ISL1

• Universal properties of language are described as the ability to communicate, which is based on the contrast between human language and all kinds of form communication.
• Researchers have tried to describe what makes language language by focusing on the bees, apes, and dolphins, which are associated with intelligence and communication.
• Unitary system hypothesis states that there is one lexicon and grammar for both languages, and lexical items of L1 and L2 complement each other.
• Research has supported that it is very simplistic to assume we have ‘two monolingual brains’.
• Human language has a meta property, which means humans can think and reflect about language.
• There are six properties of language: displacement, arbitrariness, culture transmission, productivity, variability, and duality (modularity, constituency).
• Displacement in language allows us to talk about things not present in terms of space, time, and reality.
• Arbitrariness in language means that the sounds we put together to make up words are not linked to the actual meaning of the words.
• Culture transmission in language means that languages are culturally transmitted and not genetically.
• Productivity in language means that any language has the property of being able to create new ways, new combinations, to be productive.
• Variability in language use varies according to users and uses, in different situations, in relation to cultural concerns.
• English is used as an official second language (L2) alongside official languages in fields such as government, law, education in countries like Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa.
• Sociolinguistics identifies that English is not referred to as English but Englishes, reflecting the varieties and differences.
• Modiano’s model categorizes Englishes based on proficiency, with the inner of the circle being highly proficient (native speakers +), and from the middle to the exterior the proficiency goes down.
• Modiano’s model of EIL (English as an International language) is based on common features, focusing on the shared features within all native and non native varieties.
• Kachru’s circle model categorizes Englishes based on geography and history, not on speakers’ use of English or other factors, making it generalizing and difficult to use to define speakers in terms of their proficiency.
• There is a huge diversity in the ways English is used.
• Kachru’s circle model of World Englishes represents the Englishes in circles, with the outer circle being the expanding circle which includes all other countries that speak English as a foreign language (EFL).
• The term Inner Circle in Kachru’s model implies that speakers in ENL countries are central but they should not be seen as superior.
• Duality (modularity, constituency) in language means that oral languages have sounds, which are limited in number and can be combined in all kinds of multiple ways.
• Discreteness in language means that although we speak and emit sounds that might not be clear, we manage to identify discrete units out of the flow of sounds.
• Face is the public self-image people claim for themselves and expect others to recognize.
• Context and assumptions of shared knowledge always influence how we say what we want to communicate and also how much we say.
• Direct speech acts are when we are clear and direct in what we are trying to say, the illocutionary act is reflected in the locution (for example by a speech act verb or a formula, such as I thank you).
• Indirect speech acts are when you need to know more of the context to understand the intention and the meaning (the perlocutionary effect and the illocutionary force).
• Co-text refers to the text that goes with what me, as a speaker, I am interested in / I am saying.
• Politeness, as defined by Brown and Levinson (1987), is about showing awareness of and consideration for another person’s ‘face’.
• Speech act theory, developed by John Austin (1962), deals with how humans use language to perform different actions.
• Linguistics as a science developed in the 20th century when science was a new area of research.
• John Searle’s classification of speech acts includes representatives (express some form of ‘statement’ you believe is true), directives (when we want to get our hearers to do something), commissives (when we commit ourselves to future actions), expressives (when we want to express our feelings about something), and declaratives (bring about a change of status of an object / person by saying something).
• Preparatory or felicity conditions are conditions that need to be met for a speech to achieve its purpose.
• Situational context refers to the physical situation where communication takes place.
• Background knowledge context includes the history and is not always visible but is important, it is the wider cultural context understood as shared values, shared expectations.
• Pragmatics and discourse work with language in use, focusing on how efficiently we manage to get across what we want to say and to communicate in the short time we have.
• Language policy is what language to use, when and how.
• English(es) in the expanding circle refers to the use of English as a medium of instruction, subject, and language across the curriculum.
• Language is an important form of symbolic capital.
• Communication accommodation theory states that when we communicate, we adapt to one another by either converging, becoming more similar, or diverging, becoming more different.
• Schema is a conventional knowledge structure that exists in memory, a mental construct of reality as culturally ordered and socially sanctioned, people’s expectations about people, objects, events, settings and ways to interact in the world.
• Inference and contextualisation are integral aspects of reading, taking information, hearing, reading, as they involve constructing context based on world knowledge.