Shannon Walker: What is the difference between English Language and English Literature?
I am going to college next year but I don’t know I should pick English Language and English Literature. I am hoping to become a journalist or a writer but I don’t know which one I should take, any help guys?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Courtney
Literature usually involves beigng set novels and studying them. You will study thems, plots and language of the time it was written.
Language is learning about grammar and writing and english in general.
If you enjoy reading, you will find liturature more fun.
Answer by barbara vOne studies language and the other, literature, which are writings by English authors and poets.Answer by LukeyPea
Firstly, if you’re at GCSE, you do know you two exams, one for Language and one for Literature, so you should already know the difference?
Anyways, one of my best friends wants to be a journalist, she picked both plus Media Studies 🙂
Language is writing your own stuff, articles, stories, etc 🙂
Literature is reading, studying novels and poems 🙂
I do English Literature and I really enjoy it, plus it’s easier because reading the book is just like revising whereas English Language requires great effort and a good imagination.
If I was you I’d pick both but if you can’t go for Language 🙂Answer by Amanda
I do both at A level. And you do slightly do English Language at high school, however the english language test you do at gcse is NOT anything compared to language. It is just you writing creatively if I so re-call, such as I don’t know…A leaflet advertising something? Later on you’ll be analysing that leaflet word for word.
Anyway, in language you will pick apart texts and analyse how certain words, pictures, phrases etc. have been used. You also learn about sentence structure, how people speak, why people speak differently, the development of language within an individual and things like that. It’s incrediblyy fun, but it can be hard.
Literature is more creative, however it is still analytical and requires you to read between the texts and also link to contextual evidence. Both lessons compliment each other really well. I don’t think I could havedonee halfas welll in Lit without language, cos rules from that still apply.
Anyway, you should choose what you feel seems more interesting to you. Good luck.Answer by Philip
English Literature is only part of the English Language.
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England.
Literature:
1. writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.
2. the entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc.: the literature of England.
3. the writings dealing with a particular subject: the literature of ornithology.
Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.
Language:
1. a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition
2. communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conventional meanings; speech.
3. the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract ( opposed to speech).
4. any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another.
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.
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