General Linguistics – The Essentials

Like other sciences, linguistics has a branch that studies the most general issues, providing theoretical basis and research methods for other branches of linguistics to describe and explain linguistic events, which is General Linguistics or Theoretical Linguistics.

 

The history of linguistics shows that, although language studies have appeared since ancient Greek and Roman times and developed over thousands of years of history, it was only in the early 20th century, whenGeneral Linguistics TextbookFerdinand de Saussure's work was presented at the University of Geneva (1906-1911) and published later (1916), causing great influence in Europe and North America, then General Linguistics was born and linguistics was officially recognized as a science of language. Since then, General Linguistics has become an indispensable subject in the linguistics training program of universities around the world.

General linguistics was introduced to Vietnam from around the early 70s of the 20th century, starting with the General Linguistics Textbook by F.de Saussure (translated version, first published in 1973) and then the works of Ju. Stepanov (Foundations of General Linguistics, 1984), V.Rozdextvenski (Lectures on General Linguistics, 1997), J. Lyons (Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, 1997), VB Kasevich (Basic Elements of General Linguistics, 1998), etc. A number of lectures and textbooks on General Linguistics compiled by Vietnamese linguists have also been published, notably the General Linguistics Textbook (volume 1, volume 2) by Do Huu Chau and Bui Minh Toan (1991) and Lectures on General Linguistics by Nguyen Lai (2002). These works have provided readers with general theoretical knowledge of linguistics from many different perspectives. However, the requirement to perceive, re-perceive and update theoretical knowledge and linguistic methodology still requires a work on General Linguistics that presents the basic issues of modern linguistics in a systematic, scientific manner and especially connects the achievements of world languages ​​with oriental linguistics and Vietnamese linguistics.General Linguistics – Key Contentsby Professor Dinh Van Duc has just been published (Vietnam Education Publishing House 2012), the results of the author's research and teaching of this subject for more than 30 years, has met that urgent requirement.

The book has 595 pages (including references), 16×24 in size, divided into 12 chapters, presenting the most important contents of General Linguistics, selected by the author according to three basic, practical and pedagogical priority principles (p.9). It is worth noting that the structure of the book is not presented in the traditional deductive way commonly found in General Linguistics works, from general theory to linguistic levels, but according to a logic reflecting the cognitive process, going from the concept (of general linguistics) to the research object (nature, function and system, language structure) and research method (linguistic theories). In our opinion, the way the book is organized is new compared to previous works.

The work begins with chapter 1 presenting the author's general view of General Linguistics. According to the author, "the entire content of General Linguistics, in terms of theory, aims to answer four questions: (1) What is language?, (2) How does language exist?, (3) How does language work?, (4) How do people approach language?" (p. 14). And the goal of General Linguistics is to "help us understand at least four key issues..., which are also the four theoretical contents below:

• The nature and function of language
• System and structure of language
• How language works
• Linguistics and methods of language research.” (p.15)

And those are also the four main contents of the author's book.

The first content of the book – issues related to the nature and function of language, is presented in chapters 2 (Language and communicative function), 3 (The symbolic nature of language) and 4 (Language in relation to thinking). These are basic issues of the philosophy of language that have been mentioned and discussed quite a lot in general linguistic works with many different theoretical concepts, but the author has summarized and clarified them both in terms of theory and linguistic data. Inheriting the concept that “the social nature of language is a fundamental issue for all linguistic theories”, the author believes that “the communicative function, the instrumental function of thinking and the symbolic nature of language… are closely linked together on the common foundation of the social nature of language” (p.25), and therefore, to understand the social nature of language, it is necessary to first analyze the functions of language, as well as to understand the symbolic nature of language, it is necessary to consider it in relation to the communicative function and the instrumental function of thinking. On the basis of that theory, the author presented and discussed in more depth the issues of the communicative function of language (why language has a communicative function, the nature of communication activities, human information and communication, elements of communication activities, etc.), the symbolic nature of language (symbols as a means of communication, types of symbols, the nature of symbols and ways of analysis) and especially the issue of the relationship between language and thinking (the reflective function of thinking, language as a reflective tool, the manifestations of the relationship between language and thinking in language, etc.). The author devoted more than 100 pages of chapter 4 to presenting and discussing this important but also quite complicated issue. Assuming that “the relationship between language and thinking is very close but not identical”, in which “thinking is the goal and language is the means”, the author affirms that “the relationship between language and thinking is the most essential relationship because it covers and affects all linguistic phenomena” (p.85), “therefore, all linguistic events can only be explained from the relationship between language and thinking” (p.93). All other specific issues related to the relationship between language and thinking expressed through language (structure, function, politeness and communication strategies, modality, figurative thinking and artistic creativity) are all perceived and explained from these important theoretical premises.

