Language and communication
(Womack ch.7)
human communication
any verbal or non-verbal conveying of information or meaning between
individuals
non-verbal means: odors, posture, gestures and facial expressions, touch
or body language
kinesics: study of communication through body movements
language: human ability to encode culturally defined meanings in sound
and to combine units of sound to generate infinite new meanings through
the application of rules (Womack 154)
linguistics: study of various forms of communication (i.e. not only what is
said but how it is said) in terms of their structure, history, social context
and implications for the ability to conceptualize and convey meaning
(Womack 155).
human language is based on biological adaptations and depends on:
brain and ear, vocal apparatus and musculature
Other primates (monkey and apes) have call systems.
vocal systems which consist of a limited number of sounds (i.e. calls)
produced only when particular environmental stimuli are present.
their intensity and duration vary
they are not flexible
they are automatic
thay cannot be combined
therefore they are closed systems
(i.e. one particular sound has only one meaning)
Human language is an open system (i.e. humans can combine a limited
number of sounds to produce infinite new meanings and words)
characteristics of language
blending: act of combining two calls to produce a new call
(e.g. breakfast +lunch= brunch)
duality of patterning :
ability to produce arrangements of blended sounds
(e.g. breakfast & lunch ----> bench, bunch, fun, lust)
conventionality:
words are only arbitrarily or conventionally
connected to the things for which they stand. Words stand for
things because speakers agree that they do (e.g. book, livre, kniga,
kitap)
productivity/openness: The idea that humans can combine words
and sounds into new meaningful utterances which they have never
before heard (e.g. compact disc, virtual reality or "the pink spotted
cow which was a contestant in Big Brother Two sat on Arnold
Schwarzenegger's motorcycle").
displacement: The capacity of all human languages to describe
things not happening in the present (i.e. despite remoteness in time
and space).
(e.g. I did not press my intro class hard enough to read and study
before the exam; I will be more strict in the coming months after the
first exam)
Structure of language:
components of language studied by linguistics:
Sound : phonology
Word structure: morphology
Sentence structure: syntax
Meaning: semantics
Lexicon: vocabulary
A
phoneme:
minimum
unit
of
distinctive
sound
feature
(Bloomfield in Womack 158)
phonemes do not have meaning on their own but can create
meaning when they are combined with other sounds (e.g. f + at=
fat)
A morpheme: the smallest unit of language which has a meaning
(e.g. -s as in dogs means plural, -er in teacher, means 'one who
does')
Language, thought and social context:
Noam Chomsky (1955)
Argues that human brain contains a limited set of rules for
organizing language
all languages have a common structural basis (universal grammar)
evidence: people can learn foreign languages, existence of creole
languages
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:
language determines thought (strong version)
language influences thought (weak version)
(e.g. Hopi language does not distinguish between events which
existed or exist (our categories of past and present. That Is why
Hopi speakers think about the time and reality different than
English speakers)
Criticism: Language, culture and thought are Interrelated but
changes In culture may lead changes inlanguage and thought.
Social context of language:
Variations : regional, depending on the social class or background,
occupational.
Dialects: variations in language related to geographic regions or to
social class. (Womack 161)
code-switching: the ability to switch from one dialect or language
to another in a single conversation.