difference between literature and language

difference between literature and language

Exploring the Distinction Between Literature and Language

1. Introduction to Literature and Language

The distinction between literature and language is first explored in this paper in the context of its interpretation within English language education. Then, its investigation and implications for literature will be made, and finally, the distinction will be considered for assessing concepts of their reader roles. The relevance of the distinction between literature and language shall be brought into the understanding of English language teaching concepts, for curriculum materials and methods of the teaching of English literature will continue to be developed and practiced in the schools. After all, the differences in the individual approaches to the integration of the literacy abilities of students in language and literature, e.g., in terms of employment effects for the reading of fiction and other types of texts, will be affected.

The distinction in concept between literature and language, and the use of the English language to teach literature in schools, continue to be explored by teachers and literary scholars. Essentially, literature is narratively organized. In turn, language is defined as the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of formal systems of words and the rules of their use. Therefore, language as a tool of literature embodies a compound character. Exploring this compound character of the English language influences the distinction and mutual relation between literature and language. English language teachers must understand the distinction between literature and language, for a sophisticated reflection on this distinction is important to the enrichment of literature and the teaching of literature. There are those who postulate that language and literature are simply interconnected and not distinct as closely related English language modalities. Their notion is that language, particularly its aspects such as words, phrases, and language style among others, forms the genre, and the automatic utterances and microgenetic interpretations of English do form literature.

2. The Nature and Functions of Language

We acquire our language, whether it is English, Mandarin, or Kiswahili, primarily through the community. While there is no simple calculation that will tell us how many languages there are now, it is clear that there are very many – and there are likely to be about 6,500. The number is dwindling because of the dominance or promises of the more powerful languages that gobble up their weaker neighbors and possibly because of a general trend towards globalization as well. The dominating ‘top’ languages, however, have always been engendering languages of communication, more than 1,500 worldwide. In any case, by growing up speaking at least one language, we become talking beings. This is to say that language is how human beings communicate. The verb “to communicate” refers to the exchange of one or more concepts across the boundary of two or more (thinking or talking, as the case may be) beings. It already refers to a very broad phenomenon, which includes such different things as the neuron sending and receiving electric information through threads, animals giving and/or gaining information by body postures (horses with their ears, cats with their tail, humans and other animals as well with their tails), bright neon displays painting through the night to attract a public of bored sleepwalkers, a Christian praying with God, people sending texts or mails or messages or writing on pages, advertising a credit card to a public convinced that acquiring enough stuff will bring happiness, and of course a thousand different kinds of writing. All these things are different when looked at from a sociological or an economic or a semiotics perspective. But from the point of view of language, in all these cases ideas are being signaled or transmitted from one thinking being to another.

2.1 The Nature of Language

3. Defining Literature: Genres, Forms, and Functions

We many times, however, think of “literature” in terms of categories or forms—some of which we had classified into genres in an earlier chapter—as matched to certain functions. These categories may include the epic, the long narrative poem on a grand scale, and the tragedy, a serious play or drama, or there may be breakdowns of those broad categories that include a sense of humor, or the peaceful resolution of a problem. We may also talk about the lyric, which involves the expression of emotion, and the elegy, a poem written in elegiac meter that laments the dead. Someone reading or listening to literature may be performing a number of functions as well. There are some types that include academia (the production of critical or scholarly interpretations), the application of theory, and the creative manipulation of literary forms. Whether known or yet to be discovered, these categories, forms, and functions together play an important role contributing to our understanding not only of literature, but also of language.

In tackling Effing’s argument that literature is the only discipline that doesn’t add any real knowledge of the world, we should take a closer look at the word he uses, “literature.” Before I forge ahead with my attempt to discern a distinction between language and literature, we need to define literature. This is no easy feat, as literature is a broad, encompassing term that includes oral literature, narrative, poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. The definition of literature often engages many kinds of works. As “a body of writing that is considered to be very good and to have lasting importance,” literature is evaluated according both to historical and to contemporary standards. This term may also be used for limited way for writing that is not true or based on facts, or in a scholarly pursuit that entails technical application, like using statistical methods to analyze data pertaining to labor or job performance.

4. Interplay between Literature and Language

The wide variety of literary experiences is often represented by literature from different regions. An advertisement of literature from the West would be able to satisfy the people from the West. Despite the different kinds of literature, they share the same crucial aspect of expression, making literature important. Indeed, it is literature speaking from different cultural backgrounds, where captivating literature is the medium for the expression of experience. The fact that it embodies different styles and also creates exposure to new literary forms vividly portrays the paradoxes of aesthetic language. Since an identification of what makes literature is available among different kinds of literature, it can be argued that literature has an experiential value in the sense of enabling the understanding of the form it takes. Yet, it is the wide variety of literature from various cultures that speaks vividly about the things it explores.

The idea that literature has an experiential value would imply that the creative aspect of language is only found in the various literature available to us. When we apply the ideas about literature to language and through language, there is also value. The deployment of language, or more generally, the written medium of literary writings, preserves the diverse forms of literature, giving different literature unique as well as universal value. The interplay between varieties of literature and language creates a dialogue on these levels between experiences and value. In an effort to grasp the distinction between literature and language, it is natural that we should not stress the function of literature as art. Related to literature as an art, philosophical aesthetics has focused on self-expression, helping to articulate the inspiring and universal value of literature. When using language, however, we are not always involved in an activity connected to art. It is a more universal activity that everyone engages in.

5. Implications and Significance of Understanding the Difference

Moreover, the fact of using literary language is particularly crucial in the description of many types of behaviors and events. Narratives are central to the representation of causal events because they provide specific accounts of who did what to whom when, where, and how. So, arguing that “Coronation Street” portrays “mistresses, kamikazes, guilt, and innocence in a world of moral compartmentalisation and human vulnerability” demands a semantics that discriminates between just characters’ conversations and those of passengers at a railway buffet. Barry Smith has suggested that elaboration of the nature of fictional language and the theories about the real world fictional language is used to describe has some bearing upon the scientific studies. The authors’ own interest arises from examination of a plethora of linguistically-induced practical and philosophical questions such as cross-cultural literary differences; traditions of outrageous philosophy in street directions; evolutionary explanations for cultural that is shaped, not shared association with fictional characters.

Lots of questions in the study of language and literature pertain specifically to the difference between the two. Consider when teachers allocate time to teaching explicit literature study as opposed to generic language study, or when critics attempt to evaluate the worth of a factual claim. Aside from distinguishing between novels, plays, essays, and poetry, much of what these things are about, or what work they are doing, relates to the distinction. For example, what separates the task of literary recognition (asking “What literary work is this passage from, and who is the author?”) from the puny task of identifying laboratory equipment of a particular make and model? What are the philosophical implications of the fact that readers haven’t merely read but have actually carried out successful communicative theories when they describe Hamlet as “a moody Dane, with a large inheritance, in a play concerning his emotional problems”? And what of the status of individuals like Franz Stanzel’s “reflector characters” who are not only properly fictional but who explicitly monitor their own progress through the fiction in which they find themselves?