BEING A LINGUIST

BEING A LINGUIST

Cristal, D.(2009) Being a Linguist. Chapter 1.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

When somebody talks about language and the words related to that giant term, that enclosures many concepts and perceptions, has to take into account everybody’s worlds and their ways to conceive life.  In this first chapter, Crystal,D (2009).  Generally exposed how language is an amazing field from his own point of view and experience.

First, the author considered himself a linguist not as a person that is fluent in many languages, Even though it is mentioned that it is important to have a great amount of vocabulary to manage a language, for him a linguist is just someone that is delighted by those. Everybody that is interested in linguistics is because enjoys having contact with their surroundings, language is present everywhere.

According to the author, linguists are people that are paying attention how everything is changing. They are in charge of asking questions about how a language is acquire, what are the processes that take place in the brain, they also explore its history and how language occurs according to the different cultures. They see to what extend languages are similar or differ one from each other.

Moreover, it is stated in this chapter that being a word manager is not an easy job, especially because you change some behaviours as you are in contact with words, accents, sounds and of course people. Here emerges the concept of accommodation; it as a process of adaptation, more related to sociolinguistic studies, it is evident that when people get in contact with others and talk, something happens to the discourse they use, everybody accommodates either conscious or unconsciously.

 When you are amazed on languages, you can find yourself asking questions that just pop out in everyday conversation; these tend to be endless when the topic implicates language. As it was the example given by the author, he was just talking with an unknown person on the phone about car insurance, he asked the name to the woman and a new conversation started, both got involved in the talk about etymology and all those things. You do not need to be an expert or to have an especial preparation to play with language; people just need to use it.

Trying to define what linguistics is, the author does it in a very simple way, and he assures that linguistics is the science of language, he said that he loves the science and the arts, and stablishes this relationship with linguistics. What a scientific does is to look to the world, as artists do, and the artist, during the process of creating something have to use scientific ways of thinking; and linguistic can deal with both. Actually, it is what makes linguistics interesting; the way you can cross the borders of the field, and easily go deeper into other grounds exploring the nature of language.

According to the text in the language story, there is still a lot to say, it does not have a beginning nor an end, what linguistics can do is just to tell the tail from their own perspectives and point of views and it was what Crystal did.

“The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people”

 Maria Montessori.

I brought this quote that is very related to the text, and tells me about language as part of us as human beings, language is present everywhere even in our personality. Through language, we can express thoughts, feelings and is the basis of the diverse relationships that we stablish with people.

As a reflexion about this interesting and eye catching chapter, I can say that we as language teachers are linguists somehow, every day we are facing different situations where we can reflect about the use of language, and it is very interesting to see how through this powerful tool we are trying to change society.

In our classroom and learning teaching context, we can find real situation of language in use, also a great opportunity to understand many things that are happening around our students. Just observing how they behave, talk, connect with other people, we can start changing not only our practices but also the way we address our students that are the most import thing for us .