Feeling for language
A sense of language is the intuitive , unreflective and unconscious recognition of what is linguistically correct (in terms of word choice and grammar ) or appropriate (situational and contextual), or what is perceived as incorrect or inappropriate. It is shaped in particular in the course of acquiring the mother tongue , whereby the child's origin, social environment and education and the corresponding linguistic experience of the child play a decisive role. Through intensive linguistic experience in everyday (also media) communication, which also includes literary and other reading experiences, the feeling for language can also be trained and modified in later years.
The development of a feeling for language in the mother tongue
The acquisition of the mother tongue happens from the beginning in a constant confrontation of the child with his environment. On the one hand, it learns to adapt to this environment as an individual, on the other hand, to influence it linguistically in such a way that its changing and growing needs are satisfied. In the course of this socialization process, it conceptually processes the events of this environment that are relevant to it, including the interaction in linguistic communication processes.
According to the view of constructivism , a child so unconsciously constructs his individual system of regularities in his mother tongue. The result of these constructions is referred to in linguistics as " communicative competence ", the intuitive awareness of it as "feeling for language".
The fact that native speakers generally make decisions in the area of grammar and choice of words spontaneously and, above all, with great consistency, is ultimately the result of man's evolutionary process lasting thousands of years.
Sense of language and linguistic norm
The feeling for language tends to be conservative; it perceives the agreement with the learned and familiar linguistic norms as particularly understandable and apt, the deviating as irritating and unclear or incomprehensible. A conscious examination of language and the expectations of its speakers is represented by language criticism , which as a rule tends to insist on the traditional, and literature , which also includes the deliberate violation of linguistic norms.
Feeling for language in linguistics
According to the definition above, the discussion of the term “feeling for language” takes place primarily in the linguistic disciplines of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics . The relevant specialist literature makes it clear that a feeling for language can hardly be objectified. However, since the 1980s, semantics has dealt with the phenomenon of the blurring of linguistic phenomena (terms, utterances) and thus also makes a contribution to the explanation of the phenomenon of the "feeling for language".
See also
literature
- Helmut Gipper: " Feel for language", "Introspection" and "Intuition". For the rehabilitation of controversial terms in linguistics. In: active word. 26, No. 4, 1976, pp. 240-245.
- Hans-Martin Gauger & Wulf Oesterreicher : A feeling for language and a sense of language. In: Wulf Oesterreicher, Helmut Henne , Manfred Geier & Wolfgang Müller: A feeling for language? Four answers to a prize question (= prize publications of the German Academy for Language and Poetry ). Schneider, Heidelberg 1982, ISBN 3-7953-0272-2 .
- Wilhelm Köller: Philosophy of grammar. From the meaning of grammatical knowledge , JB Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1988.
- Miriam Langlotz, Nils Lehnert, Susanne Schul, Matthias Weßel (eds.): SprachGefühl. Interdisciplinary perspectives on an apparently well-known term. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2014, ISBN 978-3-631-64827-8 .
- Dieter E. Zimmer : Language in times of incorrigibility. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-455-09495-3 .
Remarks
- ↑ Linguistic sense of style represents a special case of linguistic sense in relation to literary communication.
- ↑ See Köller 1988, p. 37.
- ↑ See for example Gipper 1976; Gauger & Oesterreicher 1982.
