UNIT 3 THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE IN USE. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING.
1. INTRODUCTION 2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. 2.1. Characteristics of communication 2.2. Elements in the communication process. 3. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE. 3.1. Malinowki. 3.2. Bühler 3.3. Jackobson‟s model 3.4. Riffaterre. 3.5. Halliday‟s model. 4. LANGUAGE IN USE AND THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING. 4.1. Language in use. 4.2. The negotiation of meaning. 5. CONCLUSION 5.1. Implications for second language learning.
1. INTRODUCTION Communication has many purposes, including the exchange of information, the creation and maintainance of social relationships such as friendship, the negotiation of status and social roles, as well as deciding on and carrying out joint actions. Throughout all of these functions though, we can say that the primary purpose of communication in our own language is probably social. In this unit we are going to define communication, look at the functions of language, language in use and the negotiation of meaning. The information that we will be using is taken from a variety of sources, including Quirk, Greenbaum, Baugh and Cable. Let us begin with a brief definition of communication. 2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. 2.1. Characteristics of communication There is more to communication than just one person speaking and another one listening. Communication process is quite complex. We differentiate verbal and non-verbal, oral and written, formal and informal, intentional and unintentional communication. In addition, there is human and animal communication, and nowadays we may also refer to humancomputer communication. From most of its history, the concept of communication has always been approached from different disciplines, such as linguistics, anthropology, psychology, or sociology among others, in order to provide an appropriate definition for the term. Still, communication is traditionally understood as the exchange and negotiation of information between 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 definition we conclude that the main features of the communication process are as follows. First, it is a form of social interaction, and
therefore it is normally acquired and used in such an interaction. Secondly, it always has a purpose, that is, to communicate, to transmit information. Thirdly, it involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity, and therefore, a successful and authentic communication should involve a reduction of uncertainty on behalf of the participants. Finally, the communication process involves both verbal and non-verbal language, 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 the Russian linguist R. Jakobson (1960) who extended other linguists‟ models to his theory as we will see later. Its clarity has made it become the best-known model to be followed on language theory. Jakobson states that all acts of communication, be they written or oral, are based on six constituent elements associated 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 situational contex, and it involves a sender (or addresser) and a receiver (or addressee). It further involves a message which the sender transmits and which the receiver interprets. The message is formulated in a particular code, and for the whole thing to work, sender and receiver must be connected by a channel through which the message is sent. In acoustic communication it consists of air, in written communication of paper or other writing materials. 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 know how to produce utterances, but also how to use them in different
situations of our social life. There have been many attempts to categorize the functions of language, the number of categories varying according to perspective or discipline. Historically speaking, Plato was said to be the first to discuss and instrumentalist definition of language, and according to his definition, language primarily serves the purpose of communication, as it is a linguistic tool. Some centuries later, and anthropological perspective, brought about by B. Malinowski in his book The problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages (1923), states that language has only two main purposes: pragmatic and ritual. For him, the pragmatic function refers to the practical use of language, either active by means of speech or narrative by means of written text. The ritual function is concerned with the use of language associate to ceremonies, and also referred as magic. Further instances of linguistic and semantic purposes are broadly overviewed below within other 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 Bühler (1923) distinguished three language functions: the expressive function refers to the speaker‟s attitude towards the message, the referent and the context of communication. By means of the conative function, the message attempts to modify the receptive subject‟s behaviour, attitude… and it is mainly represented by imperatives and vocatives. The representational function relates the message to the reality that the subjects share. Bühler‟s scheme was adopted by the Prague School and later extended by Roman Jakobson. As we have stated before, Jakobson considers that all acts of communication, be they written or oral, are based on six constituent elements. In his model, each element being primarily associated with one of the six functions of language he proposed. So apart from the 3 functions mention by Bühler (being emotive, conative and referntial, referring to addresser, addreesee and context,
