Some views of language and language learning

This chapter surveys major theoretical perspectives that have shaped the study of language and language learning. It outlines the long-standing tension among empiricism, mentalism, and interactionism, showing how each view has influenced linguistics, first-language acquisition research, and foreign-language teaching. Structuralist and behaviourist traditions emphasize observable language data, habit formation, and environmental conditioning, while Chomskys mentalist framework challenges these assumptions by proposing innate linguistic knowledge, the language acquisition device, and the role of deep structure. Later developments, including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and sociocultural theory, shift attention toward real-world language use, communicative competence, and socially mediated learning. Concepts such as speech acts, the zone of proximal development, and scaffolding highlight the importance of social interaction, meaningful communication, and learner agency. Together, these approaches illustrate the fields evolution from data-driven and innate accounts to socially grounded, interactionist understandings of how languages are learned and used.