This article is about the approach developed by Roy Harris. For the approach based on Hans-Heinrich Lieb's work, see Integrational linguistics. For the political ideology, see Integralism.
Integrationism (also known as integrational linguistics) is an approach in the theory of communication that emphasizes innovative participation by communicators within contexts and rejects rule-based models of language. It was developed by a group of linguists at the University of Oxford during the 1980s, notably Roy Harris.
The International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication was founded in 1998 and has members in more than twenty-five countries around the world.[1]
Integrationism and language
While the integrationist views of Harris and Dr Adrian Pablé, among others, differ from those who believe that cognition is distributed (e.g. Alexander Kravchenko and Nigel Love), the view on language in the two fields is quite similar. Both sides criticize the view that holds language as an individual internal psychological concern that takes written language as the base from which to begin analysis. Instead, integrationists view knowledge (which includes language) as "(i) linked to an individual's experience, and therefore dependent on the 'evidence available' to that particular individual, but at the same time (ii) unpredictable because any integrational task involving sign-making and sign-interpreting is carried out in actual, time-embedded situations, which are not simply 'given', either."[2] In other words, language usage is intrinsically, and without fail, contextual in all of its uses. Furthermore, Pablé, Haas & Christe[3] question whether language is even amenable to scientific description, based upon its contextual nature. The contextual nature of language leads to a rejection of the notion that language is a 'fixed code'. Harris discusses this extensively:
"When we come across words we do not know, words which apparently did not exist a few years ago, it is difficult to resist two conclusions. One is that if there are verbal 'codes', they cannot be fixed: on the contrary, they must be changing all the time. The other conclusion is that if there are such codes, different people use different ones, and these too change. Until yesterday, mine did not include the word moshpit: today it does. But if the code has the kind of instability evidenced by the sudden emergence of new words and meanings, what guarantee of stability is there for 'old' words and meanings? The integrationist sees none. And if indeed there is none, then it is the viability of the concept of the code that is itself called in question. For it conspicuously fails to fulfill the theoretical function that is required of a code in semantics; namely to provide a source for those publicly invariant meanings that supposedly underpin verbal communication in the community, and can consequently be both 'encoded' and 'decoded' by those who know the code."[4]
Instead of parts of a fixed code, language is looked at as a resource to conduct action with, an idea that echoes the notions put forth by speech act theorists such as J.L. Austin and John Searle, interactional sociolinguists such as John J. Gumperz, conversation analysts such as Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Goodwin, as well as others such as Erving Goffman, all of whom were or are active in fields outside of linguistics, including language philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Harris claims that to not know what a word means is to not know what to do with the words, to not know "how to integrate the occurrence of the word into enough of our linguistic experience to satisfy the requirement of the [present] case".[5] Pablé explores the integrationist views of language in terms of the naming practices related to castles in Bellinzona, Switzerland.[2][6] By asking locals the directions to castles using non-standard names for the castles, Pablé elicited various forms by which the locals referred to them, highlighting the idea that references to the places were "highly context sensitive" and that the "meaning" is created on the spot,[6] and that "speakers always make sense of language in light of their own experience".[2]
According to integrationist principles, the separation of linguistic phenomena into distinct parts of study is a fundamental error in the conceptualization of language. In 'The Language Myth', Harris postulates that the isolation and subsequent segregational approach of orthodox linguistics is a result of the fact of language itself being the descriptive medium for its own study. A problem arises when we consider words as stand-ins for things. When we then have a word for a language, the word misleads us to consider languages to be things out there in the world rather than real time, second order processes undergoing constant adjustment.[7]
Epistemological overlaps
Integrationism overlaps with recent and not so recent epistemologies concerning communication and interaction. It retains an interest in understanding the system of language-making as an emergent, context-bound, and fundamentally human activity. This view is philosophically consistent with sociocultural theories such as activity theory where the historicity of human experience is recognized to have implications on our activities in ways that shape how they unfold.[8]
Integrationist linguistics overlaps with pragmatic and phenomenological approaches such as ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. The latter being rightly susceptible to a written and spoken word bias yet this is not without current attempts to broaden and include a wider range of semiotic contingencies into analyses. The more fundamental overlap is epistemological. Harold Garfinkel's (1994) ethnomethodological policies prioritize the context of interaction with strict objection to analytic presupposed systems of any kind other than that which is made so by the sequentially ordered interactions of participants. Conversation analysts have developed an empirical approach stemming from those policies where spoken and written words are centralized. A recent decentralizing move to the analysis and theorization of multimodal sequential analysis is very much consistent with an integrationist point of view.[9][10]
Integrationism and identity
While integrationism has been in existence for over three decades, advocating against the “language myth”[7] and indicating that linguistic sign alone cannot function as the basis of an independent, self-sufficient form of communication, but depends for effectiveness on its integration with non-verbal activities of many different kinds, some integrationists have recently directed this perspective to revisit another important concept in sociolinguistics – “social identity”.
