The Language that Matters

​ Linguistics. The scientific study of language. It covers many topics and many fields.

From inside the brain with psycholinguistics to the social applications of sociolinguistics, all the

way over to understanding why ChatGPT sounds human, linguistics tell us what we need to

know about the way language affects us. Language is entirely integrated into our being. It is the

means by which we joke, mourn, and even think. Therefore, it is vital to an advancing society to

have a developing understanding of how language functions; as well as, having an understanding

of when the language is used in ways not typical of that given language.The intent of this essay

is to give broad overview of linguistic topics that lead us into a better understanding of the

discipline as a whole. The goal is not to deep dive into one specific area, but to give a bird’s eye

view of the discipline in order to entice individuals to deeper study. We will start with wide

topics, exploring the origin and the application of modern linguistics. As we continue, we will

narrow down our view more to get a more detailed look at certain aspects of linguistics.

​ If we define linguistics as “the scientific study of language”, we first have to determine

what we mean by language. Geoffrey Pullum, Professor of General Linguistics at the University

of Edinburgh, states that “languages are structured systems for making articulated thoughts fully

explicit both internally and externally.” (Pullum 3). In simpler terms, language has given us a

playground in which we can speak and think. How are you reading this right now? How is it that

you understand what it is you are reading? It is only because you and I have a shared system (the

English language) which we use to define meaning. We have agreed on what the word “dog”

means for example. I do not have to explain to you that it is a four legged canine animal. You and

I have agreed on that, so we can skip all that explanation and just say “dog”. That is the

vocabulary segment of the system we share, there are of course other segments of the system.
Syntax, Morphology, and Phonology, all of this culminates together to help us create meaning,

and not just meaning we share. When Pullum states that language exists to “articulate… thoughts

internally” he is speaking of how we create meaning within our own mind. Language exists so

that we may have a structure to think about things in our own mind and to form our own

judgments of those things. Without language it would not be possible for us to think critically.

​ This leads us into a somewhat controversial topic, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Named

after Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Worph, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that

“individuals’ fundamental perception of reality is moulded by the language they speak.”

(Hornsbury 56). The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has caused division among scholars. Pullum

himself claims that “on closer inspection [Sapir-Worph] loses any claim to be scientific thesis,”

however, in Pullum’s own definition of language he seems to support the hypothesis (Pullum

56). If language facilitates our thoughts, it therefore must facilitate our understanding of the

world around us. Like a lens on a camera, two different people, speaking two different

languages, can look at the same scene and view it differently. This does not mean that what they

see and what they hear are different, simply that they will understand it differently. One language

may have a word to describe the scene in front of them, when the other language does not. The

language lacking the descriptive word will then have to use several descriptors to define the

scene. Each of these descriptive words will each of course come with their own connotations,

thereby tainting the description of the scene with said connotations. The individual with the

descriptive word will be able to experience the scene differently because the word which he uses

will be a more direct description of the sense in front of him. The language we use isn’t the only

thing that changes our understanding of the world though; often, the language that others use can

change the way that we view them.

Her name, Rachel Jeantel, her dialect, African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It is

important to note that many languages have nonstandard variations. Often, we mistakenly view

these languages (or dialects) as simply incorrect ways of speaking a more established language.

This view, as innocent as it may seem to an individual, could not be more wrong, and leads to

real world consequences. In the case of Ms. Jeantel, a killer walked free. It is incredibly

important to note here that the term “non-standard” was used to describe variations of larger

languages. It is vital to understand that there is no such thing as an “incorrect” variation or

dialect. If Ms. Jeantel had natively spoken French, the court would have provided her with a

translator, for AAVE, no such luck. The burden was on Ms. Jeantel to speak in a way entirely

unfamiliar to her and for her to be able to effectively communicate with listeners who rarely if

ever were around this variation. It is vital that we understand that there are no such things as

“proper” or “correct” variations of a language.

​ It is because of this understanding of language, an understanding where every variation is

considered equal, that it becomes increasingly difficult to count the number of languages. Some

estimates place the number of languages as high as ~7,000 (Pullum 7). At what point does a

variation within a language become its own separate language? Is mutual intelligibility the line?

If mutual intelligibility is in fact the line, then we can say with confidence that Ms. Jeantel spoke

a separate language than that of her jury. The jury did not see it that way. If they did, a translator

would have been provided. Do we then define languages as what we intuitively know to sound

different? That would not suffice in any other science: intuitive knowledge does not guarantee

correct knowledge. Allow me to take you on a trip to Italy to explain. One rainy day, an Italian

man in Venice sheltered in a building from the rain. Sheltering with him, two women speaking
with one another. The man did not understand a word of it. His brain told him they were

speaking another language. When he asked (in Italian) what language they were speaking, they

answered (in Italian) that they had been speaking Italian, they were simply speaking a dialect

from another region (Matthews 77). His brain was wrong (at least according to the two women).

