THE LANGUAGE IS A MIRROR” METAPHOR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON FOREIGN LANGAUGE TEACHING

THE LANGUAGE IS A MIRROR” METAPHOR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

ON FOREIGN LANGAUGE TEACHING

1.    Introduction

In this case we will discussed about the definition of language that used for communication, Sapir (1921), Francis (1958), Finochiaro (1974) give following definition: “Language is a system of arbitrary vocal and visual symbols used by people n give culture to carry on their daily affairs”. The definition covers three important components:

a.       Internal structure is expressed by phrase “is a system of arbitrary vocal and visual symbols”.

b.      Speech community in given culture is major concern of both Sociolinguistics and Ethno linguistics  

c.       Communicative function of language is most obvious in the use of language to convey the message.

2.    Language, a Mirror of the Mind

In the Chomskyan school, the metaphor “language is a mirror of the mind” lurks in the background rather than looms in the foreground. This second edition that Chomsky (1972:ix-x) explicitly states, “human language should directly reflect the characteristic of human intellectual capacities, that language should be direct mirror of the mind in ways in which other system of knowledge and belief cannot”. He further argues that study of human language is nearly equal to the study of the human essence.

2.1    Chomsky Linguistic Theory as a Reflection of the Creative Mind

Discussing language as a mirror of the mind, it has key concept in generative grammar to the mind. The term generative grammar means a grammar that generates all and only grammatical sentences in any language. In a psychological sense, it is a mental grammar existing in the mind o every adult speaker of any language. Thus grammar is a near synonym of language competence, where it is operation in our mind (e.g. when we’re listening, speaking, reading and writing).

In a linguistic sense, generative grammar is a theory of grammar which purports to describe and explain the real nature of English competence; how it produce all and only grammatical sentences in a particular language (1965: 4). For instance, birds fly. In syntactic competence produces the sentence by observing the Phrase Structure (PS) Rules:

(1)   S à NP VP

NP à N

VP à V

N = birds

V = fly

The PS Rules in (1) are equal to the tree structure in (2) which represents diagrammatically the mental process of producing the sentence.

S

NP                   VP

N                     V

Birds               Fly

The PS Rule in (1) or tree structure in (2) says the following: every sentences (s) consists of an NP subject and a VP predicate. In this particular case, the NP subject consists of only the N birds, and the VP predicate consists of only the V fly. The tree diagram in (2) can produce other sentence with the same internal structure such as dogs bark, plants grow, or stars twinkle.

2.2. Implication of Chomsky’s Linguistic Theory on FLT.

Chomsky theory is mainly concerned with how the mind produces and interprets grammatical utterances: the major concern is thus grammatically of sentence, not the communicative function of language.

Chomsky’s influence on FLT is most obvious through the mediation of second language acquisition (SLA). Acquisition, suggesting that SLA is the study of what is going on in the minds of the learners while they are acquiring an L2 (Saville-Troike 2006:2).

Going into some details of Chomsky’s theory it would be better if S2 learners become fully aware of language use as a creative act and a rule governed behavior . They have freedom to produce their own utterances, but within the confines of L2 grammar- in the sense of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic rule.

3.    Language, The Sociocultural Mirror.

Language is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Chomsky says that language is the human essence, a mirror reflecting the natural creativity of the mind. Chaika (1982:1) states language and society are so closely interwined that it is impossible to understand one without the other. Similarly, language and culture are intimately interrelated. Harry Hoijer (1953) states the linguistic system interpret all others systems within the culture. To expand this idea, we could say that language is in us as much as we are in language.

3.1. Language as Seen from a Sociocultural Perspective

Linguistic relativity is best captured by the neo-Bloomfieldian postulate: every language is unique, structurally and culturally (Kadarisman, 2008).

In spite of its long history, linguistic relativity was overshadowed during the 1960s by the “Chomskyan Revolution” in linguistics and subsequently during the 1970s by the hegemony of generative grammar.

Linguistic relativity should be related to the linguistic universality. The notion of universality is popular in the Chomskyan School, but less popular in the Greenbergian School.

The most appropriate universal parameter to explain linguistic relativity are those proposed by Clark and Clark (1977: 516-517). They should prove very useful in explaining linguistic relativity.

1.        Universal in Human Language

a.         Every language is learned by children

b.         Every language is spoken and understood by adult easily and efficiently

c.         Every language embodies the ideas people normally want to convey

d.        Every language functions as a communicative system in a sococultural setting.

Parameter 1.a it implies that L1 acquisition is pat of cultural transmission. 1.(b) is true with mono-level languages like Indonesia. Parameter 1. (c) and d confined to the universal concept of time and politeness.

2.        Time

Discussing time, between English and Indonesia have similarities and differences. Our experiences are time as day (siang) and night (malam), and in smaller divisions as morning (pagi), noon (siang), and afternoon (sore) and evening (petang). In addition to these conventional division of time, for modern people time in terms of hours. Significant differences show up in greetings related to these time division.

Table 1. “Time” Greeting in Indonesia and English

Indonesia	English
Selamat Pagi	Good Morning
Selamat Siang	Good Morning/Good Afternoon
Selamat Sore	Good Afternoon
Selamat Petang	Good evening
Selamat Malam	Good Night

 What about people’s attitude toward time? Cultural wisdoms are preserved in proverbs. The Indonesian proverb says Biar lambat asal selamat (slow but safe) but in English proverb says, Time is money, the Arabic says Al-waqtu kas-saifi, in lam taqta’hu yaqta’ka, time is like sword; if you don’t cut it off, it will cut you off.

Look at these example, it refer that Indonesian context, this show up in many government offices, resulting in time inefficiency, no sense urgency, and strong impression of laziness.

(16) Mengigat pentingnya acara ini, kami mohon saudara dapat hadir tepat pada waktu yang ditentukan

à Considering the urgency of the (meeting’s agenda, we plead tht you can come exactly at the time designated.

Rhetorically speaking, sentence (16) sounds rather too wordy. It can be made shorthen such as in (17)

(17) Mengigat pentingnya acara ini, kami mohon saudara dapat hadir tepat waktu

à Considering the urgency of the (meeting’s agenda, we plead tht you can come on time.

Interpreted literally and orally, in sentence (16) and (17) would read as (18) a & b.

(18) a. be on time, pleeease!

(18) b. be on time, please

3.  Politeness

Iniversal politeness in language use has been an important object of investigation in the field of pragmatics (Brown an Levinson, 1987). In the language-use perspective, politeness according to these to pragmaticists (1987:3), means appreciation of other individual’ self-esteem or face by means of three strategies, a) the expression of solidarity (positive politeness) b) the expression of restrain (negative politeness) c) the avoidance of unequivocal imposition (off record politeness), for example:

ü    I fully agree with you

ü    I’m afraid my question would sound rather personal

3.2 Implication of “Sociocultural Linguistic” on FLT.

Sociocultural linguistics is used here to combine the social mature of sociolinguistics and the cultural nature in ethnolinguistics. Clearly language as a social phenomenon can be explained by referring to both the determining social factors and the underlying cultural assumption.

            From the writer observation of learners errors, he would say that both Contrastive Analyze Hypothesis (CAH) and Error Analysis (EA)are useful in different ways. CAH should make us FL teachers fully aware of L1 and L2 differences at any level of linguistic structures.