《语言的秘密》'How Language Works' | 语言学 Linguistics

【scroll down for the English version】

欢迎大家收听宁诺UNNC VOICE播客频道新节目，Life-longLearning。本期嘉宾是来自教育与英语语言文学系的史丹博士。她目前在宁波诺丁汉大学负责教授语言和语境、文学语言学以及高级语法等课程。节目中，史丹老师将向我们介绍DavidCrystal所著的How Language Works（《语言的秘密》）一书。如果你也对语言学感兴趣的话，本期节目一定非常适合你。

根据史丹老师的推荐，《语言的秘密》这本书适合所有对语言和语言学感兴趣的学生，她也在节目中提到正是这本书激发了她对语言和语言学的研究兴趣。它浅显易懂，以一种新鲜有趣的方式将专业语言学知识呈现在读者面前。这本书内容范围很广，每一章节都涵盖了语言学的不同方面。同时，因为书中每章内容相对独立。读者可以选择从自己最感兴趣的话题开始读起。所以从某种意义上，DavidCrystal不仅仅是这本书的作者，更是我们“语言之旅”的导游，带领我们从不同角度去理解语言。

史丹博士介绍这本书时，提到了她认为这本书最吸引人的地方在于作者是通过一种非常有启发性的方式进行写作的，做到了用最简单的词语和平白的文字来讲述宏大的故事。作者运用日常生活中的现象和随处可见的例子，通过平白如画的简单词汇及日常用语，真正揭开了我们每天“所说、所写、所读”语言的神秘面纱并通过趣味易懂的方式解锁语言交流的奥秘。她也在播客中为我们读了一段书的原文：

An alien visitor to Earth might wellwonder what was going on. It would see humans approach each other, use theirmouths to exchange a series of noises, and - apparently as a result of makingthese noises - cooperate in some activity. It would see human eyes look at aset of marks inscribed on a surface, and the eye-owners then behaving in thesame way - going out of one door rather than another in a theater, forinstance. Rather less often, it would see some humans using their hands andfaces to achieve the same results that others obtain through the use of theirmouths. In each case it might think: 'how did they do that?' And in each casethe answer would be the same: ‘through the use of language’.

这本书也为史丹老师的语言学研究带来过不少灵感，因为书中探讨的很多问题都和史丹老师多模态化相关的研究紧密相关。例如，每个人都会通过读和写来交流，但人们如何说、读和写？尽管口语和写作常常都被认为是一种语言表达系统，但这两者之间有着怎么样的不同？电子媒体中的交流与口语和写作存在着哪些差异？《语言如何运作》关注于我们所熟知的领域，比如语言，语言学，语言交流等；然而，在此书中我们可以从“如何”这个角度去重新思考探索我们对语言运用的认知与理解，而不仅仅局限于我们理所当然的对语言本身的定义。

讲到语言学研究，史丹老师提到了两个词，一个是“富有生命力”，一个是“语境”。这两种特性在我们的生活中也经常可以看到。例如，“hello”这个词通常被用来打招呼。然而，当一个学生在上课睡觉的时候被抓了个正着，老师走到他的面前说，“hello”，这时这个词就具有了完全不同的含义。当我们在研究语言是如何起作用的时候，我们是在尝试着去理解人们如何在现实生活中通过语言来达到某种社交目的。当提起应用语言学的时候，我们会说我们研究的其实是真正具有生命力的东西，是处于现实语境中的鲜活的语言，而不是孤立、静止地去解剖语言的不同组成部分。

除此之外，这本书里面讲到的语言学知识，在生活中也会有很多应用，比如我们的日常对话。当对话进行时，我们作为参与者实际上都遵循了一定的“规则”。正如David在书中所指出的，一次成功的对话并不是一场游戏，而是令对话双方都能够满意的“话语交换”。我们知道自己应当何时开口，何时保持沉默；何时坦诚相待，何时三缄其口。我们都处于某种“对话规则”之中，没有人会一直口若悬河滔滔不绝，我们都需要在某些时候让出发言权，允许别人的参与。 

