ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the different ways in which human beings have conceived language and how these have affected the strategies that groups have adopted to overcome linguistic barriers and communicate. It provides a modest evidence that shows how teachers of English as a second/additional/foreign language are beginning to address the subject of language as practice and language as system. When societies developed a written form for their language, then it was possible for second language acquisition (SLA) to take place through interaction with texts as well as through face to face interaction. The languages of the more powerful nation states served in turn as lingua francas. The awareness of dialogicality, the creation of meaning in interaction, represents a substantive shift from de Saussure's views on the nature of language. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the legacy of structuralism and its effect on an increasingly interconnected world.
