Communication Elements, Functions, and Linguistic Signs
Elements of Communication
- Issuer: The one who initiates the communication and sends the first message.
- Receiver: The recipient of the sender’s message.
- Message: The content of what is intended to be conveyed.
- Code: The set of signs through which a message is transmitted.
- Channel: The material medium through which the message is transmitted.
- Context and Situation: The verbal or linguistic context consists of the elements in the verbal message related to a particular language segment. The extralinguistic location includes all factors surrounding the act of communication.
Functions of Communication
- Expressive or Emotive: Displays moods, interests of the issuer. Example: “How cold!”
- Appellate or Conative: Messages are trying to influence the recipient. Example: “Let me get your coat.”
- Poetic or Aesthetic: Communication focusing on the actual shape of the message. Example: “It’s freezing.”
- Metalinguistic: The message focuses on the code to talk about language itself. Example: “The word ‘cold’ is a noun, masculine singular.”
- Phatic or Contact: Uses language to verify the proper operation of the channel or to establish or complete communication. Example: “Did you say cold river?”
- Representative or Referential: Concerns extralinguistic context and serves to represent the world around us. Example: “The temperature is -20ºC.”
The Linguistic Sign
Concept
It is a physical reality perceived by the senses which refers to something else and is used to convey information about what is represented.
Types
- Verbal: Classified according to the channel of transmission: oral (phonemes), basic verbal signs, and writings, which are auxiliary.
- Non-Verbal
- Signals: Directly influence human behavior. Their intention is to create or modify an action.
- Substitute Signs: Represent certain objects, situations, etc. They are classified according to their relationship with the object represented.
- Icons: Signs that refer to their object by virtue of a resemblance (graphs, maps, etc.).
- Symbols: Arbitrary signs whose relationship with the object is determined by a previous law, and represent abstract ideas.
Linguistic Levels
Phonic Level: Phonemes are the smallest linguistic unit without meaning. Morphological Level: Phonemes combine to form monemes, which are minimal linguistic units with grammatical meaning (morphemes) or lexical meaning (lexemes). Syntactical Level: Words combine to form phrases, meaningful linguistic units whose elements are organized. Syntactic functions are performed by phrases within the sentence to which they belong. Phrases combine to form sentences, sentences with prepositional meaning: they refer and preach.
Lexemes
(Root) The part of the word containing the essential lexical meaning.
Words belonging to the same lexical family share the lexeme.
Morphemes
Added to the lexeme to complement its meaning, or to relate lexemes to each other.
- Independent: Form a word by themselves. These include articles, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, and determiners.
- Dependent or Affixes: (Join the lexeme)
- Grammatical or Inflectional: Express grammatical meanings: gender, number, person, time, manner, aspect. These are grammatical affixes.
- Derivative: Alter the basic meaning of the lexeme.
The same morpheme (grammatical or inflectional) can present different forms called allomorphs. Thus, they have the same morpheme.
Simple, Derived, and Compound Words
Simple words are those that have no derivative morphemes.
Words that have prefixes or suffixes are derived words.
Compound words are formed by the combination of words or lexemes.
- Graphically welded words: Latin America.
- Words joined by a hyphen: physico-chemical.
- Graphically separate words: civil war.
Parasinthetic words have a particular structure for implementing derivative morphemes.
- A compound word followed by a derivational morpheme.
- A prefix and suffix combined with a lexeme such that binding to the lexeme with separate morphemes does not exist in Castilian.