language

When I (or any linguist) say "language", I'm (they are) referring to the spoken language. Strictly, there is no such a thing like a "written language". After all, writing isn't anything but a representation of speech. The interesting things happen in the spoken language.

Two different photos of me doesn't make two of me. Two different writings systems for the same language aren't two different languages, are just two different ways to represent a language. Thus, a writing is not language at all.

(thanks to Sírio Possenti for the photo metaphor)

Ok, linguistics is the science that studies the language. You got it. But what would be "language"? You may know it, but you can't define it, can you? At least, not so easily.

When Saussure published his book (actually he didn't published it himself, but it doesn't matter now) "Course in General Linguistics", he said that the "aims" of linguistics are:

1. to describe all know languages and record their history (...)
2. to determine the forces operating permanently and universally in all languages(...)
3. to delimit and define linguistics itself

Pay special attention to the third item. You can interpret it as: "we don't really know what language is and that's exactly what we will try to find".

In other words, one of the goals of any general theory of linguistics is to provide a nice definition of language. In other words, again, what I am trying to say is that there is no final definition of language and each author will give us their own definition. A definition that works nicely with their theory.

Thus, in the next posts, I will provide you some authors' definitions of language. Keep reading.