Functional/ Notional Grammar
The second major offshot of work into language as communication which has influenced ESP has been the functional/ notional concept of language description. Functions are concerned with social behaviour and represent the intention of the speaker or writer, for example, advising, warning, threatening, describing, etc. they can be approximately equated with the communicative acts that are carried out through language. Notions, in the other hand, reflect the way in which the human mind thinks. They are the catagories into which the mind and thereby language divides reality, for example, time, frequency, gender, duration, number, location, quantity, quality, etc.
The functional view of language began to have an influence on language teaching in the 1970s, largely as a result of the council of Europe’s efforts to establish some kind of equivalence in the syllabuses for learning various languages. Equivalence was difficult to establish on fomal grounds, since the formal structures of languages show considerable variation. The student of German, for example, is likely to have to spend a large amount of time in learning the gender/ casee endings of articles, nouns, and adjectives. The learner of English in the other hand will not have this problem, but may need to spend more time on, for example, the spelling, the simple/ continuous tense distinction or the countable/ uncountable distinction.
On notional or functional grounds, however, some approximate equivalence can be achieved, since notions and functions represent the catagories of human thinking and social behaviour, which do not vary across languages.
DISCOURSE (RHETORICAL) ANALYSIS
This next development has also had a profound effect on ESP. Till this point language had been view in terms of the sentence. Now the emphasis moved to looking ata how meaning is generated between sentences. This was a logical development of the functional/ notional view of languge which had shown that there is more to meaning than just the words in sentences. The context of the sentence is also important in creating the meaning.
If we take the simple sentence: ‘It is raining’ and we put it into three different dialogues, we can see how the meaning changes.
A: Can I go out to play?
B: It’s raining.
A:Have you cut the grass yet?
B:It’s raining.
A:I think I’ll go out for a walk.
B:It’s raining.
In each case the propotional meaning (statement) of the sentence is the same. The notions in it are also the same (present time, neuter). But the sentence is fulfilling three different communicative purposes.
In the first dialogue a parent could be talking to a child. The child is asking permission to go out. The parent’s reply of’It’s raining’ acts as a refusal of the request. The second dialogue might be a husband/ wife dialogue. ‘It’s raining’ now functions as a reason or an excuse. In the third dialogue it takes on yet another function, and this time is probably acting as advice or a mild warning and might take place between friends.
The meaning of this same sentence changes with the different contexts. This change is brought about by two factors. The first factor, as we have seen, is the sociolinguistic context: who is speaking to whom and why. The meaning changes according to the relationship between the participant in the dialogue and according to their reason for speaking. But there is another factor which influences the meaning- the relative positions of the utterances within the discourse. An utterance acquires meaning by virtue of what utterances it precedes or follows. We might call this the discoursal meaning.
For example, if we take the third dialogue above and turn the two utterences round, we get:
A: It’s raining.
B: I think I’ll go out for a walk.
By doing so, we have first of all removed the idea of advice or warning. We have also completely changed the logical meaning of the dialogue. In the first example the underlying meaning is that rain provides a reason against going for a walk, whereas in the reversed example rain is a reason in favour of going out for a walk. Thus the relative positions of the utterances witin the discourse affect the meaning of the discourse.
The second major offshot of work into language as communication which has influenced ESP has been the functional/ notional concept of language description. Functions are concerned with social behaviour and represent the intention of the speaker or writer, for example, advising, warning, threatening, describing, etc. they can be approximately equated with the communicative acts that are carried out through language. Notions, in the other hand, reflect the way in which the human mind thinks. They are the catagories into which the mind and thereby language divides reality, for example, time, frequency, gender, duration, number, location, quantity, quality, etc.
The functional view of language began to have an influence on language teaching in the 1970s, largely as a result of the council of Europe’s efforts to establish some kind of equivalence in the syllabuses for learning various languages. Equivalence was difficult to establish on fomal grounds, since the formal structures of languages show considerable variation. The student of German, for example, is likely to have to spend a large amount of time in learning the gender/ casee endings of articles, nouns, and adjectives. The learner of English in the other hand will not have this problem, but may need to spend more time on, for example, the spelling, the simple/ continuous tense distinction or the countable/ uncountable distinction.
On notional or functional grounds, however, some approximate equivalence can be achieved, since notions and functions represent the catagories of human thinking and social behaviour, which do not vary across languages.
DISCOURSE (RHETORICAL) ANALYSIS
This next development has also had a profound effect on ESP. Till this point language had been view in terms of the sentence. Now the emphasis moved to looking ata how meaning is generated between sentences. This was a logical development of the functional/ notional view of languge which had shown that there is more to meaning than just the words in sentences. The context of the sentence is also important in creating the meaning.
If we take the simple sentence: ‘It is raining’ and we put it into three different dialogues, we can see how the meaning changes.
A: Can I go out to play?
B: It’s raining.
A:Have you cut the grass yet?
B:It’s raining.
A:I think I’ll go out for a walk.
B:It’s raining.
In each case the propotional meaning (statement) of the sentence is the same. The notions in it are also the same (present time, neuter). But the sentence is fulfilling three different communicative purposes.
In the first dialogue a parent could be talking to a child. The child is asking permission to go out. The parent’s reply of’It’s raining’ acts as a refusal of the request. The second dialogue might be a husband/ wife dialogue. ‘It’s raining’ now functions as a reason or an excuse. In the third dialogue it takes on yet another function, and this time is probably acting as advice or a mild warning and might take place between friends.
The meaning of this same sentence changes with the different contexts. This change is brought about by two factors. The first factor, as we have seen, is the sociolinguistic context: who is speaking to whom and why. The meaning changes according to the relationship between the participant in the dialogue and according to their reason for speaking. But there is another factor which influences the meaning- the relative positions of the utterances within the discourse. An utterance acquires meaning by virtue of what utterances it precedes or follows. We might call this the discoursal meaning.
For example, if we take the third dialogue above and turn the two utterences round, we get:
A: It’s raining.
B: I think I’ll go out for a walk.
By doing so, we have first of all removed the idea of advice or warning. We have also completely changed the logical meaning of the dialogue. In the first example the underlying meaning is that rain provides a reason against going for a walk, whereas in the reversed example rain is a reason in favour of going out for a walk. Thus the relative positions of the utterances witin the discourse affect the meaning of the discourse.
