TEMA 1

LA LENGUA COMO COMUNICACIN: LENGUAJE ORAL Y LENGUAJE

ESCRITO. FACTORES QUE DEFINEN UNA SITUACIN COMUNICATIVA:
EMISOR, RECEPTOR, FUNCIONALIDAD Y CONTEXTO.

INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION
2. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
2.1 DESING FEATURES OF COMMUNICATION
3. COMMUNICATIVE ACTS AND SPEECH ACTS
4. THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION
5. CONTEXT
6. THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
6.1 CLASSIFICATION OF LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONS
7. VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE
7.1 VARIESTIES OF LANGUAGE ACCORDING TO MEDIUM.
8. SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE.
8.1. SPONKEN LANGUAGE
8.2 WRITTEN LANGUAGE
8.3 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEECH
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. INTRODUCTION

Communication is the exchange of information between individuals by means of a

common system of symbols. When we pronounce sentences in isolation, we manifest
our knowledge of correct English usage. But we are generally required to use our
knowledge of the language system in order to achieve some kind of communicative
purpose.

Three views of language down the centuries have been distinguished:

- Language as product. When we make the language an object of study. We

analyse and examine the system of rules (phonological, syntactic, morphological
and semantic).
- Language as tool. It emphasizes the ways we can use a language to operate upon
the environment. Each language has great potentiality for conveying our
intentions, our personal meaning.
- Language as process/language as activity. It refers to pragmatics and social
psychology. We need to know what levels of language we should use in
different circumstances.
Communication has the following characteristics:

- It is a form of social interaction.

- It involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message.
- Sociocultural contexts provide constraints on appropriate language use.
- It is carry out under limiting psychological and other conditions.
- It always has a purpose.
- It involves authentic language.
- It is judge as successful or not on the basis of factual outcomes.

2. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each
other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols (Hall, 1964).

There are other forms of communication (not human forms of communication) but
language is only a human form of communication.

2.1. DESIGN FEATURES OF COMMUNICATION. LANGUAGE

COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Human language is characterized by the following inherent features:

- Auditory-vocal channel.
- Broadcast transmission and directional reception.
- Rapid fading.
- Interchangeability.
- Total feedback
- Specialization.
- Semanticity.
- Arbitrariness.
- Discreteness.
- Displacement.
- Productivity.
- Traditional transmission.
- Duality of patterning.
 3. COMMUNICATIVE ACTS AND SPEECH ACTS

Information source------Transmitter------(Noise source)------Receiver------Destination

Message Signal Receive signal Message

This is the model of communication system. In this model, an information source emits
a message, which is encoded for transmission as a signal. This signal passes through a
channel to a receiver, which decodes the message for use at its destination.

Speech acts are defined as the simple utterance of sentences. The linguistic who first
talked about speech acts was J. L. Austin (1962). Austin put forward one distinction. He
distinguished between:

- Performative utterances:
- Constantive utterances: