Understanding Communication: Signs, Context, and Language Levels
Understanding Communication: Signs and Systems
Code: Signs and systems for combined rules.
Location: The extralinguistic circumstances surrounding the communication.
Context: Linguistic elements around the communication influence it.
Noise: Any item that hinders communication.
Redundancy: Repetitive elements in communication that try to avoid noise.
Sign: A perceptual material element that replaces reality and acquires meaning in connection with that reality. It consists of a signifier and signified.
Morphosyntactic Level
The report considers the various forms of words and the functions they perform in a sentence. Analysis separates form (morphology) from function (syntax).
- Words: A unit formed by one or more monemes.
- Moneme: Linguistic units with conceptual meaning and grammar.
- Lexeme: Conceptual meaning: an objective designation, action… Examples include nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and pronouns. They can be independent (not joined to other monemes) or dependent (moneme joined to another to form the word).
- Morpheme: Grammatical meaning: gender, tense, number…
Social Varieties of Language
Diastratic: Influenced by social and cultural circumstances.
Diaphasic: Derived from the speaker’s intention and the situation they are in.
Diatopic: Different geographical areas where the language is used.
Jargons
Particular forms of expression used by some social or professional groups.
- Professional Jargon: Used in specific activities, such as by doctors or in social policy.
- Slang: Used by marginal social groups.
Registration: Formal and Informal
Formal Registration: Prior preparation, declarative models, polite and logical organization.
Informal Registration: Spontaneity, variety of expressive resources, affinity, and subjective organization.
Levels of Language Study
- Phonic Level: Explores the sounds and phonemes, and other units related to the sonority of the language.
- Morphosyntactic Level: Studies monemes that form words and the functions of words and phrases in sentences.
- Lexico-Semantic Level: Examines various aspects of words: origin, meaning, and relationships between meanings.
Principal Semantic Phenomena
- Monosemic Words: Words with a single meaning.
- Polysemous Words: Words with multiple meanings attributed to a single signifier.
- Homonyms: Two or more different words that coincide in their pronunciation.
- Synonyms: Words different in form but with similar significance.
- Antonyms: Words whose meanings are opposite.
Class of Signs
Signs have a relationship with reality.
- Icons: Bear some resemblance to reality.
- Symbols: Have no direct relation to reality.
Functions of Language
- Representative: Forwarding objective reality.
- Expressive: The speaker expresses their mood and feelings.
- Phatic: Checks that communication between the issuer and the receiver is open.
- Appeals: Heads or attracts the attention of the listener and results in a building.
- Metalinguistic: Used to speak about the language of language.
- Poetic: Draws attention to how the language is being used.