| dc.description.abstract |
The challenges faced by international institutions when employees
communicate in different languages
Jabber Babble, University of Academia
Department of Communications
Email: jabber.babble@ac.ac.za
Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex
systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific
example of such a system.
The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Questions concerning the philosophy of language,
such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in
ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while
others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century
philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures
in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky..
Keywords: communication, multilingual, chatter
The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn ̥ ǵʰwéh₂s
"tongue, speech, language" through Latin lingua, "language; tongue", and Old French
language.[3] The word is sometimes used to refer to codes, ciphers, and other kinds of
artificially constructed communication systems such as formally defined computer languages
used for computer programming. Unlike conventional human languages, a formal language in
this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article
specifically concerns the properties of natural human language as it is studied in the
discipline of linguistics.
As an object of linguistic study, "language" has two primary meanings: an abstract concept,
and a specific linguistic system, e.g. "French". The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,
who defined the modern discipline of linguistics, first explicitly formulated the distinction
using the French word langage for language as a concept, langue as a specific instance of a
language system, and parole for the concrete usage of speech in a particular language.[4]
When speaking of language as a general concept, definitions can be used which stress
different aspects of the phenomenon.[5] These definitions also entail different approaches and
understandings of language, and they also inform different and often incompatible schools of
linguistic theory.[6] Debates about the nature and origin of language go back to the ancient
world. Greek philosophers such as Gorgias and Plato debated the relation between words,
concepts and reality. Gorgias argued that language could represent neither the objective
experience nor human experience, and that communication and truth were therefore
impossible. Plato maintained that communication is possible because language represents
ideas and concepts that exist independently of, and prior to, language.[7]
During the Enlightenment and its debates about human origins, it became fashionable to
speculate about the origin of language. Thinkers such as Rousseau and Herder argued that
language had originated in the instinctive expression of emotions, and that it was originally
closer to music and poetry than to the logical expression of rational thought. Rationalist
philosophers such as Kant and Descartes held the opposite view. |
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