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in Use Table of Contents
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Language in Use
19-20
THEME A:
USING LANGUAGE TO CONVEY INFORMATION
The units in this theme explore how we use language to convey information to others. Four basic aspects of this process are considered in the first four units, 'Words and actions' looks at the problcms which arise when we want to give an adequate account of our experience. 'Reading and understanding' examines the crucial part played by the reader's prior experience in his understanding of any piece of writing, while 'Judging your audience' looks at the same process from the point of view of the writer, who must always ask himself what prior experience lie can assume his audience to possess. If he is concerned with a sequence of events, a writer is only able to represent a small portion of all that he experiences. 'Reporting events' focuses upon decisions that every writer has to make so that what he selects can represent the whole experience.
The next two units are concerned with limitations inherent in the nature of written language. Language functions very successfully most of the time without there being any need for great precision in the way it is used. 'Language and the Law' and 'Reporting Parliament' look at two quite different areas of human activity where a more than customary precision in reporting what happens is essential.
Units A7 to 10 are all concerned in some way or other with the relationship between language and what it is referring to. 'Operating instructions' looks at the problem of using language to point from the written text to some concrete object in order to convey information about how it can be used. 'Words and diagrams' explores a similar relationship between words and things, but this time the 'object' is represented on the page as a diagram or sketch to which the words refer directly. 'Observing and describing' looks at the relationship between language and what it describes in the context of experiments, where the written record must convey to someone other than the writer a precise sequence of operations. 'New words' considers the degree to which the use of new words is a consequence of the need to make new distinctions in writing up what has been observed.
The next two units, 'Summarising' and 'Making an abstract', explore familiar ground, the processes by which we can represent the substance of a piece of writing in much briefer compass than the original. The aim is to make pupils aware of the basic linguistic processes involved, so that they will be able to develop a general capacity for handling any written text in this way.
The last unit in the theme, 'Sports commentating', exploits all the facets of language in use which the theme explores and looks towards the use of language as an expressive medium.