again the need of a student: how much will the student need these words, will he or she have many opportunities to use them, how high is this bit of vocabulary on the student's list of priorities?

From this point of view many topics seem doubtful as far as Russian students of foreign languages are concerned. That is why the majority of foreign language teaching materials — audio, video, etc. courses are of very limited value for our students. For instance, the inevitable "Hotel registration" situation, which opens so many courses of foreign languages. To a Russian learner of a foreign language this situation is extremely distant and unrealistic. Even if in our most rosy dreams we imagine that 1 out of our 1000 students will go to a foreign, say English-speaking country, it is, probably, 1 out of 100,000 who will ever have to check in a hotel by himself.

Indeed, choosing the subjects for a foreign language course for Russians one should take into consideration the actual social, cultural and historical situation in the country: In most countries the courses are meant mainly for people intending to have some real, active, live contacts with foreign-speaking people and foreign-speaking countries. From this point of view all the hotel, bank, post office, launderette, etc. topics are quite reasonable. The situation in our country is still quite different, even now with all the new prospects, all the new contacts, private invitation travelling, etc. AH this new promising way of life still concerns a tiny fragment of students of foreign language in the RF. Most of them (the absolute majority) study a foreign language not because they mean or plan to go to a foreign country, but because they either want to know English for their profession, for "special purposes" (to read special professional papers and talk to their colleagues — not only shop, as they are human) or they want it as part of culture to be able to read and speak everyday English (or sing songs - for young people), or both. Consequently, to them checking in a hotel is, putting it mildly, not the first priority. They need more general things (introductions, apologies, refusals, agreeing-disagreeing, assessments, suggestions, etc.) and more general human, less specific situations.

Thus, the problems of what to teach (as opposed to how to teach) is extremely topical and urgent nowadays. Answering this question largely depends on the aims of the foreign language course, on the skills that are meant to be acquired.

The optimal teaching material for acquiring "passive skills", skills of recognition (mostly reading special texts in our case) should be presented by topical, informative texts. The efficiency of these texts is increased when they have a special learner's commentary — both linguistic and extralinguistic. The problem of commenting upon scientific texts used for teaching purposes has not received all the attention it deserves. The Learner's commentary is concerned with two main kinds of difficulties: 1. realia, extralinguistic facts (names, dates, etc.); 2. language units requiring explanation. The latter comprises mostly: 1) polysemantic words when it Is not easy for a student to understand which of the meanings of the word is realized in this particular utterance; 2) complex syntactic structures; 3) peculiarities of the individual author's style.

The question of commenting upon extralinguistic facts is much more delicate and complicated. Indeed, teaching LSP to specialists in this subject is a difficult and unenviable task because the students know the subject matter of the text under "study better than the teacher, and often it is the latter who needs this kind of extralinguistic explanation. The only conclusions drawn at the present stage of research in this field can be formulated as follows: 1) the learner's commentary on a scientific text should be oriented towards the background knowledge of the student; 2) it must be sociolinguistically determined, i.e. it must reveal the cultural, social, traditional allusions and connotations of the words in the text; 3) it must be adequate - neither abundant, nor deficient; 4) it depends to a great extent on the addressee.

It is obvious that an English text on Russian history should be explained differently for Russian and non-Russian students. For example, in M.J. Clark's English Studies Series History, Sociology, Politics, Economics and Law (Oxford, 1964) extralinguistic facts are explained in a concise and acceptable way:

Peter the Great - Peter I, Tsar of Russia, 1682-1725 Moscovy — old name for Russia

Tsarism - the pre-revolutionary system of government in Russia (tsar — emperor) (p. 32)

However, the following commentary given in a textbook for Russian students seems to be abundant and unnecessary, and is confined to a mere translation or even transliteration of the commented .units, putting it mildly:

the Bolsheviks — большевики

the Mensheviks — меньшевики

the cossacks -- казаки

Thus, the teaching material for developing skills of recognizing the written LSP text (passive skills) is a topical informative text supplied with the learner's commentary.

The teaching material which may be recommended for developing active skills, skills of production, especially at early stage, is a modelled text, that is a text which, by method of analysis through synthesis, is shaped into such a perfect, pure, standard form that it can be safely reproduced by a foreign learner.

In brief, the process of modelling a text for LSP students at the initial stage of their studies is confined to the following steps:

1. Choosing an optimal pattern scientific text written in standard, normalized language.

2. Analyzing it on different levels of linguistic research (grammar, lexis, syntax, style) for pragmatic foreign language teaching purposes. The idea of this stage of modelling is to specify: all violations of the norm, stylistic effects, play on words, etc., that is all those moments that cannot be recommended for foreigners to use.

