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Linguistics

Notes an attempt by speakers of one language or dialect to exert influence over speakers of other languages
or dialects (see Linguistic imperialism). An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among
censors, who attempt to eradicate words and structures that they consider to be destructive to
society.
Speech and Writing

Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken language is more fundamental
than written language. This is because:
• Speech appears to be universal to all human beings capable of producing and hearing it,
while there have been many cultures and speech communities that lack written communication
• Speech evolved before human beings invented writing
• People learn to speak and process spoken language more easily and much earlier than writing.
Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable.
For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics, written language is
often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of
spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written.
In addition, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-
mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry. The study of writing systems
themselves is, in any case, considered a branch of linguistics.

2.2 Linguistics and Related Fields of Study
2.2.1 Linguistics and Anthropology

Broadly speaking, anthropology is the study of mankind and of culture. Its main subdivisions are
physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Linguistics is a branch of cultural anthropology.
The chief contribution of cultural anthropology, as a whole, to the study of language has been the
broadening of linguists’ outlooks so that their horizons include, not only languages, but culture of
many different types. It has helped in removing the misconception that one language is superior
to the other, in accepting a generalization that all languages are complex and are adequate to the
needs of the respective communities, and in establishing certain linguistic universals. It has also
made clear to the linguist the fact that languages are not ‘primitive,’ although cultures may be
primitive. Furthermore, a language is a language even if it has no writing system.
Modern linguistics, particularly in its early phases in the United States, received a great impetus
from the attempts of anthropologists who studied the culture of “primitive” peoples. Linguists
had to devise new ways and techniques of linguistic analysis to study the languages of these
primitive races and tribes. As a result their methodologies and theories were enriched. They also
stood benefited by the similarities and contrasts between those hitherto unknown languages and
the known European languages. Another positive contribution of cultural anthropology to
linguistics lies in the furnishing of data for the interpretation of meanings, on both the grammatical
and the lexical levels.
On another level, linguistics has made a very valuable contribution to the methodology of social
sciences, through the concept of the functional unit and the distinctive feature of behaviour, etc.
Anthropology has benefited from linguistics in the field of individual and social group, learning
process, correlation between heredity and linguistic structure, etc. The fact that man’s dialect is
the mirror of his culture, has also been beneficial to anthropologists and sociologists.
Now-a-days, the relationship between linguistics and anthroplogy is less close. But at the same
time a new discipline called Sociolinguistics is expanding rapidly, meaning thereby that sociology
and linguistics are getting closer.
2.2.2 Linguistics and Philosophy
The association between philosophy and language and linguistics and has indeed been historically
very long. In fact, it were the philosophers who first of all speculated on language. Plato’s Dialogues

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