This integrational view of identity concurs with the sociocultural perspective that identity is not a rigid and static system predetermined on the basis of either social class, gender, ethnicity, age or education, but rather a discursive and constantly emerging experience that is locally shared and situationally evoked. On the other hand, however, stressing that identity cannot be examined exclusively from an individual's integrational practice (including both linguistic and non-linguistic practice), integrationists cast doubt on the way sociocultural approach analyzes identity by specifically questioning three of the latter's tenets: (i) data, (ii) phenomenological inductivism,[11] and (iii) indirect indexicality.[3] They point out an intrinsic controversy that while identity, as the speaker's first-order experience, is highly context-dependent, the attempt to detect identity merely through inspecting the linguistic components in the tape-recorded data and interpret the data through postulating the existence of linguistically pre-labeled “concrete universals” (e.g. ‘varieties of language’, ‘style’) is actually de-contextualizing the speakers’ identity. Also, they identified another conflict in the sociocultural approach of interpreting a speaker's identity between the claim of a socially indexical value of linguistic features (“social marker”) that is beyond a single occurrence and the one of locally indexical value of linguistic features that is analyzable only in term of one specific local context.
Compared with sociolinguistic perspective on social identity, integrationists emphasize the integrational phenomenon that occurs when we converse with each other. Sociolinguists concentrate on how people utilize linguistic structures and items, cultural norms, and macro identities that they are normatively assigned in conversation. Based on utterances, sociolinguists attempt to capture speakers’ positionality and relationality in terms of identity, emergence of identity, and indexicality of the language that speakers used.[12] It is problematic to integrationists that sociolinguists only focus upon what is said. In other words, sociolinguists take language as an independent structure that can be isolated from the ongoing conversation. Integrationists argue that utterances cannot be dissociated from the context where he utters statements. Utterances have to be integrated with the activities, linguistic and non-linguistic, at that moment.
In conclusion, from an integrational view, “social identity” is rather a “meta-discursive label used by lay speakers to cope with their everyday first-order experience”[3] than a term or object of scientific study that is static and communicationally predetermined. In other words, along with their refusal of language as a static code system to be decoded for meaning transmission, they specifically emphasize that identity is not amenable to scientific description, as “sign-making and sign-interpreting are ‘private’ and cannot be detached from an individual's integrational activities in the here-and-now”.[3] The remaining question for integrationists is how to study ‘identity’ then. One suggestion integrationalists may be more up to is to treat what is displayed in the temporal situations as “beings” and “becomings” rather than fixed identities, and study it multimodally, which is to take different modalities and time scales into consideration, instead of merely relying on the pre-labelled linguistic features.
The implications of first-order and second-order language on reading comprehension
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),[13] literacy is defined as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. In other words, the ability to read and write does not only to fulfill one's own need but also to communicate with the community and society where one stays. With regard to it, this section first focuses on the distinction between spoken language (first-order language) and written language (second-order language)[14] and how reading comprehension is achieved, and then aims at the impact of technology-enhanced interaction on reading comprehension.
Traditionally, spoken language and written language are regarded as the two sides of the same coin[14][15] In other words, written language is believed to fully represent its corresponding spoken language. Therefore, educators believe by teaching words, or the symbolization of phonetic signs, students are equipped with the literacy to understand the written texts. However, it is often the case that students have a hard time understanding and interpreting a poem even though they know every single word. The glittering example reveals the problem of treating spoken language and written language as the same and implies the need to treat them differently.
