Mantilla, Joshua P.

BEE – II
Eng01

Week #1
Module 1

Unit 2

1. Mark the following statements as true or false:

False (a) Langue changes, but parole doesn‘t.
True (b) The relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary
False (c) Diachronic studies do not take the historical evolution of language into account.

2. Why is it necessary to distinguish between langue and parole? Why does Saussure say that
langue is the legislative part of language and parole is the executive part?

It is important to note the difference between the two concept which is parole and langue
since the knowledge to use these two is essential in an effective conversation. The people involve
in a communication must acknowledge that they are using the same langue or convention so that
it is assured that they are in the same page of conversation. This is why it is called legislative
because it rules over the usage of their words and thoughts. Now that they know that they are
talking the same topic, the only thing left is to deliver it correctly in a way that both participants
understand what they hear. It is meaningless even if they both know what they are talking about
but misunderstands each other anyways because of their performance during the act. Hence, this
is called the executive part since it must execute what the legislatives or langue planned to do.

Unit 3

Let‘s look at some examples of types of utterance. The following are utterances: "Your cat kept
me up all night"; a sonnet by Shakespeare; Saussure‘s Course in General Linguistics;
Beethoven‘s Fifth Symphony; my suit and tie; Alexander Pope‘s garden in Twickenham. As
such there is in each case a specific system that underlies and to an extent governs the types of
utterance that can be made. What is the specific mechanism that allows systems to operate in
these ways?

From how I understand utterance works in which it contains meaningful events that has
been made possible and governed to an extent by a pre-existing system of signs, the mechanism
that allows this to happen is the works of langue that makes signifier giving signified to life. The
utterances mentioned in the questions are made up of different signifiers that makes us think of
specific concept, in which langue composes structures of words and sentences to be able for
signified and signifiers to work together. Therefore, the mechanism of langue oversees the entire
framework of these utterances and it allows systems to operate in these ways.

Unit 4

View videos 2, 3 & 4. Give your reactions on the videos. What insights have you gained as a
future language teacher?

Noam Chomsky’s definition of Universal Grammar especially in video 4 suggests that it

isn’t designed for humans right at the very beginning. However, UG emerged along with the
evolution of human beings. What I understand from some of his ideas is that homo sapiens
adopted and developed some biological aspects from using symbols and actions until such time
that they had made words to communicate. He said that this ability just suddenly popped in and
breed in a small population in Africa and spread throughout the world.
In terms of children having innate ability to learn, I believe more of this than the
opposing concept of just learning language by Skinner since it is what I observed and
experienced firsthand. As far as my memory remembers, I can speak even before my parents
taught me how to do so. Not just short sentences but long ones, though it does not contain any
words that are used by people near me in their daily lives. Not just by experiencing it but by
observing too like our neighbor’s toddler wherein he can speak english and sometimes use it to
state what he wants because he’s exposed with english cartoons. It just proves that there’s this
instinct within children that they can easily adopt words by hearing and deciphering it at the
same time on how to use the words that they heard.
The insight I got from this is that your exposure to the language that you want to learn
will help you learn it. It means that even mature people can enhance their english-speaking skills
with the help of exposing themselves with various media that can help them soak up new words
and how to use it, including the ability of constructing sentences with the chosen language.
Unit 5
Discuss Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir‘s Theory on Structuralist Linguistics. Cite
concrete examples.

Bloomfield and Sapir are co-founder of American structuralism and is based on

Saussure’s structuralist linguistics though they are somehow dissimilar from each other Sapir’s
approach were imaginative and Bloomfield were methodological. Bloomfield’s approach
includes the scientific basis to linguistics along with behaviorism that he developed later on. He
focuses on language as being spoken. Meaning of words used in speaking contains its own
meaning depending on context rather than just by giving meaning per word, since it describes
what people say and not what people should say. For example, a child may say “like that”, it
does not focus on what does the word like means but with how the child says it. It may be that
the child is pointing to a flower and it actual wants to say that he likes the flower. Bloomfield
emphasizes that language is observable and not knowledge. That is why it gives importance to
what is spoken since it says that not all languages have its own system of writing. Bloomfield
also focuses on the current time that the language exists and not with the dead ones, and it does
not give much attention on why a word have such meaning that is same approach with Saussure.
On the other hand, Sapir’s approach states that language is an acquired function of
culture rather than being biologically determined. Therefore, culture affects how people thinks
rather than the reciprocal. It worth mentioning that this approach is opposite to how Noam
Chomsky views it. Sapir believes that an individual will never be able to speak with meaning on
his own, unless he talks with someone within a society. For example, a student is trying to learn
Japanese but he only knows words and sentence construction, not knowing what does Japanese
people tend to speak with other people. In this given example, the student must know a little
background of Japan before learning its language. Better if he relocates to the place where he can
interact with other people, or else he’ll just spout nonsensical Japanese terms. Sapir pointed out
that if an infant was born in a certain linguistic environment but then he grows up to another
linguistic environment, he will surely adopt the language of where he grew up rather than
learning what his biological parents’ language.

