A Tentative Study On The Commensuration Between Linguistic Signs And Currency

Economic activities are the exchange of value taking currency as the medium; language communication is the exchange of information taking linguistic signs as the medium. Both economic activities and language communication abide by the principle of minimization and optimization, and the evolution of currency and linguistic signs show that they are both the process of changing from motivation to arbitrariness through conventionalization. With reference to economics and monetary theories, and through the comparative study of the corpus of the evolution of English and Chinese, this paper puts forward that there is commensuration existing between economic activities and linguistic sings in their pursuit of optimization, and there is also commensuration in their process of simplification from motivations to arbitrariness through conventionalization. The evolution of linguistic signs improves not only the efficiency of language communication but also the social stability of the linguistic community who uses the language. And the evolution of currency not only facilitates the economic exchanges but also improves the stability of the economic entity of the currency circulation. Although there is a lot of separate study on language communication or economic exchange, there is no available literature on the research of the commensuration from the aspect of the evolution of language and economy. By this study, it reveals the relationship between linguistics and other disciplines, especially there are commonalities between linguistics and economics in theory and value. Moreover, for the students of similar English level, it is of great practical guiding significance to improve students'writing ability by training them to achieve maximum meaning with simplest language in their daily writing.This paper is composed of five chapters:Chapter one is the introduction to this study, including the definition ofcommensuration and the commensuration between linguistic sign and currencylanguage and economy.Chapter two is the literature review, mainly the theoretical explorationsboth home and abroad about this research.Chapter three and four are the main parts of the paper. Chapter threedeals with the linguistic sign and currency, including their definitioncharacteristics, evolution, and the commensuration between them. Thecharacteristics of linguistic signs include its arbitrariness and motivation. Andit points out only after convention can symbols change into public linguisticsigns in a society. From Chinese and English evolution, it is very easy to seekout this tendency, that is at the original stage, linguistic sign shows itsmotivation clearly, but with the evolution and after its conventionalization, therelationship between the object and its sign becomes more arbitrary. Thecurrency is a symbol of value at the beginning, and the currency itself keepsthe real value as same as the currency can stand for, which is similar to othegoods. The motivation of currency is that currency must have real value. Fofulfilling the demand of economy development, currency evolves from oxsilver, gold (the original forms of currency) to paper currency, digital currencyand virtual currency, which is leaving its real value further and further. Themodern currency doesn't keep the natural and rational relation with its valueany more. From this point, currency also shows its arbitrary characteristicsCurrency must follow the rule of social convention, although sometimes this convention is set up by authorities or power. There is commensurationbetween linguistic sign and currency from motivation to arbitrariness throughconventionalization.Chapter four deals with economic exchange and languagecommunication, including their definition, characteristics and the rules.Language communication is the process to transmit information in a limitedtime taking use of informational relevance as concise and effective as possible.Language communication shows its economic characteristics that the speakerwants to use the least and simplest language to maximize expressive effectwithout ambiguity. This is something like in the economic activities, both thepurchaser and seller want to pursue the maximum profit, using the least inputand getting the maximum output. The operator (purchaser, seller in economicexchange, speaker in language communication) seeks for the maximum profitwith minimum input in their actions, which is the commensuration betweeneconomic exchange and language communication.Chapter five is the conclusion of this study, including three parts. TheSummary of Findings includes the commensuration between the minimizationof language and economy (minimum input) and optimization of benefits (theamount of outputs, information transmitted), the evolutionary process ofsimplification and high efficiency of linguistic signs and currency from itsmotivation to arbitrariness via conventionalization. The Implication for theStudy and Teaching of English indicates besides revealing the relationshipbetween linguistics and other disciplines, for the students of similar Englishlevels, the study is of great practical guiding significance to improve students'writing ability by training them to achieve maximum meaning with simplest language in their daily writing. The Limitation and Suggestion for the Further Study includes that this paper mainly talks about the evolution of linguistic signs, and doesn't touch other sides of language. It is only a discussion on the least and optimization role of language communication, and doesn't give a deeper analysis to the economic characteristics of language from the perspectives of psychology and cognition. And with the internet language becoming more popular, linguistic signs show some new tendency, for example the Chinese character"囧"is often used to express a person who is in an embarrassing situation, which shows some original motivated characteristics of linguistic signs. So it raises some new questions, such as the evolution of linguistic signs follows a linear model or a cyclic model. And language communication uses language as medium to exchange information, and according to Saussure's theory, language is only a system of values, so whether there is a kind of value exchange in language communication. This paper can't do any deeper research to the above-mentioned topics.