Verbal and Written Communication

Posted on Nov 8, 2024 in Language

Communication

Communication is the transmission of information from a point of origin to a point of arrival. Verbal language is the principal instrument of human communication in all its forms and is key to coexistence.

Key Components of Communication

  • Transmitter: Transmits the information.
  • Receiver: Receives information and interprets it.
  • Message: The information being transmitted.
  • Channel: The natural or artificial vehicle for transmitting the message.
  • Code: The set of signs and rules forming the message.
  • Context: The situation surrounding the act of communication, which influences interpretation.

Types of Signs

  • Signs: Indicators that maintain a natural dependency relationship.
  • Icons: Signs that have a relationship of similarity.
  • Symbols: Unmotivated signs with no direct relationship to the referent.

Verbal Communication

Oral Communication

  • Unrehearsed and spontaneous.
  • Direct and immediate.
  • Ephemeral.
  • Interaction between sender and receiver.
  • Auditory channel.
  • Affective content.
  • Focus on social and personal relationships.
  • Specific linguistic features.

Written Communication

  • Reflective and thoughtful.
  • Deferred or mediate.
  • Durable.
  • No direct interaction between sender and receiver.
  • Visual channel.
  • No other extralinguistic support.
  • Stored and transmitted.
  • Linguistic features (syntactic structures composed and processed).

Linguistic Units

  • Monemes: Minimal units of meaning.
  • Phonemes: Smallest units without meaning.

Functions of Language

  • Representative Function (Context – Referent): Relaying information on extra-linguistic reality. It uses objective linguistic resources. Example: “Earth is a planet.”
  • Expressive Function (Issuer): The message stresses the feelings and attitudes of the speaker. Subjectivity is reflected by certain linguistic frames. Example: “Bravo!”
  • Appellate Function (Receiver): The intention is to influence the receiver’s behavior. Common in advertising. Linguistic markers include vocatives, imperatives, interrogatives, affective elements, evaluative adjectives, and rhetorical questions. Example: “Order, order…”
  • Phatic Function (Channel): Establishes a communication channel between sender and receiver. Example: “I share your sentiment.”
  • Metalinguistic Function (Code): Focuses on the language itself. Example: “What does the word ‘hello’ mean?”
  • Poetic Function (Message): The message draws attention to itself. Example: “So, forty may not take off his coat.”

Language and Dialect

Language vs. Dialect

  • Language: High degree of differentiation from other languages; standardized grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation rules; literary tradition; significant speech community; may achieve national language status.
  • Dialect: Subordinate to a language; less differentiation; no established literary tradition.
  • Patois: Language used in a specific region or limited area.
  • Local Speech: Occurs in a very narrow geographical area.

Levels of Language Use

  • Cultured Level: Correctness, lexical richness, capacity for abstraction, and literary tradition.
  • Standard Level: Intermediate but formal level; adheres to normative models; serves both oral and written communication; respects lexical and grammatical rules.
  • Popular Level: Used in everyday life; subjective; economical use of linguistic means; frequent appeals to the listener; use of proverbial language.
  • Vulgar Level: Used by less educated individuals; simplified grammar and vocabulary; contains vulgarisms (phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic).

Colloquial Register

  • Dialogic character.
  • Spontaneity and lack of formalization.
  • Combination of verbal and nonverbal codes.

Castilian Spanish

  • Official language of all of Spain.
  • A Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin spoken in ancient Cantabria.
  • Earliest written forms appear in the Castilian Glosses and the Glosses Emilianenses and Silenses.
  • First literary work in the 12th century: The Poem of the Cid.
  • Dialects: Andalusian, Murcian, Extremaduran, Canarian.

Catalan

  • First written words appeared in the 12th century with the Forum Iudicum.
  • Characteristics: Conservation of initial Latin ‘f’; opening of the tonic ‘e’ or ‘o’; conservation of consonant clusters ‘cl’, ‘pl’, ‘fl’; voicing of ‘p’, ‘t’, ‘c’; loss of final vowels.
  • Two types: Occidental and Oriental.

Valencian

  • Originates from the conquest by James I and repopulation with people from Lleida and Tarragona.
  • Romance language with irregular presence throughout the territory.
  • Has its own varieties.
  • Characteristics: Retention of final ‘r’; loss of intervocalic ‘d’.
  • Dialectal groups: Tortosa and Lleida.
  • Belongs to the Eastern form of Catalan.