According to Kravchenko, spoken language and written language are different in that spoken language is temporal and local, while written language is atemporal and non-local.[14] The understanding of spoken language relies on the common knowledge shared by the participants who are involved in the conversation, and the cognition required is situated and highly interactional. As for written language, the understanding takes place when the text is written (product) rather than is being written (process). Therefore, it is less interactional. Despite the difference, the understanding of both linguistic systems calls for the appropriate background knowledge. An example adapted from Kravchenko is that if a traveler wants to check in and the clerk tells him/her, “I’ll be back in 20 minutes”, the traveler may check the watch and calculate when to come back for the check-in, so he/she does not have to stand at the front desk for 20 minutes. However, if the traveler sees a note on the front desk saying, “I’ll be back in 20 minutes”, he/she may be baffled due to no point of reference, so he/she does not know how long is needed.[14] This example shows that it takes more efforts to establish background knowledge for the understanding of written language than spoken language. By extension, successful reading comprehension depends upon the establishment of shared knowledge between writers and readers.
With the development of technologies, written language includes not only printed work but also hypertexts. Because of the new genres of written language, new literacy is needed. Kravchenko maintained that literacy is the knowledge of using knowledge, so students have to develop the ability of reasoning and judgment based on the written texts.[14] Jenkins et al. go further by claiming that the form of reasoning plays a more important role than the content of learning in the era of technology-enhanced interaction.[16] To put it another way, the content can be easily stored and retrieved by means of technologies, so the practice of reasoning centers on how to generate, evaluate, interpret, and deploy the electronic resources. Different electronic resources can provide different affordances, so one of the aims of teaching new literacy is to help students develop the ability of knowing what functions that the certain electronic resource is good at. For instance, the text mediation through computers can facilitate the thinking, reflecting, and revising of one's own thought.[17][18] Videos, with the visual and auditory modality, can better help knowledge acquisition than pictures, which have the visual modality alone.[19]
The hypertexts available online enable readers to create their own reading paths and recontextualize the resources of websites.[20] Through the recontextualization, the thematic regions and semiotic formations are more idiosyncratic than fixed. The readers play a role in picking up the meaning through the created reading paths. According to Harris, linguistic signs should be understood with non-verbal activities.[21] In addition to reading the hypertexts, the readers have access to other non-textual resources online, such as pictures, diagrams, videos, etc. The use of those non-verbal semiotic resources within the texts has its function and offers affordances to the readers to make meaning.[20]
Related Research Articles
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and written forms, and may also be conveyed through sign languages. The vast majority of human languages have developed writing systems that allow for the recording and preservation of the sounds or signs of language. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA).
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.
Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past century to encompass most aspects of language structure and use.
A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, it is important to note that written language is not merely spoken or signed language written down, though it can approximate that. Instead, it is a separate system with its own norms, structures, and stylistic conventions, and it often evolves differently than its corresponding spoken or signed language.
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between sentences, sentence fragments, words, or individual morphemes. However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. Likewise, code-switching can occur when there is a change in the environment one is speaking. Code-switching can happen in the context of speaking a different language or switching the verbiage to match that of the audience. There are many ways in which code-switching is employed, such as when a speaker is unable to express themselves adequately in a single language or to signal an attitude towards something. Several theories have been developed to explain the reasoning behind code-switching from sociological and linguistic perspectives.
In sociolinguistics, a variety, also known as a lect or an isolect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety. The use of the word "variety" to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and the term dialect, which is often associated with non-standard language forms thought of as less prestigious or "proper" than the standard. Linguists speak of both standard and non-standard (vernacular) varieties as equally complex, valid, and full-fledged forms of language. "Lect" avoids the problem in ambiguous cases of deciding whether two varieties are distinct languages or dialects of a single language.
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group.
Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event.
In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow prescriptive norms for formal usage than in a casual setting, for example, by pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal, choosing words that are considered more "formal", and refraining from using words considered nonstandard, such as ain't and y'all.
