It is important to be able to combine different perspectives together to formulate a more holistic understanding of the target knowledge. For example, there are the Sociolinguistics who study the importance of seeing how languages are used in a more social context. That is because various social factors such as cultural norms can greatly influence language. Another example is anthropological linguistics. They are the ones who study how language impacts the practices and beliefs a society has. Each one serves a purpose to see how each perspective is able to generate unique insights into a language. They all help us better understand the pragmatics, semantics, syntax, phonology and phonetics especially during certain aspects. Therefore there would be no preference to one disciplinary approach over the others. We would have the ability to combine all the elements each discipline offers to be able to guide us in our learning journey. There are many ways as to how my knowledge of language structures and disciplinary methodologies can impact the trajectory of my learning plan.
By learning a language through the lens of each discipline, I believe I would have a better understanding of the language and also be able to learn more of the culture of that language. For example, for stylistics, we can use that to focus on the grammar rules and how to structure a sentence correctly. This will teach us how to be able to read, listen, write, and speak the language, But then we also take into account the anthropological perspective in order to use what we just learned but in a more social and cultural context. This will demonstrate to me, for example, why in Korean there are different sentence structures depending on your relation to the other person you are talking to. Under computational linguistics, we are able to use technological tools that can help us enhance our language skills. Due to the internet, we have an endless amount of digital sources we can use. If I need help to say a phrase, I would just type it in the language app called Papago to hear how to correctly pronounce words. This is helpful since I am not always with my language tutor.
Overall, it is important to integrate the different perspectives from all the categories from Aitchison's diagram in order to have a more holistic understanding of the target language. By doing this approach, we are able to have more appreciation of the societal and cultural contexts of a language. By applying these elements to my journey of learning Korean, I would become more aware and proficient of the language and use it to effectively communicate despite cultural boundaries.
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