Approaching language as human communication system

In linguistics, the term function has several meanings, including both the structural and the pragmatic function. Structural function refers to elements of language where structure is perceived as a subject or object, or as a doer or goal. Whilst, pragmatic function is about what language can accomplish, such as to convey information, control others’ behaviour, or express emotion, etc. The focus of functional approach, on the other hand, is in understanding the use of language in real situations (namely performance) as well as underlying knowledge (namely competence). For that reasons, the purpose of language is communication, with scope of concern that goes beyond the sentence to include discourse structure and how language is used in interaction, and to include aspects of communication beyond language (Saville-Troike 2006).