在节目的最后，史丹老师也为学习语言的同学们提出了一些建议。她认为，了解一些能够帮助我们理解语言的知识工具是非常重要的，比如理论性、分析性的知识框架来帮助我们分析真实语境下使用的语言。同样的，大量的阅读也是必不可少的。在阅读和学习的基础上，我们还需要积极去思考，建立关联，观察语言，分析其应用,并探索潜在规则。学习应用语言学帮助我们提升对语言的敏感性，在培养未来语言学家的同时，更有助于我们在现实生活中成为更好的语言沟通交际者。

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Hi there, welcome to the new podcast collection Life-long Learning of the podcast channel UNNC VOICE. For this episode, we have invitedDr. Dan Shi from the School of Education and English. She's currently teachingLanguage and Context, Literary Linguistics and Advanced Grammar for Study andthe Professions. Today, Dan is going to introduce the book ‘How LanguageWorks’by David Crystal. If you are also fascinated by linguistics, thenyou won't want to miss this. 

According toDan, she would like to recommend this book to students interested in studyinglanguage and linguistics. She also mentioned that this is one of the very firstbooks that stimulated her interests in language. The language style of the bookis neat, concise and expressive. It also covers a wide range of topics, witheach chapter discussing a different section of linguistics. And as each chapteris quite designed as a self-contained unit, readers can start from anythingthat interests them the most. In some sense, David Crystal is not only theauthor but also a tour-guide who tries to answer every question that readersmay have ever had from different language perspectives.

Whenintroducing the book, Dr. Dan Shi mentioned that it is attractive because theauthor wrote in a very illuminating way, using small words and ordinarylanguage to tell big stories. Crystal uses everyday phenomenon and examples tounlock the mystery of language which we use to speak, write, read every day andthe secrets of communication in an accessible, and entertaining way. In thepodcast, she also shared a section of the book: 

An alien visitor to Earth might well wonder what was going on. It wouldsee humans approach each other, use their mouths to exchange a series ofnoises, and - apparently as a result of making these noises - cooperate in someactivity. It would see human eyes look at a set of marks inscribed on asurface, and the eye-owners then behaving in the same way - going out of onedoor rather than another in a theater, for instance. Rather less often, itwould see some humans using their hands and faces to achieve the same resultsthat others obtain through the use of their mouths. In each case it mightthink: "how did they do that?' And in each case the answer would be the same:‘through the use of language."

This book alsooffered Dr. Dan Shi much inspiration on her studies in multimodality, as manyquestions discussed in the book are closely related to her research. Forexample, everybody speaks and writes to communicate, buthowdo peoplespeak, read, and write? And how to understand the distinction between writingand speech, though they are usually considered as equal systems of linguisticexpressions? How does the electronic media differ from speech and writing?‘Howlanguage works’focuses on all these familiar ideas, like language,linguistics, communications, etc. But in this book we can rethink them from the‘how’ perspective rather than on the ‘what’ as something that we usually takefor granted. 

When talkingabout linguistic research, Dr. Dan Shi mentioned two words: ‘live’ and‘context’. These two characteristics are also often seen in our everyday lives.For example, the word ‘hello’ is normally used for greeting. However, in asituation where a student is caught sleeping in class, and the teacher comes upto him and says, ‘hello’, the word has a completely different meaning. When westudy how language works, we're not doing this anatomical study of identifyingeach part of language as something dead. Instead, we try to understand the livebehaviors of language, and how people use language to perform their socialactions in real life contexts.

Furthermore,Dr. Shi mentioned that the linguistic knowledge in the book is also commonlyfound in our daily lives, like the conversations we use for communication. Justas what Crystal has said in the book, a successful conversation is not a game,but a mutually satisfying linguistic exchange. We know when to speak, when tokeep silent, when to provide information, and when to hold it back. We allobserve some kind of conversation rule, and no one's going to hold the floorforever. We need to stop at certain points in the conversation to allow othersto come in.

At the end of the podcast episode, Dr. Dan Shi offeredsome tips for linguistic students. She thinks that it is very important to befully equipped with the tools for language understanding, like theoretical,analytical frameworks that can be used to analyze the language in use. And ofcourse, this needs to be supported by considerable amounts of reading, which mayfacilitate students’ understanding. Based on the reading and learning, students also need tobe motivated to think, make connections, observe language in use, and explore underlyingprinciples to offer further explanations. Learning applied linguistics helps studentsdevelop a sensitivity to language in use, and this sensitivity will not only helpstudents grow as linguists, but also as better communicators in different reallife contexts.