When we talk about John Rupert Firth, we have to know that he is one of the main representative people of Linguistics. First of all we have to clarify the meaning of Linguistics, which, is the scientific study of human language; this science has three branches such as: language form or structure or grammar; this part of the linguistics focuses in the system of rules of a language, e.g. morphology, (the formation and composition of words); syntax (formation and composition of phrases and sentences from these words); phonology (sound systems); and finally phonology (the branch that concerns the actual proprieties of speech). Language meaning resolves ambiguity of the language because it concerns how language employs a logical structure with real world references to convey or process and it also assigns meaning. Language context is influenced by social, cultural, historical and political factors.
John Rupert Firth (1890-1960) was born in Keighley, Yorkshire. Firht´s career was marked by the existence of the British Empire, he attended the local grammar school, studied for a BA and MA in history of Leeds University, and taught the subject in the same University. Before the First World War, he went to India, to work for the Indian Education Service. Also, he had to take military service during the war and returned to the imperial Education Service as a Professor of English University of the Punjab, where he began with his studies of the area’s language. He returned to Britain in 1928 and worked in Daniel Jone’s Department of Phonetics at University College London, interspersing his UCL teaching with part-time work at the London School of Economics, was to become the school of Oriental and African studies and Oxford. In 1983, Firth moved to the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where he was to stay for the rest of his career, being made a Reader two years later and Head of Department in 1941. Firth had experiences in Southern Asian language which made him prosper in SOAS, and the school proved that Firth had an excellent base so they decided to help him in his ambitions to establish linguistics on a firm academic footing. One year later when the Second War began in 1941, he taught intensive courses in Japanese for members of the armed services.
Firth made contributions to the History of
Linguistics when he published The English
School of Phonetics. The article was characterized by the
impression that Firth finds it important to praise the work of those who wrote
in England. While at SOAS, Firth developed his ideas on phonology, which many
see as his greatest contribution to linguistics. The first publication where Firth
set out his phonological ideas is Sounds and Prosodies (1948), however it
is not easy to extract them from the article. His last major publication was A
Synopsis of Linguistic Theory (1930-1955) in which he reexpressed his
phonological ideas. These volumes served as a summary of, and practically
end-point to his career. Then he retired from SOAS in 1956. Firth lived only a
further four years, leaving, many have argued, much unwritten, in part because
he was already quite ill. Firht died suddenly on 14th
December, 1960 in Lindfield, Surrey.
Finally, history of linguistics has been marked by various outstanding linguists
through the world. When we focus on Britain we will be able to find many important
specialists in this area, within it, we should
not forget the great contributions that John Rupert Firth made. After his death Firth
was recognised in Britain as a central, distinguished figure in linguistics and
also awarded honorary degrees.