Roy Harris was a British linguist. He was Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall. He also held university teaching posts in Hong Kong, Boston and Paris and visiting fellowships at universities in South Africa and Australia, and at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
The ethnography of communication (EOC), originally called the ethnography of speaking, is the analysis of communication within the wider context of the social and cultural practices and beliefs of the members of a particular culture or speech community. It comes from ethnographic research It is a method of discourse analysis in linguistics that draws on the anthropological field of ethnography. Unlike ethnography proper, though, EOC takes into account both the communicative form, which may include but is not limited to spoken language, and its function within the given culture.
Language ideology is, within anthropology, sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies, any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their social worlds. Language ideologies are conceptualizations about languages, speakers, and discursive practices. Like other kinds of ideologies, language ideologies are influenced by political and moral interests, and they are shaped in a cultural setting. When recognized and explored, language ideologies expose how the speakers' linguistic beliefs are linked to the broader social and cultural systems to which they belong, illustrating how the systems beget such beliefs. By doing so, language ideologies link implicit and explicit assumptions about a language or language in general to their social experience as well as their political and economic interests.
In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a focal event, in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind. Context is "a frame that surrounds the event and provides resources for its appropriate interpretation". It is thus a relative concept, only definable with respect to some focal event within a frame, not independently of that frame.
Social semiotics is a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice. Semiotics, as originally defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, is "the science of the life of signs in society". Social semiotics expands on Saussure's founding insights by exploring the implications of the fact that the "codes" of language and communication are formed by social processes. The crucial implication here is that meanings and semiotic systems are shaped by relations of power, and that as power shifts in society, our languages and other systems of socially accepted meanings can and do change.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language.
Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence was written and published in 1991 by Raymond Keith Gilyard. Gilyard's autoethnography offers a poignant portrayal of his life as a student in the American public school system during childhood and adolescence. The chapters vary between narrative stories of how Gilyard communicates in different social situations and scholastic analyses of those experiences.
Integrational Linguistics (IL) is a general approach to linguistics that has been developed by the German linguist Hans-Heinrich Lieb and others since the late 1960s. The term "Integrational Linguistics" as a name for this approach has been used in publications since 1977 and antedates the use of the same term for integrationism, an unrelated approach developed by Roy Harris. Integrational Linguistics continues being developed by an open group of linguists from various countries.
Cognitive sociolinguistics is an emerging field of linguistics that aims to account for linguistic variation in social settings with a cognitive explanatory framework. The goal of cognitive sociolinguists is to build a mental model of society, individuals, institutions and their relations to one another. Cognitive sociolinguists also strive to combine theories and methods used in cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics to provide a more productive framework for future research on language variation. This burgeoning field concerning social implications on cognitive linguistics has yet received universal recognition.
Harris, Roy (2000). Rethinking Writing, London, Athlone. Integrationist critique of the traditional Western concept of writing as a representation of speech.
Harris, Roy (ed.) (2002). The Language Myth in Western Culture, London, Curzon. Papers from the first IAISLC international conference.
Harris, Roy (2005). The Semantics of Science, London, Continuum.
Kalyuga, S., Ayres, P., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2003). The expertise reversal effect. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 23–31.
Kravchenko, A. V. (2009). The experiential basis of speech and writing as different cognitive domains. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17(3), 527-548.
Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Lotman, Y. M. (1988). Text within a text. Soviet Psychology, 26(3), 32-51.
Love, Nigel (2004). Cognition and the language myth. Language Sciences 26,525–544.
Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pablé, Adrian (2009). The ‘dialect myth’ and socio-onomastics. The names of the castles of Bellinzona in an integrational perspective. Language & Communication 29 (2009) 152–165.
Pablé, Adrian (2009). Language, knowledge and reality: The integrationist on name variation. Language & Communication 30 (2010) 109–122.
Pablé, Adrian, Haas, Marc, & Christe, Noël. (2010). Language and social identity: An integrationist critique. Language Science, 32, 671-676.
Spurrett, D. (ed.) (2004). Distributed Cognition and Integrational Linguistics. Special issue of Language Sciences. Vol.26. 6.
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