The second and third contents of the book - issues of system, structure and mechanism of language operation, are presented concisely in chapter 5. Here, in addition to re-introducing general concepts related to the system - structure of language (such as language system, language structure, relationships in language, language levels and related units), the author focuses on discussing and clarifying the "mechanism of language operation" as "the mode of operation of the language system" (p. 219), expressed through the mechanism of language and speech, the mechanism of combination and selection (F.de Saussure), the mechanism of language function and prosody (N. Chomsky), the mechanism of speech act (JL Austin, JR Searle and other authors), thereby connecting the research achievements on the system - structure of language with the research on the function and operation of language of modern linguistics. At first glance, the length of chapter 5 (only about 50 pages) seems to attract little attention from the author. However, after reading carefully, it is understandable why the author chose to present it in this way. Firstly, because the general theoretical contents related to the characteristics of the system - structure and mechanism of language have been presented quite thoroughly in many works on General Linguistics, Introduction to Linguistics, and even thematic monographs, making the author feel that “it is not necessary to rewrite… issues that may not be better presented than those of his colleagues” (p. 12). However, the second, more important reason, in our opinion, is that presenting these issues in a general way is only suitable for a work on introductory linguistics, but not suitable for a theoretical work on general linguistics. In fact, all theoretical issues on the system – structure and mechanism of language operation are closely linked to the schools of linguistics, so they cannot be presented separately from the concepts of these schools. And that is also the reason why the author devotes the remaining chapters to content 4 – presenting and discussing in detail the approaches and research methodologies of linguistics, thereby once again clarifying the issues on the system – structure and mechanism of language operation.

In this fourth part of the book, so that readers can immediately approach the methodology and theoretical premises of modern linguistics, the author begins by introducing the basic theses on language and linguistics of F. de Saussure, the founder of the structural-systemic theory of language (chapter 6) and the basic linguistic theses of N. Chomsky, the father of the theory of Generative Linguistics (chapter 7), before recalling the characteristics of Traditional Linguistics (chapter 8). Next, the author also devotes an appropriate amount of space to presenting the basic concepts and methodological issues of Structural Linguistics (chapter 9), Functional Linguistics (chapter 10), Functional Grammar (chapter 11) and Applied Linguistics (chapter 12). Here, what is special is that although most of the chapters are named and arranged in the order of linguistic schools or theories, in terms of content, the author has "avoided the presentation in the form of writing the history of linguistics, but deliberately selected the most key issues of theory and research methodology as the focus of introduction", as the author himself identified in the preface (p.8). For example, introducing N. Chomsky and Generative Grammar, the author focuses on N. Chomsky's concept of language (with the focal points being language acquisition, the distinction between universal grammar and specific grammar, between functional and prosodic language) and Chomsky's theoretical models of language in the early stages (Transformational Grammar 1, Standard Theory, Extended Standard Theory) which the author calls linguistic forms. In presenting Structural Linguistics, the author focuses on clarifying the context of appearance, the main ideas and representatives of the two schools of Structural Linguistics, European (Prague School) and American (American Descriptivism), and the main methodological issues (distributional method and direct componential analysis method). With Functional Linguistics, the author chooses the focus of presentation according to both research trends (functional trends of the Prague School, Relational Grammar, Case Grammar) and the system of research problems (speech acts, sentences and sentence meanings, categories of expressive meaning, etc.). This combined presentation according to both historical trends (research trends) and the system of problems gives the reader a fairly comprehensive picture of the relevant issues, although it is not always easy to follow.

Another advantage of the book is that in addition to providing readers with a comprehensive and specific theoretical knowledge system on general linguistics, in many issues, the author has applied general theory to help readers understand clearly the issues of Vietnamese linguistics and Vietnamese practice. This can be clearly seen through the author's vivid writings on the relationship between language and thinking with the structure and function of language in general and Vietnamese in particular (chapter 4), on the influence of linguistic theories on Vietnamese linguistics, from traditional linguistics and structuralism to different trends of functionalism and functional grammar (from chapters 8 to chapter 11).

The book has a fairly tight structure, the content of the chapters is logically and coherently linked together. The style of the book is academic and scientific but also easy to understand and highly pedagogical because there is always a combination of theoretical presentation with the author's analytical and evaluative opinions, with specific examples taken from the practice of Vietnamese and other languages. Of course, here and there in the book, readers can see that there are other more reasonable arrangements, or want the author to present more thoroughly, clearly, and even more up-to-date. I think that with a work of more than 500 pages, referring to most of the important contents in the general theory of linguistics from traditional to modern, although according to the author's assessment, it is only in draft form, such shortcomings, if any, are difficult to avoid.

We valueGeneral Linguistics – The Essentialsby Prof. Dinh Van Duc is a valuable scientific work and a general linguistics textbook with high pedagogical value. It can be affirmed that this is a truly necessary book for scientists, PhD students, university students and linguistics students as well as for all those who love linguistics and want to understand more deeply about language and linguistics. We respectfully introduce it to readers.

Canberra, August 2013