9.1: Introduction
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"Language is the way we interact and communicate, so, naturally, the means of communication and the conceptual background that’s behind it, which is more important, are used to try to shape attitudes and opinions and induce conformity and subordination. Not surprisingly, it was created in the more democratic societies." - Chomsky
Language is a central part of everyday life and communication a natural human necessity. For those reasons there has been a high interest in their properties. However describing the processes of language turns out to be quite hard.
We can define language as a system of communication through which we code and express our feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences. [1]
Already Plato was concerned with the nature of language in his dialogue “Cratylus”, where he discussed first ideas about nowadays important principles of linguistics namely morphology and phonology. Gradually philosophers, natural scientists and psychologists became interested in features of language.
Since the emergence of the cognitive science in the 50's and Chomsky´s criticism on the behaviourist view, language is seen as a cognitive ability of humans, thus incorporating linguistics in other major fields like computer science and psychology. Today, psycho-linguistics is a discipline on its own and its most important topics are acquisition, production and comprehension of language.
Especially in the 20th century many studies concerning communication have been conducted, evoking new views on old facts. New techniques, like CT, MRI and fMRI or EEG, as described in Methods of Behavioural and Neuroscience Methods , made it possible to observe brain during communication processes in detail.
Later on an overview of the most popular experiments and observed effects is presented. But in order to understand those one needs to have a basic idea of semantics and syntax as well as of linguistic principles for processing words, sentences and full texts.
Finally some questions will arise: How is language affected by culture? Or in philosophical terms, the discussion about the relationship between language and thoughts has to be developed.