respectively), he added 3 more: The Phatic, which helps to establish contact between addresser and addressee and it often conveys ritualised formulae, eg. Hello, how do you do? Nice weather, isn‟t it? or, to check the channel, Can you hear me? The Metalingualinguistic deals with the verbal code itself. The speaker 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 own sake. It deals with the message as a signifier within a decorative or aesthetic function. This is achieved by means of rhetorical figures, pitch or loudness. Jakobson‟s notion of poetic language was developed by Riffaterre, He based his theory on the distinction between mere communication and literary communication, expressing that the complexities of expressive and affective connotations must be regarded to ensure understanding. For Riffaterre, the process of decoding a message by the receiver is more important than encoding it on the part of the speaker. It doesn‟t matter what message is being sent, it is how it is received that is important. He also believed that the message was a subjective reality apart from any scientific or linguistic analysis, therefore stating a criticism in relation to those who insisted on studying the language in a scientific way, such as Jakobson. In 1985, Halliday emphasizes the functions of language in use by giving prominence to a social mode of expression, as register influences the selection from a language‟s system. Meaning was considered as a product of the relationship between the system and its environment,. Messages combine an organization of content according to the receptive needs of the speaker and listener, and the meaning they are expressing. For Halliday, there are three macro-functions that, in combination, provide the basic functions on learning a foreign language: the ideational, which refers to the expression of content: speaker‟s experience of the world; the interpersonal: establishing and
maintaining social relations; and the textual. Establishing cohesive relations in the sentences of the discourse: linking words and relating meaning to context. 4. LANGUAGE IN USE AND THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING. 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 use the language for the communicative function. As speech is a social event, it can be learned only through experience with language in use. Rivers (1981) states that we have to distinguish between language usage and language use. We may understand a language system and be able to combine its linguistic elements to express specific meanings, but we may still not understand a word or feel unable to say what we really want to say. From the 1980s on, the term “use” was to be defined within the framework of a foreign-language situation for students to use their knowledge and ability in genuine communication. In an act of communication, we are influenced by environmental factors as well as by our own intentions, and therefore, the speakers will select, according to the circumstances, a set of linguistic means in order to express their own purposes. They needed to know which levels of the language they should use in different circumstances and how to negotiate meaning by means of asking acceptable questions. This selection reflects the complexity of the use of human language, as there are infinite aspects of meaning both within 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 or native language are limited. This effort to overcome
communicative difficulties in order to secure a mutual understanding is known as the „negotiation of meaning‟. This is a major feature of conversations concerning second language acquisition, as strategies and tactics are involved in this process on 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 communication process. Two main features characterize strategies: first, to be potentially conscious and secondly, to be problem-oriented, that is, that they are employed to overcome a communication problem. Strategies and tactics can help to expand resources as their main contribution is to keep the channel open, facilitation the acquisition of new lexis and grammatical rules. Among the main 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 solve the problem, we mainly mention asking for clarification and repetition, speed reduction and topic switching. Other factors that may affect the process of negotiation are the cooperative principle, which points out the importance of being brief, true, relevant and clear: or the turn-taking norms and conventions that govern the distribution of talking among the participants in a conversation: they differ according to the type of speech event, e.g. raising a hand, the chairman… and they must be generally negotiated in conversation, i.e., the topic nomination, expanding information, using adjacency pairs, indicating comprehension… 5.CONCLUSION Since we are dealing with a communicative approach, it is relevant to conclude mentioning the objectives that our current educational system searches for. First, a focus on fluency to promote an interactive group work in the classroom. Secondly, to provide students with genuine interactions in order to increase their learning in the foreign language. The aims is for students to
acquire a communicative competence, where their knowledge and ability in the foreign language will help them get the meaning of a sentence, even if the different functions of language make it difficult. Finally, students are provided with strategies and techniques to overcome their communicative problems in an attempt 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 to interact with native speakers in natural settings through different activities such as exchange and study abroad programs. At present, this authentic communicative interaction is approached within our current educational system through projects such as “Comenius” and “Socrates”, intended to promote international exchanges within the European Community, and projects such as “Plumier” , designed to promote the use of new technologies to communicate with other students worldwide. These three projects are designed for student to practice and increase their learning in the foreign language.
