Unit 1

ENGLISH FOREIGN
LANGUAGE

La lengua como comunicacin:

lenguaje oral y lenguaje escrito.
Factores que definen una
situacin comunicativa: emisor,
receptor,
funcionalidad
y
contexto.

INDEX
1. LANGUAGEASCOMMUNICATION
1.1. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
1.2. COMMUNICATION THEORIES
2. ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE
2.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
2.2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE
2.3. CHARACTERISTICS OF ORAL LANGUAGE
2.4. CHARACTERISTICS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE
2.5. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
3. FACTORS THAT DEFINE A COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION
3.1 ADDRESSER. ADDRESSEE
3.2. THE CONTEXT
3.3. PURPOSE
3.4. TOPIC
3.5. MEDIUM/CHANNEL
3.6. CODE
3.7. REGISTER
4. FUNCTIONALITY
4.1. JAXOBSONS MODEL
4.2. HALLIDAYS MODEL
5. THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO FIT
5.1. BACKGROUND
5.2. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
5.3. COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

INTRODUCTION
Language is an essential and characteristic part of being human. We
spend an immense amount of time speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Children all over the world begin to speak roughly at the same age and follow
the same learning pattern. All languages have a similar basic structure and they
are used to transmit our ideas, thoughts and feelings. The ability we have to
understand each other and the society we live in is what differentiates us from
animals.

Communication between humans is an extremely complex phenomenon,

with many variables - the participants, context, purpose and channel are some
of

the

factors

that

are

present

in

communicative

act. Whenever communication takes place, there is a speaker (or writer)

and a listener (or reader) who has a communicative purpose: having a
conversation, giving information, greeting someone, etc and they will
use a medium (channel) for doing so: a letter, face to face, telephone, and so
on.

Learning a second language is complicated, too. Second Language

students have to learn a new system of signs to transmit a message.
Since the 1970s the belief that language is a means of communication
has

inspired

new

approach

English

language

teaching:

the

Communicative Approach. This is based on providing the students with

communicative actives that will develop their oral and written skills. so they can
use

the

language

with

accuracy

and

appropriateness.

This

view focuses on communicative proficiency rather than on the mastery of

structures and vocabulary.

Our current Educational System has incorporated this functional

and

communicative

potential

of

language

in

its

objectives

and

methodology. The ultimate goal is the development of the students

communicative

competence.

The

communicative

competence

not

only refers to the ability to use the language, but also to aspects related
to the communicative context the social dimension of language is also
taken into consideration.

This chapter on oral and written language and the communicative act
is the starting point with which we shall analyse, on the one hand, the
differences of the two means we use to communicate, speech and
writing, as well as the pedagogical implications In the development of
these two abilities. On the other hand, we will study the factors that
intervene in a communicative act, and see in which way they relate to
each other when transmitting a message. Finally, we will study the main
ideas of the Communicative Approach to foreign language teaching. Its
principles

have

been

incorporated

into

our

current

syllabus

design.

1. LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION

1.1. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

Language is the main means by which people communicate. It can
broadly be defined as a system of signs that are combined, with the help of
conventional rules, to transmit a message. However, a recognized problem with
the concept of language is the wide range of its application: some scholars
focus on the general concept of language; some on the formal aspects of
language (phonology, grammar and semantics); some emphasize the range of
functions that language performs, and some stress the differences between
Language and other forms of communication. The following set of definitions
exemplifies the way different writers have attempted to tackle the problem:

Language

is

purely

human

and

non-instinctive

method

of

communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarilyproduced symbols; (E. Sapir, 1921).
-

A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which the

members of a society interact in terms of their total culture. (G. Trager,
1949).

A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length

and constructed out of a finite set of elements; (N. Chomsky, 1957).

Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact

with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary
symbols; (RA Hall. 1964).

A useful approach to language, and one used by most current linguists, is

to identify its essential defining features. The aim is to establish what counts as
a human language, as opposed to other systems of communication. The most
widely recognized comparative approach was proposed by the American
linguist Charles F. Hocket. He made a set of 13 design features of
communication using spoken language, and studied whether these features
could be found In animal communication. He concluded that some animals
shared some of these characteristics when communicating, such as the use of

sounds (birds, dolphins, monkeys and other species). However, most of the
features are unique to human language.