We see here that even our initial guesses are incorrect. Some have tried to define languages via

political boundaries. “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy,” jests Max Weinriech in

1945. Yet, defining languages via political affiliations means that the Spanish spoken in Mexico

must now be considered a different language than the Spanish of Spain. It is clear that any given

“language” does not have clear cut boundaries that mark it apart from other languages. It may be

helpful to think of languages not as individual entities, but rather as members of a family who are

all interrelated to one another.

​ The idea of language families not only helps us categorize variations, it also helps us to

understand how all languages are interconnected with one another. We know that the Romance

Languages [French, Spanish, Italian] descended from Latin (Matthews 46). These Romance

languages are cousins to many more languages that descended from another common ancestor --

Proto-Indo-European (PIE). From this beast of a language, ancient in age, descended several

branches that then branched again, which of course, branched again, until we ended up with the

languages we have today. Of course, not all languages descended from PIE, yet many of the

world languages did. It is important to note that PIE never had a written form, as written forms of

language are a fairly new innovation in the history of our world. The earliest form of written

Indo-European languages is a 3,500 year old tablet, on which a script known as “Linear B” is

written (Matthews 58). We can take Linear B and compare it to other written forms of languages

we have (which are also ancient, the next oldest after Linear B being 3,000 years old) to see how
PIE changed over time in different languages. When we find similarities in these languages it

adds to our understanding of PIE and how it formed the branches/families of languages we have

today. Yet, we should note that written language is a bit of an odd representation of spoken

language. While it is true that we as humans have innate ability to learn spoken language and

develop the ability in our early years to speak, the ability to write is not so innate. While we have

many examples of the written forms of these languages, it is not fully possible to understand how

these languages were spoken. Based on current knowledge we can sound out and piece together

the auditory parts of the language based on the writing, but we will never know the more casual,

interpersonal tones that would have been spoken among friends at dinner parties. Perhaps there,

in that unknowable spoken aspect of the language, was a larger key to understanding the

connection between the languages.

​ As we speak of the connection between languages and understanding their connections it

is important that we understand that the construction of any given language is mostly, if not

entirely, arbitrary. These connections between these languages can only be formed because we

understand that there is no reason that any one sentence structure should be preferred over

another, or because any given affix with a specific meaning should contain certain sounds. Why

would this vast number of similarities exist in two languages that had no such connection? The

likely situation is that they shared a common ancestor from which these arbitrary traits were

passed down. It is only when we understand that language is an arbitrary system that we can

form such conclusions. Why would this vast number of similarities exist in two languages that

had no such connection? It could of course be possible that two languages came in contact with

one another and were in connection for a prolonged enough period of time that they began to rub

off on one another and share traits. This solution, however, does not account for the similarities
that exist. We are able to reconstruct a system of language (in part, not in entirety) from the

Indo-European languages that could serve as a common ancestor because of the similarities. It is

because we are able to do this that linguists believe that no other story could account for the

languages we have. Two neighboring populations engaging with one another simply would not

have created two languages so closely related. And because we know that languages can grow

and develop into new languages (again, take the romance languages from Latin for example) it

seems most plausible that the Indo-European languages descended from PIE.

Given, of course, that everything in these languages is arbitrary we can see that the

changes themselves are also arbitrary. It is important that we study languages (and language

changes) through this lens to have a full understanding of how the language is functioning.

The easiest way to understand the arbitrary nature of language is to consider Structural

Linguistics, a branch of linguistics first introduced in the early 20th century by Ferdinand de

Saussure. Structural Linguistics looks at language as having an overarching structure that is

shared by the members of a language community. This structure is created by the community and

is shared among them, to speak ungrammatically, or unintelligibly to speak outside of that

structure. This system changes over time (as previously discussed, this eventually leads to the

creation of new languages). The change in these systems is referred to as Diachrony; we refer to

the static form of the system at any given period of time as Synchrony (Bella). For the remainder

of this paper we will look at Synchrony and how we create meaning from seemingly arbitrary

things.

