What is language and what does it do?

Research output: Contribution to Book/ReportChapterpeer-review

Abstract

People find the subject of language interesting and worth studying for many different reasons. Language can, for example, be used as a way of finding out more about:

• how our brains work, from investigating how children learn language, or how damage to our brains results in certain kind of language disorders (psycholinguistics);

• how to learn and to teach different languages (applied linguistics); • the relationship between meaning, language and perception (philosophy); • the role of language in different cultures (anthropology); • the styles of language used in literature (stylistics); • the different varieties of language people use, and why there are linguistic differences between different groups (sociolinguistics); • how to make computers more sophisticated (artificial intelligence).
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLanguage, Society and Power
Subtitle of host publicationAn Introduction
EditorsLinda Thomas, Shân Wareing
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherTaylor & Francis
Chapter1
Pages1-16
Number of pages16
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9780203426968
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 31 Jul 2004

Publication series

NameLanguage, Society and Power

Keywords

  • Language
  • Power
  • Society

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