3. Synthesizing the results of the analysis.

4. Analyzing the modelled text.

5. Synthesizing the improved version. The process can go on indefinitely as long as there is room for improvement.

And the last (but by no means least) aspect - psychological. Learning a foreign language, like no other subject, requires a special psychological approach, the atmosphere of relaxation, trust even love and faith. Indeed, learning a strange language, a strange world picture, strange (often alien) mentality is a difficult psychological barrier for many learners. Teaching foreign languages to university students of non-philological subjects is complicated by the fact that for these students a foreign language is not part of their special, professional education which may result in a lack of motivation.

Thus, the foreign language teacher's difficult but noble task is to create a relaxed, uninhibited atmosphere in class without being too indulgent or permissive.

I. Answer the following questions:

1. Why can teaching English in Russia be regarded as a social problem?

2. Why is it difficult for native speakers of English to fully realize the significance of *, teaching English to foreigners?

3. What is the situation with learning English in Russia?

4. What is the position of teachers of English?

5. In what way is the situation with foreign language teaching in Russia different from that in other countries?

6. What are the tasks of a university course of foreign language teaching?

7. What is meant by 'learner-oriented' teaching methods? Why is it important?

8. What are the problems of teaching grammar?

9. What are the problems of teaching vocabulary?

10. What is the optimal teaching material for 'passive' skills, skills of recognition? For active ones, skills of production?

11. Support or challenge the following statements:

1. English-speaking people do not fully realize the significance of teaching English to foreigners.

2. Teachers of English become more vulnerable.

3. The problem of what to teach is more urgent and more important than the problem of how to teach.

4. Learning a foreign language, like no other subject, requires a special psychological approach, the atmosphere of relaxation, trust, even love and faith.

III. Expand on the following:

1. Teaching English is a social problem in Russia.

2. Foreign language teachers have found themselves in the focus of public attention.

3. Teaching grammar is a very essential part of foreign language teaching.

4. Choosing the subjects for a foreign language course one should take into consideration the social, cultural and historical situation in the country of native-speakers.

4. Training LSP teachers in Russia

S. Ter-Minasova

Nowadays, one of the characteristic features of life in Russia is an unprecedented surge in the study of foreign languages — chiefly English. The growth in political, scientific, economic, cultural and educational contacts with different countries has set the scene for a renewed interest in foreign language studies. Language teachers will have to work very hard in order to satisfy this interest: they must change drastically their inadequate and outdated teaching methods and produce new, effective methods.

In order to perform all these tasks, which may look humble but are in fact extremely difficult and complex, many questions have to be, settled; the most urgent of these is: how to teach teachers? In other words, a new approach to foreign language teaching should begin with a new approach to language teachers' training and education.

In Russia this problem is especially urgent because, oddly enough, the profession which is in greatest demand nowadays that of teacher of foreign languages for scientists - - is not fully recognized as such: it does not exist in the official State Committee of Education list of professions. Russian universities and higher education institutions provide training for philologists (the chosen few, the experts in languages and literature) and for schoolteachers of foreign languages. The former know too much, the latter too little, to be good teachers of foreign languages for non-philologists, that is, for those legions of specialists in all branches of knowledge for whom a foreign languages is not the subject of their research but just a tool of their trade. This last statement may seem paradoxical and is, obviously, an exaggeration, but it gives, in a nutshell, some idea of the problem.

Teachers of foreign languages for non-philologists should, then, be specially trained along the following lines:

1. They must learn the variety of language for special purposes that they are going to teach, its peculiarities in all aspects -- whether grammar, vocabulary, syntax or style.

2. They must have a general idea of the subject their students are doing. This seems to be a highly revolutionary point, usually provoking protests and panic among those foreign language teachers who are accustomed to teaching economists or chemists the foreign language skills they require for their professional communication without themselves having the slightest idea about economics or chemistry.

3. They must be taught to cater to their students' needs. This is a difficult psychological requirement but there is no doubt that foreign language teaching must be learner-oriented. Language teachers must resist the temptation of revealing their vast, profound knowledge of the subject to the students and think only about their actual needs.

4. Finally, they must enthuse their students. Teaching foreign language to university students of non-philological subjects is complicated by the fact that for these students a foreign language is not part of their special, professional education: hence their lack of motivation. Foreign language teachers must, therefore, think of ways of arousing interest in their subject and of finding new means of increasing their students' motivation.

I. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the situation with foreign language studies in this country?

2. What are the main problems in teachers' training?

.3. What are the peculiarities of teaching foreign languages to non-philologists?

II. Support or challenge the following statements:

1. Philologists know too much, schoolteachers know too little to be good teachers of foreign languages for non-philologists.

