Communication Elements, Signs, and Language Functions
Understanding Communication
Communication is an interactive process in which an individual transmits information to another individual, who usually understands them.
Communication Elements:
- Sender: The person who issues the message.
- Receiver: The one who receives a message and has the capacity to understand it.
- Message: The information sent from the sender to the receiver.
- Referent: The reality that the message is about.
- Channel: The physical medium for transmitting a message.
- Code: The system of signs where the message is formulated.
- Communicative Situation: The circumstances (spatial, temporal, personal, etc.).
Signs and Their Types
A sign is any perceptible element (object, image, gesture, etc.) that represents or replaces an idea, a feeling, or a reality. There are several criteria for classifying signs:
- By the sense in which it is received: Visual, acoustic, olfactory, gustatory, tactile.
- By the relation between signifier and signified:
- Evidence: Meaning and signifier correlate, or there is a natural cause-effect relationship.
- Icons: The relationship is one of resemblance or similarity.
- Symbols: Signifier and signified are associated by convention.
Human Language
Human language can be of two types:
- Verbal Language: Employs linguistic signs (words).
- Nonverbal Language: Uses signs other than words, such as gestures, colors, etc.
Properties of Linguistic Signs:
- Arbitrariness: The relationship between signifier and signified is conventional.
- Discontinuity: The linguistic sign is discrete because it can be segmented.
- Linearity: An ordered sequence of significant components.
- Immutability and Mutability: The linguistic sign is immutable because its form and meaning are given, yet it can also change over time.
Language Functions
- Referential or Representative: To convey information about reality.
- Expressive or Emotive: To express feelings and opinions.
- Conative or Appellative: To draw the attention of the receiver or influence their behavior.
- Poetic: To create beauty and draw attention to the form of the message itself, often breaking the rules.
- Metalinguistic: To treat language itself as a code.
- Phatic: To verify that the channel remains open; to establish, discontinue, or terminate communication.
Synonymy
Synonymy is the relationship between two words that have different forms but very similar meanings. Types of synonymy:
- Absolute: When two words have the same meaning in every sense.
- Conceptual or Cognitive: The relationship between two words that have semantic identity in a particular sense.
- Denotative: When two words share a denotation but do not have the same connotative values.
- Referential: When two words that bear no relation between them are associated at a given time (e.g., Cervantes, the one-handed man of Lepanto).
- False Synonymy: Occurs between words whose denotations bear some similarity but are not truly identical.
Antonymy
Antonymy is a lexical opposition, a relationship between two words that have contradictory meanings. There are three types:
- Complementarity: The statement of one of the lexical units necessarily implies the negation of another (e.g., alive/dead).
- Gradual Antonymy: The opposition of concepts from which we can differentiate levels (e.g., big/small).
- Reverse Antonymy: When two words represent the same reality in a way that implies another meaning (e.g., buy/sell).
Varieties of Language
- Diaphasic Varieties: A speaker does not express themselves in the same way when talking to a child as they do to an adult. The way of speaking depends on the situation and using a proper register.
- Diastratic Varieties: Presented in terms of language, cultural, or social group. This choice depends on two factors: biological (sex, age) and non-biological (level of education, social class).
- Diatopic Varieties: Each location uses a dialect.
Abbreviated Procedures
- Abbreviations: Reducing a word by deleting certain letters or syllables.
- Acronyms: Words formed by the initial letters of a complex expression.
- Initialisms: Words that are formed by one or several letters of other words.
- Shortening: Removing the initial or end of a word (e.g., ‘chacho’ from ‘muchacho’).