Andrea Tyler (2010). Usage-Based Approaches to Language and Their Applications to Second Language Learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, pp 270-291. doi:10.1017/S0267190510000140.
The article examines three usage-based models: systemic functional linguistics (SFL), discourse functionalism and cognitive linguistics (CL), as well as their applications to second language (L2) learning. While SFL is the most developed of the three, CL is the newcomer, and that is the reason why the author pays particular attention to it.
Common aspects of the three models
Usage-based approaches defend that the language of each one of us is acquired as a result of communicative situations with members of our linguistic community where we use language to exchange meanings. These approaches rely in five principles:
- Language is meant for communicating, and is shaped through communication.
- Language happens in a context, which influences in the choices the user takes when she produces an utterance.
- Language is learned. Patterns of usage and frequency play a key role in the learning process.
- Not only lexical items (words, sayings, idioms) have meanings, grammatical patterns also have meaning beyond the lexical items that they are composed of.
- From a syntactic point of view, language has a single level (not sure of what that means, though).
Systemic Functional Linguistics
SFL began with Halliday's work on the 70's, who stressed the communicational function of language and claimed that language transmits not only information, but culture itself. At the same time we communicate an idea or a fact, we also transmit information about who we are, our values, desires, etc. Therefore, each language has a set of genres, each one of them suited for a particular sub-culture (dentists, teenagers, etc.). As a result, each one of us can use several genres, depending of "the hat we wear" on each occasion. There are three main contextual factors that shape genre: field (what we are talking about), tenor (the social roles played by those taking part in the scene), and mode (the rules that set how language should be used in that particular context).
Those three contextual factors are linked with three communicative metafunctions, which exist simultaneously and interactively in any text: ideational (what the text is about), interpersonal (what kind of relationships exist among those who take part in the scene) and textual (about the coherence and flow of the discourse).
My reading of this article illustrates these factors and metafunctions and how language can also be used to make someone realise she is out of place; I can understand the literal meaning of most words, but I am aware that most of the meaning contained in it remains hidden to me, because field, tenor and mode are unfamiliar. I have put it in other words in this tale about the world of sounds and letters.
Depending on those factors and related metafunctions, the user will choose a particular linguistic pattern, within a network of closed systems of options offered by the language she is using, which will be the best suited for communication taking all factors into account. Thus, the form of language depends on the communicative function altogether, and has nothing to do with cognitive or neuro-physical aspects.
SFL focuses on text, because that is where meaning lies. It is not particularly interested in the listener or the role of cognition.
SFL has been applied to L2 learning mainly focusing on genre-defined texts.
Discourse functionalism
Discourse functionalism focuses on the relationships among grammar, discourse and the producers of discourse, but disregard genre. Besides socio-cultural aspects, it also takes into account cognitive factors, such as memory. Iconicity (a resemblance between language and the concepts it represents) would be a proof of the influence of cognitive factors on language, although this proposal has received some criticism.
Cognitive linguistics
This approach also recognises the importance of discourse-level phenomena (whatever they are, since it doesn't appear clear to me reading the text) and iconicity. What makes this approach different from the previous one is its ultimate goal: developing a model of language which will explain cognitive aspects from a neural-physical point of view, as well as human interaction within the social and the natural environment. CL assumes that different areas of language should reflect the same neural-cognitive principles, and looks for evidence for that in psychology and neuroscience.
Thus, cognition would be determined to a great extent by physical and neural factors and their interaction with the environment, both social and natural. For instance, human bipedalism and the way it determines how we interact with our environment would lead to linking erectness with meanings related to resilience in a metaphoric sense. Perceptive factors, such as the ground/figure relation would also reflect on language pattern. Moreover, humans would use their understanding about the natural environment (concrete concepts) to represent internal phenomena (abstract concepts), such as emotions.
In summary, CL claims that cognition is important enough to explain language by itself, with no need to look at additional factors. The key cognitive capacities include classifying, pattern finding, inference and memory, resulting in the conclusion that language learning relies heavily on input frequency. Therefore, CL studies in depth exemplar based learning, abstraction over several instances and automaticity as a result of entrenchment due to input frequency. In this approach, language would be seen as a by-product of cognition.
Another important difference between CL and the other two approaches refers to sensory-motor imagery, which CL believes to be an essential part of human conceptualisation. In other words, according to this approach humans think a lot "in images" and through other sensory perceptions, so language wouldn't necessarily be the main means for thinking. This ability to conceptualise based on resources other than language would influence on language itself. For example, it would allow a speaker to focus on a particular perspective of a given spatial scene in order to choose how she will describe it.
The application of CL to L2 learning is still incipient. It has been applied to vocabulary learning, where apparently learners of L2 which are made aware about patterns of metaphor and metonymy learn and retain new words better. Thus, improving metalinguistic abilities would help to learn L2.
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