We will discuss some important ones:

-

Auditory-vocal channel: human language is a system of sound signals

used between mouth and ear as opposed to visual, tactile or other
means of communication.

Total feedback: speakers hear and can reflect upon everything they say.

Arbitrariness: there is no link between the signal and the nature of the
reality to which it refers. There is no intrinsic connection, for example,
between the word dog arid the animal it represents.

Traditional transmission: human language is acquired by a long

learning process, which is transmitted from one generation to the next.
Human language is by no means totally conditioned by the environment,
and there is some type of innate predisposition towards learning it.

Duality. The sounds of a language or its phonemes mean nothing

separately but they become meaningful when they are combined with
other phonemes to form words. This organization of language in two
layers is known as duality or double articulation.

Displacement. Speakers can talk about events remote in time and

space.

Productivity. Human language is essentially creative (or productive).

Humans can understand and produce new sentences, thats to say,
sentences that they have not heard or said before.

Structure

dependence.

Language

operations

depend

on

an

understanding of the internal structure of a sentence, rather than on the

number of elements involved. A person cannot learn a language by
mechanical means such as counting the elements of a sentence. He/she
must know how the elements of the structure are related to each other.

To summarize, language is a patterned system of arbitrary sound signals

characterized by displacement, duality, creativity, cultural transmission and
structure dependence. All these features show that acquiring a language is a
complicated process which is unconscious and effortless when children learn

their mother language, but conscious and difficult when learning a foreign one.

1.2. COMMUNICATION THEORIES

Nowadays language is considered a means of communication, not simply
a system of structures and words. Language is an interactive event occurring
between participants.
The branch of linguistics that studies the factors that govern our choice of
language in social interaction is called pragmatics. The field of pragmatics is
fairly new and sometimes overlaps with other areas, such as semantics,
sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics or stylistics. Pragmatic factors always
influence our selection of grammatical structures, vocabulary and intonation.
Language constraints, such as expressions of politeness, conventions of
greeting, leave-taking and so on vary from one language to another, and some
of them are taught to us at a very early stage (for instance, in British English,
the importance of using please and thank you.)
We will now explain three influential approaches on communication theory:
the cooperative principle, the speech act theory and discourse analysis

Cooperative principle.

This is a term derived from the American philosopher Paul Grice, who is
sometimes regarded as the father of pragmatics. Grice emphasized that people
cooperate

in

the

process

of

communication

in

order

to

reduce

misunderstanding. He attempted to specify the principles which underline this

cooperative behaviour, and proposed four maxims or rules of conversation:
-

Maxim of Quantity states that speakers should give the right amount of
Information. A speaker should say neither too little nor too much.

Maxim of Quality states that a speakers contribution to a conversation

ought to be true. They should not say what they believe to be false, nor
should they say something about which they lack evidence.

Maxim of Relevance states that contributions should clearly relate to the

purpose of exchange. Speakers should be relevant.

Maxim of Manner states that the contributions should be clear,

perspicuous. More specifically: speakers should avoid obscurity and
ambiguity.

They

should

also

be

clear

arid

orderly.

These maxims are best regarded not as rules but as implicit principles on
which successful communication is built, Other maxims have also been
proposed: the politeness principle, suggested by G. Leech, and the relevance
theory.

Speech act theory.

The British philosopher J.L. Austin was the first to draw attention to the
fact that many utterances do not communicate information but are equivalent to
actions. When a judge says l sentences you to five years imprisonment,
he/she is not merely saying a string of words: his/her utterance has the same
effect as if the judge performed the action of locking the person up. Austin
called these utterances performatives. He has found three types of performative
acts:
-

Locutionary act. This refers to the literal meaning conveyed by the

words and structures contained in the utterance: Its cold today (a
statement about the weather).

lllocutlonary act. This refers to the act which is performed as a result of

the speaker making an utterance, such as requesting, promising,
warning, welcoming, betting, and so on: Whats the rime? (Requesting
the time).

