the communication process. functions of language

7/31/2019 THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE.

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UNIT 3

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. FUNCTIONS OFLANGUAGE. LANGUAGE IN USE. THE NEGOTIATION

OF MEANING.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS.2.1. Characteristics of communication2.2. Elements in the communication process.

3. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE.3.1. Malinowki.3.2. Bhler3.3. Jackobson s model 3.4. Riffaterre.3.5. Halliday s model.

4. LANGUAGE IN USE AND THE NEGOTIATION OFMEANING.4.1. Language in use.4.2. The negotiation of meaning.

5. CONCLUSION5.1. Implications for second language learning.

1. INTRODUCTIONCommunication has many purposes, including the

exchange of information, the creation and maintainance of socialrelationships such as friendship, the negotiation of status andsocial roles, as well as deciding on and carrying out join t actions.Throughout all of these functions though, we can say that the

primary purpose of communication in our own language isprobably social. In this unit we are going to definecommunication, look at the functions of language, language inuse and the negotiation of meaning. The information that we willbe using is taken from a variety of sources, including Quirk,Greenbaum, Baugh and Cable. Let us begin with a brief definitionof communication.

2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS.

2.1. Characteristics of communicationThere is more to communication than just one person

speaking and another one listening. Communication process isquite complex. We differentiate verbal and non-verbal, oral andwritten, formal and informal, intentional and unintentionalcommunication. In addition, there is human and animalcommunication, and nowadays we may also refer to human-computer communication. From most of its history, the conceptof communication has always been approached from differentdisciplines, such as linguistics, anthropology, psychology, orsociology among others, in order to provide an appropriatedefinition for the term. Still, communication is traditionallyunderstood as the exchange and negotiation of informationbetween at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, oral and written, and production and comprehension processes (Halliday 1973). From this definitionwe conclude that the main features of the communication processare as follows. First, it is a form of social interaction, and


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therefore it is normally acquired and used in such an interaction.Secondly, it always has a purpose, that is, to communicate, totransmit information. Thirdly, it involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity, and therefore, a successful andauthentic communication should involve a reduction of uncertainty on behalf of the participants. Finally, the

communication process involves both verbal and non-verballanguage, such as gestures or body language.

2.2. Elements in the communication process.One of the most productive schematic models of a

communication system emerged from the speculations of theRussian linguist R. Jakobson (1960) who extended otherlinguists models to his theory as we will see later. Its clarity hasmade it become the best-known model to be followed onlanguage theory. Jakobson states that all acts of communication,be they written or oral, are based on six constituent elementsassociated with one of the six functions of language he proposed,to be broadly examined in the next section. So according to him,any particular act of communication takes place in a situationalcontex, and it involves a sender (or addresser) and a receiver (oraddressee). It further involves a message which the sendertransmits and which the receiver interprets. The message isformulated in a particular code, and for the whole thing to work,sender and receiver must be connected by a channel throughwhich the message is sent. In acoustic communication it consistsof air, in written communication of paper or other writingmaterials.

3. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE.It is now common in the study of language to recognize

that, as a system of communication, language has many functions,and that is part of our competence as speakers not only to knowhow to produce utterances, but also how to use them in different

situations of our social life. There have been many attempts tocategorize the functions of language, the number of categoriesvarying according to perspective or discipline. Historicallyspeaking, Plato was said to be the first to discuss andinstrumentalist definition of language, and according to hisdefinition, language primarily serves the purpose of

communication, as it is a linguistic tool. Some centuries later, andanthropological perspective, brought about by B. Malinowski inhis book The problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages (1923),states that language has only two main purposes: pragmatic andritual. For him, the pragmatic function refers to the practical useof language, either active by means of speech or narrative bymeans of written text. The ritual function is concerned with theuse of language associate to ceremonies, and also referred asmagic. Further instances of linguistic and semantic purposes arebroadly overviewed below within othe r linguists models.

From Plato s distinction of first, second and third or general person (related to the Rhetorical Grammar: the speaker,the addressee and everything else), Psychologist Karl Bhler(1923) distinguished three language functions: the expressivefunction refers to the speaker s attitude towards the message, thereferent and the context of communication. By means of theconative function, the message attempts to modify the receptivesubject s behaviour, attitude and it is mainly represented byimperatives and vocatives. The representational function relatesthe message to the reality that the subjects share.

Bhler s scheme was adopted by the Prague School andlater extended by Roman Jakobson. As we have stated before,Jakobson considers that all acts of communication, be theywritten or oral, are based on six constituent elements. In hismodel, each element being primarily associated with one of thesix functions of language he proposed. So apart from the 3functions mention by Bhler (being emotive, conative andreferntial, referring to addresser, addreesee and context,


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respectively), he added 3 more: The Phatic, which helps toestablish contact between addresser and addressee and it oftenconveys ritualised formulae, eg. Hello, how do you do? Niceweather, isn t it? or, to check the channel, Can you hear me?The Metalingualinguistic deals with the verbal code itself. Thespeaker and the receiver need to check whether they are using the

same code. eg: Do you understand? Or Sorry, what did you say?The Poetic function: This focuses on the message for its ownsake. It deals with the message as a signifier within a decorativeor aesthetic function. This is achieved by means of rhetoricalfigures, pitch or loudness.

