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In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed, grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also ...
Speech Act Theory is a subfield of pragmatics that explores how words and sentences are not only used to present information, but also to perform actions. [2] As an utterance, a locutionary act is considered a performative , in which both the audience and the speaker must trust certain conditions about the speech act.
Literal and figurative language is a distinction that exists in all natural languages; it is studied within certain areas of language analysis, in particular stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics. Literal language is the usage of words exactly according to their direct, straightforward, or conventionally accepted meanings: their denotation.
This theory remains to be confirmed by psycholinguistic studies. [46] Conceptual metaphor theory from George Lakoff's cognitive linguistics hypothesises that people have inherited from lower animals the ability for deductive reasoning based on visual thinking, which explains why languages make so much use of visual metaphors. [47] [48]
For much of the history of the positivist philosophy of language, language was viewed primarily as a way of making factual assertions, and the other uses of language tended to be ignored, as Austin states at the beginning of Lecture 1, "It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a 'statement' can only be to 'describe' some state of affairs, or to 'state some fact ...
Searle, J. (1969), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Searle's has been the most notable of attempts to extend and adjust Austin's conception of speech acts). Searle, J. (1979), Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 ...
The main use of language is to convey information. It can be used to transfer thoughts from one mind, to another mind, and it can also be used to modify and explore thoughts within a mind. The bits of linguistic information that enter into one person's mind, from another, cause people to entertain a new thought with profound effects on their ...
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis branches out into two theories: linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism is viewed as the stronger form – because language is viewed as a complete barrier, a person is stuck with the perspective that the language enforces – while linguistic relativity is perceived as a weaker form of the theory because language is discussed as a ...