Sources:
https://cte.univ-setif2.dz/moodle/mod/book/view.php?id=16633
https://unt.univ-cotedazur.fr/uoh/learn_teach_FL/affiche_theorie.php?id_theoricien=10
https://www.ourboox.com/books/leonard-bloomfield-american-structuralism/
https://science.jrank.org/pages/9907/Language-Linguistics-Structuralist-Era.html
Unit 6
View the video and make some reactions and relate o real life experiences.

“Change is the only constant here in this world”, said by an unknown person who
probably observed things as they changed over time. This particular truth isn’t applicable to all
and even language, a concept or a physically absent, can’t evade as well. Halliday had made a
point in which language does change over time. Not linguistics or the study of its construction,
but language itself.
Michael Halliday stated in his lecture that language does not only change but
evolved according to what does homo sapiens needs for convenience. People in forest, near
lakes, sea sides, plateaus, flatlands, or anywhere else in the world has their own language. Their
separation with each other makes language unique according to the people who uses it. The
culture that they practice is what makes their language unique as it provides them convenience
for everyday usage. But then there’s this people who wants to conquer the world and so they
invade places within their reach. The most familiar for us Filipinos is when Spaniards came and
invade our lands. At that point, our ancestors defend our lands but then fell at first. This brings to
a great range of evolution for early Filipinos; their daily lives, language, culture, the genes of
people in the next generations, everything that results to what we have today. Our writing system
called alibata wasn’t spread well, hence having us who lives in today’s generation to use foreign
letters and making foreign language which is english as our second language. From that length of
time, we can definitely point out what went wrong and what went right. I said is as it may be
wrong according to Halliday who said that things in the future may be better than today’s but be
seen as worse for others. Philippine’s system of writing and language has changed due to the fact
that we were invaded for multiple times. My point is to highlight what we have now. We can
enjoy the wealth of conversing with foreigners with the use of english. This gave us a lot of
opportunities since Philippines as of this moment, may have to work on eliminating corrupt
politician in the government. Which means that Filipinos can have work overseas and not to
problem with english comprehension, which is convenient. If we did not have english as our
second language, most of us will be too scared to communicate foreigners putting having a job
overseas as not an option. We are not Japan or China or any country who needs monolingual
system since they are capable of supporting their countrymen, compared to us who needs to rely
on other countries to move forward. This statement is part of Halliday’s explanation about
people in countryside going to urban areas to enjoy the luxury of convenience. Halliday stated
that he loves to be in countryside, but he chooses to live in city because he needs to be near with
doctor or dentist. At that point, the crowd laughed, but he went on explaining things on how
language is adopting to what is convenient.
In contrast to the luxury of convenience, there will be a lot of culture and language
to disappear in the process. This may be a hypothetical statement, but I believe that only
language which is used by a lot of people will continue to exist, and those who are used by little
will soon disappear. The point is, we have lots of languages here in the Philippines which is not
used by multiple regions. cebuano language is even getting popularized and some people outside
of Mindanao views cebuano or bisaya as most used in Mindanao, like when you go to Luzon and
they’ll know that you came from Mindanao, they’ll ask whether you can speak bisaya or not. On
the other hand, there are small barangays that are hard to go into which uses kamayo. I’ve been
into one and live there for months. As someone who speaks bisaya, I use it to communicate with
some of people there. They understand me and I understand them since I ask them whenever I
don’t understand a word that they just said. During one of my conversation with my friend, there
are now lots of people who uses bisaya and most of them are not born and raised there but just
relocated. They don’t use the kamayo language at all. It led me to a thought that there will be
some point in the future that this language may go extinct. There are no books that teaches that
language, unlike bisaya which is being thought now to grade schoolers in a subject Mother
Tongue-Based Multi Lingual Education or MTB MLE. Last time I checked, it isn’t included to
the list of local language that was included to MTB MLE. There were no means of spreading it
out nor maintaining it. Therefore, there is a slight to moderate chance that this language may go
extinct in the future. As what Halliday stated, each tribe who lived in forest, near lakes, sea sides,
plateaus, flatlands, or anywhere else in the world back in the days have their own system culture
and system of living such as medicine and other sets of knowledge. But those sets of knowledge
was not able to pass properly due to lack documentation. Though not all, several knowledge and
practices are now forgotten. In the field of medicine for example, people will now go to clinic or
hospital because this is much more convenient than relying on traditional medicine that was
practiced by each tribe in the past. Convenience isn’t just the only reason why language evolves
or going extinct. Halliday then cite some examples such as burning of books, suppressing people
to use their own language and force them to other language instead, and other else.
In conclusion, Halliday’s approach to language is for convenience only. His
approach is to language to converse with people with meaning and not minding what language it
is, which is in some point is right. That is how language works anyway, the convenience of
exchanging thoughts. But for us who gives important to our identity, we should encourage the
young mind especially us being a teacher to give importance to our mother tongue. Loving and
nurturing our own language is not inconvenient at all. What is inconvenient are those people who
forgets where they came from.