Structural and Behavioural Linguistics

Structural linguistics is a theory or method of language study and language learning which was inspired by the work of a Swiss linguist called Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who described the structure of our social and cultural life as a system of signs (cited in

Sanders 2004). In his work, ‘Course de Linguistique Generale’, de Saussure described language as:

a socially shared, psychologically real system of signs, each consisting of the arbitrary conjunction of an abstract concept and acoustic image (cited in Godel, 1957, p. 182).

With only publicly observable responses, structural linguists focused on describing human languages and identifying the structural characteristics of those languages assuming that diverse variations existed among languages (Brown, 2007). Structural linguists realised that if human verbal or non-verbal actions carried meanings, then these meanings are possibly made only through an underlying system of distinctions and conventions (Rivkin and Ryan, 2004). To provide a systematic understanding and analysis of the nature of this language system, Saussure distinguished between la langue and la parole (Sampson, 1980).

La langue refers to the potential language system of interpersonal rules and norms that exist in the mind of human beings while la parole is the actual manifestation of this linguistic system into actual human language use (Culler, 2002). The structuralists argue that learning language is about learning its system through mastery and memory.

Sometime after de Saussure’s initial work and to study and compare the system of languages, linguists developed contrastive analysis or contrastive studies to analyse similarities and differences between languages. According to Fisiak (1981), contrastive analysis, for short CA, refers to:

a subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine both differences and similarities between them (p. 1).

CA assumes that foreign or second language learners’ problems or difficulties in learning the target language are caused by a conflict of different language systems between their first language and the target language, such as between grammatical or phonological systems (Richards and Rodgers, 2014). Thus, CA would predict potential problems of first language (L1) interference and address them through English Language Teaching (ELT) material organised around these potential L1 interferences and difficulties that the second language (L2) learners might encounter in the future (Lems et al., 2009). This principle of L1 interference and potential difficulties become the basis of audiolingual methodology and its material, which I introduced in Chapter One and discuss in more depth in Section 3.2. For example, the language teacher would expect that Arab learners of English will

have a problem with the three sounds /æ/ as in sat, /e/ as in set and /ɪ/ as in sit which are represented in Arabic language as /æ/ alif (فلا ) as in qala (لاق.(, /e/ fatt-hah (ةحتف ) as in kana (ناك ) and /ɪ/ kass-rah (ةرسك ) as in rijal (لاجر ). The teacher might focus on these sounds during, say, a whole week until the students could get these right (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). In doing so, the teacher would write words such as the above that represent these sounds in both English and Arabic and indicate the differences and similarities between the two systems to the learners.

The structuralists’ views encouraged several behavioural psychologists to propose a different view about language based on other non-verbal human behaviours. According to Skinner (1974), an American psychologist, “habit formation was a structuralist principle:

to acquire a habit was merely to become accustomed to behaving in a given way” (p. 71).

Based on laboratory experiments on animal behaviour, Skinner described language as a system of verbal operants and proposed a behavioural approach to language study based on a general learning theory of operant conditioning (Brown, 2007, p. 22). Operant conditioning is an approach described by Reynolds (1968) as:

a process in which the frequency of occurrence of a bit of behaviour (utterance/sentence) is modified by the consequences of the behaviour (positive/negative). It consists of a series of assumptions about behaviour and its environment and is concerned with the relationship between the behaviour of organisms (human being) and their environment (p 1).

According to this operant conditioning approach, humans learn a language (response/operant) with or without observable stimuli (environment), and that language is learned when positive verbal or non-verbal responses are reinforced and negative verbal or non-verbal behaviours are punished (Brown, 2007, p. 23). A positive reinforcement is a post-learning event that increases the probability of the learning that preceded that reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is also a post-learning event but instead of increasing the probability of the preceding learning, it decreases it (Brown, 2007). For example, in teaching, language teachers, following this theory, either praise (positive reinforcer) a learning point and strengthen and increase the likelihood of that learning, or frown and reject (negative reinforcer) that learning so reducing its likely re-occurrence in the future and encouraging students to produce a correct response instead (Gage, 2009).

When applied in the ELT classroom, a structuralist/behaviourist teacher would focus on the mastery of the language system defined in terms of discrete units of phonological units (phonemes), grammatical units (clauses, phrases, sentences), grammatical operations

(adding, shifting, joining or transforming elements) and lexical items (function words and structure words) (Richards and Rodgers, 1986). The teacher would present a language point, explain and repeat it with the students, whereas the students would just listen to the teacher, write down structures and examples and drill and memorise these language points (rote learning) (Brown, 2000; Larsen-Freeman, 2000). When these students practise and drill vocabulary and structures in front of the teacher or use them in the future, the teacher either reinforces the students’ use of these structures by various positive reinforcements such as rewards and praises or rejects the produced language by negative reinforcements (Brown, 2007). Based on the structuralists’ and behaviourists’ views and practices, the teacher often becomes a controller and the only knower and doer who transmits information to the students who become passive listeners and repeaters of the memorised and transmitted knowledge (Harden and Crosby, 2000; Collins and O'Brien, 2003). These principles are the bases for several approaches to English Language Teaching (ELT) and learning including the audiolingual method, which I discuss in detail in the next section. So, too, they overlap with aspects of the Quranic teaching and learning I outlined earlier. I develop applications of the structuralists and behaviourists’ views of language classrooms in more depth in Section 3.2 below.

The Behaviourists were criticised by cognitivists who argued for an alternative approach that could account for the cognitive processes underlying language and learning.

According to Brown (2007), both structuralists and behaviourists have suggested a linguistic principle that focuses on only explicitly observable human acts but ignores otherwise the mind and the unobservable underlying principles of language. This criticism led to cognitivism which has its own views of language and learning views and which I present in the next section.