2. Teachers of foreign language for non-philologists must have a general idea of the subject their students are doing.

III. Expand on the following:

1. Non-philologists are specialists in all branches of knowledge for whom a foreign language is not the subject of their research but a tool of their trade.

2. Foreign language teaching must be learner-oriented.

Приложения
Приложение 1

David Chrystal

(from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of language, 2^nd ed., CUP, 1998)

English has already become a world language, by virtue of the political and economic progress made by English-speaking nations in the past 200 years, and is likely to remain so, gradually consolidating its position. According to conservative estimates, mother-tongue speakers now have reached around 400 million; a further 350 million use English as a second language; and a further 100 million use it fluently as a foreign language. This is an increase of over 40% since the 1950s. More radical estimates which include speakers with a lower level of language fluency and awareness, have suggested that the overall total is these days well in excess of 1,000 million...

Surveys of range of use carried out by UNESCO and other world organizations reinforce the general statistical impression. English is used as an official or semi-official language in over 60 countries, and has a prominent place in a further 20. It is either dominant or well-established in all 6 continents. It is the main language of books, newspapers, airports and air-traffic control, international business and academic conferences, science, technology, medicine, diplomacy, sports international competitions, pop music and advertising.

Over two-thirds of the world's scientists write in English. Three-quarters of the world's mail is written in English. Of all the information in the world's electronic retrieval systems, 80% is stored in English. English radio programmes are received by over 150 million in 120 countries.

Over 50 million children study English as an additional at primary level; over 80 million study it at secondary level (these figures include China). On any one year, the British Council helps over a quarter of a million foreign students to learn English, in various parts of the world. Half as many again learn English in the USA.

Приложение 2

Big Dictionary

(from “Moscow News” № 26, July 10 – 16 2002, p.10)

Today, after 1,500 years of promiscuous acquisitiveness, the vocabulary of English is vast. The Oxford English Dictionary lists more than 600,000 words; German has fewer than one third that number, French fewer than one sixth. What makes English mammoth and unique is its great sea of synonyms, words with roughly the same meaning but different connotations, different levels of formality and different effects on the ear. Anglo-Saxon words are blunt, Latin words learned, French words musical. English speakers can calibrate the tone and meter of their prose with great precision. They may end (Anglo-Saxon), finish (French) or conclude (Latin) their remarks. A girl can be fair (Anglo-Saxon), beautiful (French) or attractive (Latin). A bully may evoke fear (Anglo-Saxon), terror (French) or trepidation (Latin).

Its depth and precision have helped make English the foremost language of science, diplomacy and international business — and the medium of T-shirts from Tijuana to Timbuktu. It is the native tongue of 350 million people and a second language for 350 million more. Half the books being published in the world are in English: so is 80 percent of the world’s computer text. While Americans debate bilingualism, foreigners learn English. Its popularity is fed by U.S. wealth and power, to be sure. But Richard Lederer, author of The Miracle of Language and other books on the peculiarities of English, believes the language s “internationality” has innate appeal. Not only are English’s grammar and syntax relatively simple, the language’s sound system is flexible and “user friendly” — foreign words tend to be pronounced the same as in their original tongue. “We have the most cheerfully democratic and hospitable language that ever existed,” Lederer says. “Other people recognize their language in ours.”

Приложение 3

A 'glorious mongrel'

(from “Moscow News” № 26, July 10 – 22, 2002, p.10)

The language that some Americans want to defend against foreign invasions is itself a multicultural smorgasbord of borrowed words. Back in 1780, John Adams urged the creation of an American academy with a lofty mission — to keep the English language pure. The Continental Congress, preoccupied with other challenges (such as winning independence from Britain), let the proposal die. And wisely so. It would have been like giving a courtesan a chastity belt for her birthday. “The English language,” as Carl Sandburg once observed, “hasn’t got where it is by being pure.” Not from the get-go. The language that many now seek to shore up against the babel of America’s multicultural masses is a smorgasbord (Swedish) of words borrowed from foreign tongues. Three out of four words in the dictionary, in fact, are foreign born. Sometimes anglicized, sometimes not, many loan words are so familiar that most English speakers are aware of their exotic origins only vaguely if at all. We can borrow sugar from a neighbor only because English borrowed the word from Sanskrit centuries ago. Ask your pal (Romany) to go to the opera (Italian), and he may prefer instead to go hunting in the boondocks (Tagalog), to play polo (Tibetan) or to visit the zoo (Greek) to test his skill (Danish) at milking a camel (Hebrew), after which he may need a shampoo (Hindi). Whether silly or scholarly, many sentences have equally rich lineages, illustrating Dorothy Thompson’s aphorism (Greek) that English is a “glorious and imperial mongrel” (mongrel, fittingly, being pure English). English itself is one of history’s most energetic immigrants. Three northern European tribes, the angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, got the enterprise started by invading Britain around A.D. 449. The Vikings arrived from Scandinavia in A.D. 793 to mix it up, battle-ax against battle-ax, adverb against adverb. The Norse and Anglo-Saxon tongues melded, enriching the word hoard. Example: You reared a child (Anglo-Saxon) or raised a child (Norse). As every school-child used to know, the Norman French conquered England in 1066. The language of the Saxon peasantry then conquered the Norman aristocracy. The result was a tongue that kept its Germanic structure but took in a huge new vocabulary of French words and through it Latin and Greek terms. Traders, warriors, scholars, pirates and explorers all did their part to advance English’s cosmopolitan destiny. The language was happily spiced with words from 50 languages even before the opening of the New World offered fresh avenues. Americans quickly became known for their own coinages, the many “Americanisms” they invented — words like groundhog lightning rod, belittle (minted by Thomas Jefferson), seaboard — new words for a new land. But American English also adopted American Indian terms, (mostly place names) and welcomed useful words brought across the water by immigrants. The Dutch supplied pit (as found in fruit) and boss (as found in the front office), sleigh, snoop and spook. Spanish supplied filibuster and bonanza. Yiddish enabled Americans to kibitz schmucks who sold schlock or made schmaltz.