Perlocutionary act. This refers to the effect the speakers utterance has
on the listener, such as persuading, commanding, convincing, etc.: Go to
bed! (commanding).

One of the most widely-used taxonomies of speech acts is that proposed

by J.R. Sean:
1. Representative. Description of states and events with an assertion: Today is
Monday.

2. Directive. Suggestions, commands, requesting, etc: Please, be quiet.

3. Commissives. Threats, promises. etc.: If you pass rheexarnsyou1lgeta
prize.
4. Expressive. Expressions of feelings and attitudes: The 61m isvs harri&1e
5. Declarative. Marrying, christening. declaring in institutional frameworks: I
declare you the natural successor.

Discourse analysis.

Discourse is quite an elastic term in linguistics. It is often used to mean

any sequence of language In written or spoken form larger than a sentence,
The distinctive feature of discourse is that it stresses the communicative
dynamics of language.
In this sense, discourse analysis means studying all those features which
are part of the communicative act: the context of the utterance, the tenor of
relationships, the mode of discourse, and so on. Of the many types of
communicative acts, most study has been devoted to conversation.
Conversation analysis (also known as ethno methodology) studies aspects
such as strategies for beginning and ending a conversation, changing topics,
and the use of adjacency pairs. These are formulaic exchanges: greetinggreeting, question- answer, apology-acceptance, etc.

Examples:
Greeting: Hello, Tom.
Greeting: Hi, Bill.
Offer: Would you like a cup of tea?
Acceptance: Yes please.

Once we have studied these approaches, we can conclude that they have
a common concern: they see language as a dynamic, social and interactive
phenomenon, whether between the speaker and listener or the writer and
reader. Meaning is conveyed not by single sentences but by more complex
exchanges, in which the participants, the purpose and the situation play a

crucial part. We will see these factors in more detail further on in this chapter.
But first let us analyse the main features of oral and written language.

2 ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE

2.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.

For centuries, written language held a more pie-eminent place than oral
language. It was the medium of literature, and thus the standard of linguistic
excellence, grammatical rules were always illustrated from written texts.

Oral language, on the contrary, was an object unworthy of study, because

it was considered to be lacking In care and organization. in fact. it was said that
oral language had no rules and in order to speak property it was necessary to
follow the structure of the written form.

The supremacy of written language over oral language remained until the
19th century, in which there was sporadic Criticism of this viewpoint. It wasnt
until the 20th century, however, that a new approach appeared. This new
approach pointed out that speech was more important than writing, for three
reasons.
1. Because speech is much more ancient than writing.
2. Because it is developed naturally in children, while writing is artificially
taught.
3. And because writing is a transcription of the sounds of speech.

The American linguist Leonard Bloomfield said: Writing is not language,

but merely a way of recording language by means of visible marks Because of
the emphasis given to the spoken language, it was now the turn of writing to fall
into disrepute. Many linguists considered the written language a useful tool for a
minority writers and scientists. For the rest, written language was considered a
mere reflection of spoken language, being excluded from scientific study.

Nowadays, the vision of both means is changing. Linguists no longer

consider one means better than the other, or one of them to be the reflection of
the other. Speech and writing are different systems of communication, with their
own characteristics and uses.

2.2.

DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN

ORAL

AND

WRITTEN

LANGUAGE.
The most obvious difference between oral and written language is the
physical form: speech uses the form of air-pressure movements and the written
language uses graphs that are marks on a surface.

A great consequence follows this physical difference: listening is different

to reading. Listening to an informal conversation differs from reading a written
text. Speech is immediate, dynamic. transitory and interactive. Writing is static
and permanent, and there is no interaction, in general, between the addresser
and addressee.

The knowledge of the differences between speech and writing will allow
the teacher to design activities depending on the difficulty of the skills that must
be developed: speaking and listening are oral skills; reading and writing are
written skills. We must not forget that in the English language there is a great
difference between the oral and written form, which usually leads students to
having problems when writing, making mistakes such as:
Its a teibol, instead of its a table.
Or pronouncing words as if they were reading in Spanish:
Saying /ouse/ instead of /haus/.
Lets look at the differences between oral and written language, and try to
understand the specific features of each medium.