Jakobson s notion of poeti c language was developed byRiffaterre, He based his theory on the distinction between merecommunication and literary communication, expressing that thecomplexities of expressive and affective connotations must beregarded to ensure understanding. For Riffaterre, the process of decoding a message by the receiver is more important thanencoding it on the part of the speaker. It doesn t matter whatmessage is being sent, it is how it is received that is important. Healso believed that the message was a subjective reality apart fromany scientific or linguistic analysis, therefore stating a criticism inrelation to those who insisted on studying the language in ascientific way, such as Jakobson.

In 1985, Halliday emphasizes the functions of language inuse by giving prominence to a social mode of expression, asregister influences the selection from a language s system.Meaning was considered as a product of the relationship betweenthe system and its environment,. Messages combine anorganization of content according to the receptive needs of thespeaker and listener, and the meaning they are expressing. ForHalliday, there are three macro-functions that, in combination,provide the basic functions on learning a foreign language: theideational, which refer s to the expression of content: speaker sexperience of the world; the interpersonal: establishing and

maintaining social relations; and the textual. Establishingcohesive relations in the sentences of the discourse: linking wordsand relating meaning to context.

4. LANGUAGE IN USE AND THE NEGOTIATION OFMEANING.

4.1. Language in use.In relation to all of these functions of language that we

have just studied we have to say that initially L2 learners will usethe language for the communicative function. As speech is asocial event, it can be learned only through experience withlanguage in use. Rivers (1981) states that we have to distinguishbetween language usage and language use. We may understand alanguage system and be able to combine its linguistic elements toexpress specific meanings, but we may still not understand aword or feel unable to say what we really want to say. From the1980s on, the term use was to be defined within the framework of a foreign-language situation for students to use theirknowledge and ability in genuine communication. In an act of communication, we are influenced by environmental factors aswell as by our own intentions, and therefore, the speakers willselect, according to the circumstances, a set of linguistic means inorder to express their own purposes. They needed to know whichlevels of the language they should use in different circumstancesand how to negotiate meaning by means of asking acceptablequestions. This selection reflects the complexity of the use of human language, as there are infinite aspects of meaning bothwithin language and in the relation between language and world.

4.2. The negotiation of meaning.When communicating, speakers often experience

considerable difficulty when their resources in their foreign ornative language are limited. This effort to overcome


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communicative difficulties in order to secure a mutualunderstanding is known as the negotiation of meaning . This is amajor feature of conversations concerning second languageacquisition, as strategies and tactics are involved in this processon the part of the native speaker and the learner. Since Selinker(1972) coined the term communication strategy , there has been

a steady increase of interest in the learner s communicationprocess. Two main features characterize strategies: first, to bepotentially conscious and secondly, to be problem-oriented, thatis, that they are employed to overcome a communicationproblem. Strategies and tactics can help to expand resources astheir main contribution is to keep the channel open, facilitationthe acquisition of new lex is and grammatical rules. Among themain conversational devices the speaker uses to avoid problems,within strategies we may mention checking understanding,predicting, and selecting a topic. Within the tactics used to solvethe problem, we mainly mention asking for clarification andrepetition, speed reduction and topic switching. Other factors thatmay affect the process of negotiation are the cooperativeprinciple, which points out the importance of being brief, true,relevant and clear: or the turn-taking norms and conventions thatgovern the distribution of talking among the participants in aconversation: they differ according to the type of speech event,e.g. raising a hand, the chairman and they must be generallynegotiated in conversation, i.e., the topic nomination, expandinginformation, using adjacency pairs, indicating comprehension

5.CONCLUSIONSince we are dealing with a communicative approach, it is

relevant to conclude mentioning the objectives that our currenteducational system searches for. First, a focus on fluency topromote an interactive group work in the classroom. Secondly, toprovide students with genuine interactions in order to increasetheir learning in the foreign language. The aims is for students to

acquire a communicative competence, where their knowledge andability in the foreign language will help them get the meaning of asentence, even if the different functions of language make itdifficult. Finally, students are provided with strategies andtechniques to overcome their communicative problems in anattempt to make communication as real as possible in a formal

setting. As the study of the culture is an important aspect of foreign language teaching, the students need opportunities tointeract with native speakers in natural settings through differentactivities such as exchange and study abroad programs. Atpresent, this authentic communicative interaction is approachedwithin our current educational system through projects such asComenius and Socrates, intended to promote internationalexchanges within the European Community, and projects such asPlumier , designed to promote the use of new technologies tocommunicate with other students worldwide. These three projectsare designed for student to practice and increase their learning inthe foreign language.

the communication process. functions of language

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