Understanding Communication: Signs, Elements, and Language Functions

Posted on Jan 7, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

Communication and Exchange of Signs

Communication is an interactive process in which an individual conveys information to another individual who usually understands. This communication process is an exchange of signs, through which information is transferred.

Elements of Communication

• Emitter: The person or persons who produce and broadcast the message.
• Receiver Unit and Receiver: The receiver who receives the message and has the capacity to understand and decipher it. The recipient and the receiver need not match.
• Message: Information that the sender sends the receiver and must be interpreted by the recipient in accordance with its meaning and communicative intent. The message consists of a set of signs belonging to a code, which, combined according to rules, have meaning.
• Reference: Facts on which the message is based.
• Channel: Physical environment for transmitting the message (e.g., paper, air).
• Code: A system of signs and rules for combining them, which makes up the message and should be shared by the sender and receiver for communication to occur.
• Communicative Location: Circumstances (spatial, temporal, personal, and social) in which communication occurs.

The Sign and its Types

A visible sign is anything that represents or replaces an idea, a feeling, or a reality.

• Signifier: Part detectable by the receiver.
• Meaning: The concept or idea associated with the signifier.
• Referent: External reality that the sign refers to.

Senses for Laying Signs

Visual, acoustic, olfactory, gustatory, tactile.

Relationship Between Signifier and Signified

• Evidence: Signifier and signified bear a natural relationship or cause and effect.
• Icons: The relationship is one of resemblance or likeness.
• Symbols: Signifier and signified are associated by convention.

Only humans are able to communicate through linguistic signs, using words whose properties allow the expression of thought.

• Verbal Language: Uses linguistic signs, also called verbal, can be acoustic (oral) or visual (written).
• Nonverbal Language: Uses signs different from words, such as gestures, colors, perfumes, etc.

Properties of the Linguistic Sign

• Arbitrariness: The relationship between signifier and signified is established by convention.
• Discontinuity: The linguistic sign can be segmented.
• Linearity: In oral communication, the sounds are emitted one after another, so that they arrive to the receiver sequentially. In written communication, the signifier appears ordered in a line graph.
• Immutability and Mutability: The linguistic sign is immutable because its shape and meaning are given to us. Over time, a series of changes may alter the sign.

Functions of Language