1、Introduction:The London School generally refers to the kind of linguistic scholarship in England, a country that has both an unusually in linguistics and peculiar features in modern linguistics. And there is a famous scholar representing the London Schools linguistic points, named J.R.Firth, and he
2、was the first professor of General Linguistics in Great Britain.J.R.Firth was influenced by the anthropologist B.Malinowski. In turn, he influenced his students, the well-known linguist M.A.K.Halliday. The three men all stressed the importance of context of situation and the system aspect of languag
3、e. Thus, london school is also known as systemic linguistics and functional linguistics.摘要：Compared to other schools of modern linguistics, the London School, founded by J. R. Firth, is more interested in instrumentality of language and meaning or function in context. Influenced by Malinowskis theor
4、izing, Firth and his followers stress the functioning of language and argue that language cannot be disassociated from meaning and should be looked at from a sociological perspective. The London School and the systemic functional grammar, which has developed out of the London approach to language, c
5、onsider meaning and function as the basis of human language and communicative activity. The linguistic theorizing in the London style is of practical significance and therefore is more relevant to sociolinguistics, stylistics, literary criticism and language teaching. From the linguistic ideas of a
6、few important figures of the London School, we may see the developmental stages this School has gone through and how the tradition has been established for the academic discipline of linguistics in Britain.1 background of The london school:The london school is one of the important modern linguistics
7、 schools. It was founded in england, a country in which certain aspects of linguistics have an unusually long history, by john rupert firth (1890-1960), the first general linguistics anthropologist and father of the london school. J.R.Firth had established the school together with some colleagues an
8、d apprentice in the university of London and the African institute speech department, since the 1930 s. In 1960, after the death of J.R.Firth, they scattered in the U.K. and Australia and the universityies across the United States to work. Compared to other schools of modern linguistics, the London
9、School, founded by J. R. Firth, is more interested in instrumentality of language and meaning or function in context.From 17 to 19 century, the British empire was expanding territory and the languages, became increasingly complex . It needed to establish the standard English, which could be understo
10、od by all of people and needed to be familiar with the language of people whose national language is not English. Therefore, the British research of the language had its definite practical purpose. The British had made great effort on orthoepy, lexicography, stenography and spelling reform. Before J
11、.R.Firth, Henry Sweet and Danial Jones of had made great contribution to phonetics.2 Development of the london schoolthe development of the london school was connected with several representatives. Their ideas about linguistics had inheritance and development, which represented the germination, esta
12、blishment and development and so on each stage of the London school. Malinowskis “meaning as founctions in the context of situation” was its source of ideas. J.R.Firths “typical context of situation” was the foundation of it. And Hallidays“ systemic-functional grammar” was the development of its tho
13、ught. Then “Cognitive Grammar” of matthiessen, fawcett and others was its top of development, which led the research of the function of language to turn to the cognition. This is a link process, even is a difficult process of language studies have approached the nature of language, which represents
14、its the whole context of linguistics development of thought. In other words , these several representative figures have made contributions to the whole London school linguistics, and the train of thought of the study can be traced to its traditional thought.3 representatives and theories Firth, a yo
15、rkshireman, read history as an undergraduate. he was professor of english at the university of the punjab from 1919 to 1928, and returned in the latter year to a post in the phonetics department of university college, london. in 1938 firth moved to the linguistic department of the school of oriental
16、 and african studies, where in 1944 he became the first professor of general linguistics in great britain. until very recently, the majority of university teachers of linguistics in britain were people who had trained under firths aegis and whose work reflected his ideas. there are many other britis
17、h linguists in this school, such as f. palmer, john lyons, r.h. robins and m. a. k. halliday. firths theory: 1) analysis of language: structure / system; 2) he argues not only social process but also individual human beings are involved in the development of language. he emphasis the personal side o
18、f human being. he did not agree saussuran dictum, langue and parole, language is a set of commensions, and mode of action. 3) speech is the essence of language. 4) language is developed as a result of inter-nature and nurture. peoples learning process of language the target language used by people i
19、n reality.during the development, there were two outstanding aspects that are always associated with the name of firth: context of situation theory and prosody.the context of situation theory is the foundation of linguistics. firth insisted that sound and meaning in language were more directly relat
20、ed than they are usually taken to be. meaning is the focus of linguistic study; context may be employed to be the theory and approach of analysis. meaning does not come from the idea of the word comprised the situation by, or from the relation. Malinowskis theories: (1) professor of anthropology at
21、the london school of economics from 1927 onward. The most important aspect of his theories concerned about the functioning of language . language is regarded to be a mode of action. (2) based on two kinds of observations: first, in primitive communities there is no writing, and language has only one
22、 type of use. Second, in all societies, children learn their languages in this way. (3) utterances and situation are bound up with each other and the context of situation is indispensable for the understanding of words. Halliday has developed the ideas stemming from Firths theories in the london sch
