Sunday, 30 Dec – Tuesday, 1 Jan
Toolan, Michael J. 1996. Total Speech: An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
- Finished Ch. 4: Further Principles of Integrational Linguistics, or, On Not Losing Sight of the Language User
Monday, 31 Dec 2007 New Years’ Eve
Harris, Roy. 2005. The Semantics of Science. London: Continuum.
Got this for Christmas from my lovely sister and brother-in-law. Took it with me this morning and began re-reading it waiting for a haircut.
This is the one work by Harris that Hjørland cites.
Wednesday, 2 Jan
Harris, Roy. 1977. On the Possibility of Linguistic Change. Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press.
Mentioned in the previous post.
Thursday – Friday, 3 – 4 Jan
Taylor, Talbot J. 1990a. Normativity and Linguistic Form. In Redefining Linguistics, 118-148. New York: Routledge.
Re-read this. Quite a good argument for the centrality of “[a]gency, normativity, responsibility, authority, voluntariness, and correctness … in a redefined study of linguistic form” (148).
Friday, 4 Jan
Taylor, Talbot J. 1990b. Review of The Politics of Linguistics. Language 66:159-162. (JSTOR, accessed December 4, 2008).
Saturday, 5 Jan
Harris, Roy. 1983. Language and Speech. In Approaches to Language. 1983. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Succinctly and convincingly illuminates the distinction between language and speech. Comments on the impact of writing on this distinction, of which he actually finds 4 distinctions: physiological, semiotic, executive and sociological.
So we have in English, unfortunately, only two terms in common use, language and speech, to cover four importantly different distinctions which relate to one facet of the logoid activities of Homo sapiens. This would be bad enough as a source of potential confusion, but it is made worse by the fact that modern theorists have themselves often failed to recognize the importance of these distinctions, and consequently have introduced terminology of their own which cuts across them (7).
Well, it seems one of my predictions for this feature within my blog is coming true. Of course, it was such an easy prediction. I am not reading a lot at the moment as I should mostly be writing, and re-reading so that I can write better, hopefully. Shouldn’t be much new reading and all re-readings do not need to be mentioned. If I have something new or more to say, then fine.
I have ordered 4 more “Harris” books in the last few days, though.
1 response so far ↓
1 Some things read this week, 6 - 12 January 2008 // Jan 13, 2008 at 6:29 pm
[...] well with the much more in-depth argument Toolan gave in an article last week on the normativity of language, which is why lay language-users do moralize talk about it: Taylor, [...]