Amanda's Linguistics of Particularity

Here are my answers to the questions. Sorry that I don't have a lot of page references; I don't have my book with me and I reached my viewing limits on Google Books.

1. On p. 86, Becker talks about where he first heard the term "linguistics of particularity," from Kenneth Pike. Pike's view of the linguistics of particularity is "that one's understanding of another language, or another person, is a movement from an etic perspective . . . to an emic understanding, a more fully contextual understanding." I had to look up the terms etic and emic to understand this statement. Etic is a description from an observer, and emic is a description that comes from within the culture. In other words, the linguistics of particularity is a study of language where a person tries to understand the details of the language, not just the grammar or the vocab, but the silences, the deficiencies, the culture, and the meaning behind what is being said. This kind of attention to detail, to become a part of the culture of the language, helps linguistics understand and describe the language from an insider's point of view rather than an outsider's. The language of particularity takes into account all of the context as well as the individual meaning of the word or phrase. Becker gives good examples for this with his 4 relations and his discussion of the reasons for including silences as a textual relation. Becker does a great job of illustrating his desire to give a emic description of the language rather than a etic throughout the book - he learns more about the language as he studies their culture (example: the man who told Becker that Becker was ruining the language).
   
2. In class, we defined philology as "the love of language and literature; a rhetorically-based linguistics that is context-based; and the art of reading slowly." Reading texts slowly, to me, does not just mean reading slowly, thinking of the meaning of words, and then moving on. To me, reading slowly has everything to do with the linguistics of particularity. When we read slowly, we take time to find out the context of the words. We take time to see how the text relates to other experiences in our lives or other texts we have read. We take the time to find out about the underlying structures because we love language and want to find out more about it. As we read slowly, we gain more understanding and knowledge about language and about different texts, which gives us more love for language and literature. Knowing what the word means out of context does give it some extra meaning, but knowing what the word means within the context opens up a whole new world of understanding. I like Becker's two examples of the man who corrected his phonetic writing because he said that Becker was hurting the language and Becker's metaphor that he uses of the stage.
3. This new philology helps us to better understand works of literature because, like we said in class, the literature is the interrelation, or the experience, of the text, the reader, and the author. Knowing about the context of a piece of literature helps us understand the silences or deficiencies - bring a whole new meaning or understanding to the text. For example, Dr. Hallen is constantly telling of the background of Emily Dickenson's life, and every time she does that, I get another level of understanding about the poem. As we compare Emily's poems to the bible, there is also another level of meaning. As we talk in class about our own personal understandings, that brings yet another level of meaning. All these levels add to our interpretation and help us to better understand the works of literature. Each of these three things build context and help us hear the silences and fill in the deficiencies - or at least make us want to look more into them - and help us to better understand.