23、ool. His systemic-functional grammar is a sociologically oriented functional linguistic approach and one of the most influential linguistic theories in the twentieth century. systemic-functional grammar contains two components: systemic grammar and functional grammar. Systemic grammar aims to explai
24、n the internal relations in language as a system network, or meaning potential. Functional grammar aims to reveal that language is a means of social interaction.4 Comment on the comparison between firthian linguistics and noam chomskys generative grammarSyntactic analysis in the london style is comm
25、only called “systemic grammar” (other, less significant terms have also been used). a “system” in firthian language, remembers, is a set of mutually exclusive options that come into play at some point in a linguistic structure. this is the clue to london school syntax: like firthan phonology, it is
26、primarily concerned with the nature and import of the various choices which one makes (consciously or unconsciously) in deciding to utter one particular sentence out of the infinitely numerous sentences that ones language makes available. to make this clearer, we may contrast the systemic approach w
27、ith chomskys approach to grammar. a chomskyan grammar defines the class of well-formed sentences in a language by providing a set of rules for rewriting symbols as other symbols, such that if one begins with the specified initial symbol s and applies the rules repeatedly the end-result will be one o
28、f the target sentences. such a grammar can succeed in defining a range of different sentences, clearly, only because in applying the rules one is often faced with choices. but in a chomsky grammar the choice-points are diffused throughout the description, and no special attention is drawn to them. m
29、any choices are made in the constituency base: a given category symbol is expanded by means of braces or commas into alternative rewriters, or brackets are used to show that some element may or may not occur in the rewriter of a category symbol. other choices arise in applying transformations: certa
30、in transformations are optional, others can apply in alternative ways, and (in some versions of transformational theory) there are alternative orders for applying transformations, with the nature of the ultimate result varying according to which order is selected. often it would be the case that som
31、e choice in applying transformational rules becomes available only if certain options have been selected in the constituency base, but a chomskyan grammar does nothing to make such interdependencies between choices explicit that is not its aim. to cite a very simple example, halliday (1967, p. 40) s
32、uggest that one system of choices operating in english main clauses, a system which he labels “transitivity”, provides for a choice between “intensive” and “extensive”. in a standard transformational grammar, the syntactic differences between these clauses would correlate with choice of rewrite for
33、the category symbol “vp” and for certain other symbols in the base, with choice of whether or not to apply the passive transformation, and with choice of whether or not to apply the transformation which deletes the by-phrase produced by passive. no explicit statement would be found in a transformati
34、onal grammar pointing out, for example, that the choice of applying the passive transformation arises only if certain options are chosen when rewriting “vp” in the base, and there are certainly no special names given to the alternative structures which result from the various choices. (occasionally
35、chomskyans do use a special terms to describe some particular syntactic structure, but usually this is a term inherited from traditional philological vocabulary, and traditional terminology provide names for only the most elementary among the many systems defined in a systemic grammar chomskyans do
36、not make a point of supplementing this deficiency.) london school linguists have no interest in asking what particular types of rules are used in realizing various systemic options, since they are not concerned with the question of linguistic universals. in the case of syntax the chomskyans are less
37、 one sided than in the case of phonology, since most chomskyan grammars include a constituency base defining a range of deep structures as well as a set of transformational rules converting deep into surface structures. alongside the notion of “system”, halliday (for example, 1961) introduces into s
38、yntax the notions “rank” and “delicacy”: scale of rank; scale of delicacy and scale of exponence. any grammatical system will operate at a specific rank. if we think in terms of chomskyan hierarchical tree diagrams, halliday is saying, as it were, that sentences can be represented not merely as tree
39、s but as trees which are regimented in such a way that along any branch there are the same number of intermediate nodes between the “root” and the “leaf”. the most important view of halliday is his scale and category grammar, and systemic grammar. he supposed that there are four categories in langua
40、ge: unit, class, structure and system. these four categories are linked with scale of rank, scale of delicacy and scale of exponence. the London school pay attention to pronunciation, semantics, the social dialects and local dialect, explore language, grammar system, a psychological combining litera
41、ry criticism, pay attention to language teaching. For with practical for the target language learners, they is keen to lead.5 references （1）The London school of linguistics; a study of the linguistic theories of B. Malinowski and J. R. Firth by D Terence Langendoen（2）西方语言学流派，刘润清，外研社，1995（3）冯志伟现代语言学流
42、派陕西人民出版社，1999。（4）现代语言学名著选读刘润清，崔刚，外研社，2009It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible. First, I thank Mr Zheng for teaching us this subject and sharing his knowledge with us. Then I can finish this thesis. Second, I cant not forget my parents who give me life and support to give me
43、the chance to come into the college where I can learn more, such as this subject about the schools of linguistics. Finally, I would like to show my gratitude to my roomates for giving me suggest and support to finish this thesis. Lastly, I offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the project.