Go back to the beginning. When “dog” was mentioned as an example of the arbitrariness

of vocabulary, what did you picture? A golden retriever? A poodle? A golden doodle? As you

can see there are a lot of possibilities. However, I can assume that whatever you picture as a
result of the word was canine, four-legged, with a tail. You have an abstract definition of what a

dog is, which, given that everything is going as it should, I share with you. The combination of

sounds which form the word “dog,” along with our shared abstract definition of what a dog is

form what is called a sign (Bella). The abstract definition is called the signified, and the

collection of sounds is called the signifier. A sign is the combination of both. Now it is important

to note that the signified is not a real dog, it is simply our abstract definition of what, the actual

real life dog would be called the referent (Bella). This is all immensely important because it

demonstrates to us how our vocabulary works, and how it may be subject to change. The only

reason why “dog” is the sign for a four legged canine animal is because you and I agreed on it. A

wonderful example of the way that we assign signs arbitrarily is the word computer. Up until the

mid 20th-century the word computer was the title of a job where one computed. They would sit

there all day and perform calculations for the business they worked for. In fact, in cities like New

York it was fairly common to entire floors in skyscrapers dedicated simply to computers. When

modern computers came along, they performed the same task, and thus they were named after

the people with that job. As modern computers became advanced and replaced people in the

workplace, the signified associated with the signifier changed. When I say “computer” you no

longer picture a person working on the 40th floor in New York, you picture an abstract device on

which I may have written this paper. Thus, in the small piece of time where that sign was

changing, we created a new shared meaning for that sign. If we were to take a look at the English

speaking community in the mid 60s, we would likely see a shared understanding where

depending on the context the sign could mean either, and the context of who was speaking about

what would be incredibly important for understanding the sign. Yet, by the late 90s the sign had
become solidified into its new meaning. Structural linguistics does not end here with signs, it

goes on to explain a concept called slotting.

Slotting explains how we can order words in order to create meaning. Any order of

linguistic elements, from sign to letters, may be placed among two axes: the paradigm and the

syntagm. The syntagm marks the relation between the linguistic elements and tells us how they

relate to one another. The paradigm marks the relationship between signs that may place or not

replace one another on the syntagm (Bella). Let’s keep working with “dog”. The syntagm is

“d-o-g” and that order creates a specific meaning. Paradigmatically, I may replace the “d” with a

“c” because our system allows for the “co” letter order. This paradigmatic change creates a new

syntagm “cog” with a different meaning. Yet we cannot replace the “o” with a “c” to create

“dcg” because in the English language words must have vowels. That change is ungrammatical

in English.

This is what grammar is. It is not the overambitious teacher in the high school attempting

to convince kids that they can;t use the word “ain’t”. Good grammar is an accurate description of

how a language is already being used. There is a system already in place and we did not create it.

There will be a different system in a 1,000 years. We will not intentionally create it. Linguistics

is the never ending quest of understanding the large variety of systems that exist and identifying

what makes them unique and what they share with other systems. The more understanding we

have of language the more understanding we have of ourselves as we are all linguistic beings.
 Afterword

​ There are of course topics which we did not touch on in this paper, perhaps the

largest topic being phonology. They did not quite fit into the scope of this paper. This topic

simply was not in the structure the way I intended it to be. My hope was everything in the paper

would tie together to help us understand how language affects us as individuals and this topic is

incredibly important for that, however, there was no part of the paper where it felt natural to

include it. I attempted to include a section on phonology after the paragraph on slotting

explaining why vowels are required for words in English. It came out feeling clunky and forced,

like I was giving you a puzzle piece for a puzzle you had not yet seen. Yet, the purpose of this

paper was to give a large comprehension of what linguistics is and I would be doing the reader a

disservice if I did not include this topic.

Phonology is a study of how the sounds that we use in languages are created, and how

they are used in sequences to help create meaning. Phonology breaks down sounds into their

smallest units called phonemes (Culpeper 23). These phonemes can be stringed together in order

to create meaning in a given word. To use the same example we used throughout the paper,

“dog” is phonologically broken down into /dôɡ/. Those sounds together then create the signifier

for the four legged canine animal. There is significantly more to phonology than this and I would

encourage the reader to seek further commentary and explanation of phonological studies.
 Works Cited

Pullum, Geoffrey K. Linguistics: Why It Matters. Polity Press, 2018.

Hornsbury, David. Linguistics: A Complete Introduction. Teach Yourself, 2019.

Matthews, P. H. Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Bella Ross. “Ferdinand de Saussure and Structural Linguistics” YouTube, 21 Mar. 2014,

httpshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5vhq3aRNjE&t=165s.

Culpeper, Jonathan. Introducing Linguistics. Edited by Aina Casaponsa et al., Routledge, 2023.