Приложение 4

Language More Important Than God

(By Alexander Ageyev, Vremya MN, № 26, July 5-11, 2002)

Zakharov Publishers has made history by issuing "The Big Book of Brodsky Interviews" compiled by Valentina Polukhina. The tome numbers nearly 700 pages, all of them filled with the great poet's views on himself, poetry, his contemporaries, his times, God, and language. A lot of the pieces have not been published before, so the reader can expect an intellectual feast.

But I would not advise reading this book right through, page by page. Brodsky's interviewers ask the same ques­tions over and over, and he is compelled to repeat himself accordingly, since his views did not alter significantly over the years. On the other hand, making a mental note of the repetitions, one could construct a scale of interconnected values, which Brodsky espoused both in life and work.

Uppermost in this set of values is of course language: To Brodsky, language is not a tool, nor a means of expressing certain content. It is the human being, particularly the poet, that is the tool of language. "Language is an independent magnitude, an independent phenomenon that lives and develops, in a way, like Nature herself. And eventually it reaches maturity. While a poet or prose-writer merely chances to be there to pick up the fruits falling on the ground and arrange them in a certain order. Indeed, what is poetry? Poetry is essentially a higher form of linguistic activity. If there is anything that distinguishes us from dumb beasts, it must be our ability to articulate, to use language. It follows from this that poetry is really not an area of literature, nor a form of art, entertainment or leisure, but the ultimate goal of humanity as a biological species. People who engage in poetry are the most biologically perfect specimens of the human race... Language is more important than God, more important than Nature, more important than anything else..."

In Brodsky's universe, this notion explains virtually everything, even his relationship with the authorities. Brodsky never saw himself as a dissident in the popular sense of me word; it was just that they talked different languages, the poet and the powers than be. "If a poet is making progress, sooner of later there will come a point when the powers that be will find offensive not the content of his poetry, but its idiom and style... Language tends to clash with the system and the language idiom used by that system. That is say, the Russian language cannot abide the language used by the Establishment."

This suggests, among other things, that Brodsky was a fairly strict rationalist not given to sentiment in his rela­tions with humanity and the world, and that he did not rely on God. Hence, too, Brodksy's classic individualism, now thoroughly uncool. He loves to repeat that he and the friends of his youth were more American than present-day Americans; the notion of individualism, the individual's personal self-standing, which, as he imagined in his younger years, had become reality on American, soil, was always a determining idea with him.

To live with this set of values, a person needs a good deal of courage, not just to face everyday situations (con­firmed individualists are resented everywhere, in America as much as in Russia), but also to bring ideas to a logical conclusion without shying away from the results that may be highly distressing m terms of the outlook for humanity and the individual. This courage Brodsky possessed in full measure and painstakingly tried to graft onto Russian poetry. He said a truly remarkable thing about the latter in one of his last interviews: "The overabundance of feminine and dactylic inflectional endings is the chief feature of Russian poetry in the 20 century, of its Soviet period. Now what is behind this? First and foremost, not a rational approach to the material or actual events, but a kind of wailing or emotional response. That is self-lamentation. Or put more crudely, whining, if you like." Whining and self-lamentation are definitely something Brodsky's poetry has none of. There is not a trace of posturing or anger in his judgement of himself and his contemporary colleagues (quite a few of whom are discussed in the book on numerous occasions, and I do not envy Yevtushenko, for instance, or Voznesensky). Because Brodsky judges from the vantage point of language, which (remember?) is "more important than God..."