1.
THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS
Communication is defined as the exchange of meanings between individuals through a common
system of symbols (Halliday 1985). However, there isn’t a universally accepted definition for this
term. This is because there are over 50 different ways that try to explain communication from one
or another perspective.
From an anthropological perspective, the origins of communication are to be found in the very early
stages of life when there was a need for animals and humans to communicate basic structures of the
world and everyday life. It is relevant to establish, then, a distinction between human and animal
systems of communication as their features differ in the way they produce and express their
intentions.
Regarding the types of communication (Halliday 1985), the field of semiotics distinguishes two:
verbal and non -verbal communication. Thus, when the act of communication is verbal, the code is
the language, which may result in oral or written form, as when we are having a conversation or
reading a magazine. When we refer to non-verbal communication, visual and tactile modes are
concerned, such as gestures, facial expressions, body language, or touch, and even some uses of the
vocal tract are possible by means of paralanguage, such as whistling or musical effects.
The word “language” has prompted many definitions:
• “The institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means
of habitually used oral-auditory symbols” Hall (1964).
• MOST OUTSTANDING DEFINITION: “an instrument of social interaction with a clear
communicative purpose”. Halliday (1973).
In fact, a widely recognized problem with the term “language” is the great range of its application.
However, a useful approach to language is to identify the various properties that are thought to be
essential defining characteristics.
For several millennia many linguists and philosophers have approached the concept of language
from different domains of knowledge, such as philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and sociology
among others, in order to offer an account of the main features of human language in opposition to
other systems of communication.
Among the most prominent features of human language, as opposed to animal communication, it is
worth highlighting
• The auditory-vocal channel that humans are endowed with, in opposition to tactile, visual or
other modes of communication.
• Interchangeability of messages: Human beings are also able to reproduce messages to say
anything in any context (only restricted in certain ceremonial contexts such as church
services, business meetings where a fixed form is expected to be followed).
• Productivity as there is an infinite number of possible messages to be expressed.
• Displacement since we may talk about events remote in space or time, in contrast to other
animals that have no sense of the past and the future.
• Duality as sounds with no intrinsic meaning may be combined in different ways to form
elements with meaning.
• We talk about the concept of arbitrariness by which words and their meaning have no a
priori connection.
1.1. MODELS OF COMMUNICATION
In order to define communication and language as a means of communicating, we shall focus on
different linguistic models proposed by scholars.
SAUSSURE’S MODEL
Saussure (trans.1983) devised a circular communication model on the basis of two premises:
1. The first premise claims that communication is linear in that two people communicate in a
way that a message is conveyed from one to the other.
2. The second premise states that the participants in the communication process are both
simultaneously active, in the way that they do not only listen, but they may answer or at
least show some reaction.
On the basis of this understanding, Saussure shows the mechanisms of a dialogue. There are
two processes within this framework:
1. The first one is phonation where the sender formulates mental signs in the mind and then
gives acoustic shape to them.
2. The second one is audition, and it is the opposite process of the receiver transforming the
acoustic message into mental signs.
JACKOBSON’S MODEL
One of the most productive models of a communication system emerged from Roman Jakobson
(1896-1982). Jakobson’s model clarity has made it become the best-known model to be followed on
language theory.
Jakobson states that all acts of communication, be they written or oral, are based on six constituent
elements. In his model, each element is associated with one of the six functions of language that we
will further analyse, thus referential, emotive, connative, phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic.
Any particular act of communication takes place in a situational context, and it involves a sender (or
addresser) and a receiver (or addressee). It further involves a message which the sender transmits
and which the receiver interprets. The message is formulated in a particular code, and for the whole
thing to work, sender and receiver must be connected by a channel through which the message is
sent. In acoustic communication it consists of air, in written communication of paper or other
writing materials.
2. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
The most usual answer to the question of “why we use language” is to communicate our ideas.
But it would be wrong to think of communicating our ideas as the only aim for which language is
used. Among all the proposals regarding the different functions assigned to language, coming from
linguists such as Malinowsky, Saussure, Bühler, Halliday and Jakobson, we highlight the
considerable impact of Jakobson’s work and his communication model where the functions of
language are for, thus are referential, connative, phatic, poetic, expressive and metalinguistic.
2.1. HALLIDAY’S COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS
For Halliday, there are three macro-functions that, in combination, provide the basic functions on
learning a foreign language. Thus, the macro-functions are mainly:
• Ideational meanings represent our experience of phenomena in the world framed by
different processes and circumstances which are set in time by means of tense and logical
meanings.
• Interpersonal meanings are shaped by the resources of modality and mood to negotiate the
proposals between interactants in terms of probability, obligation or inclination, and
secondly, to establish and maintain an ongoing exchange of information by means of
grammar through declaratives, questions, and commands.
• Textual meanings are concerned with the information as text in context at a lexico-
grammatical level. Phonology is related arbitrarily to this function as its abstract wordings
includes intonation, rhythm and syllabic and phonemic articulation.
On combining these interrelated functions, Halliday proposes seven basic functions on language
use:
1. The instrumental to express desires and needs.
2. The regulatory where rules, instructions, orders, and suggestions are included.
3. The interactional, where we may include patterns of greeting, leave-taking, thanking, good
wishes, and excusing.
4. The personal function which encourages students to talk about themselves and express their
feelings.
5. The heuristic function focuses on asking questions.
6. The imaginative function which is used for supposing, hypothesising, and creating for the
love of sound and image.
7. The informative function which emphasises affirmative and negative statements.
2.2. JACKOBSON’S MODEL OF COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS
Jakobson states that a common code is not sufficient for the communicative process, but rather a
context is necessary from which the object of communication is drawn. Jakobson allocates a
communicative function to each of the components which may be active simultaneously in
utterances. They are:
1. The emotive function focuses on the first person, and reflects the speaker’s attitude to the
topic of his or her discourse.
2. The conative function is directed towards the addressee, and it is centred on the second
person.
3. The referential function refers to the context, and emphasises that communication is always
dealing with something contextual.
4. The phatic function helps to establish contact between two speakers, and refers to the
channel of communication.
5. The metalinguistic function deals with the verbal code itself. The aim is to clarify the
manner in which the verbal code is used, for instance, when the code is misunderstood and
needs correction or clarification through questions such as "Sorry, what did you say?"
6. The poetic function deals with the message as a signifier within a decorative or aesthetic
function of language. This is achieved by means of rhetorical figures, pitch or loudness.
3. LANGUAGE IN USE: THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
Problems of communication affect us all in many aspects of day-to-day living, and can cause
serious trouble. It is incredibly easy to be unintentionally misunderstood, or to speak ambiguously.
According to Crystal (1985), to initiate communication is one thing whereas to make it successful is
another. An excellent example of difficult communication is in the doctor-patient relationship,
where most patients find it very difficult to get the right words to describe their symptoms whereas
for doctors, the problem is to formulate a diagnosis in words which the patient will understand.
Within this interaction, there is a need and a wish for a mutual understanding.
When communicating, speakers often experience considerable difficulty when their resources in
their foreign language are limited. This effort to overcome communicative difficulties in order to
secure a mutual understanding is known as the ‘negotiation of meaning’. This is a major feature of
conversations involving second language acquisition, as strategies and tactics are involved in this
process on the part of the native speaker and the learner. Communication strategies will be the issue
of our next section.
3.1. STRATEGIES AND TACTICS IN THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
Two main features characterize strategies, first, to be potentially conscious and secondly, to be
problem-oriented. Strategies and tactics can help to expand resources as their main contribution is
to keep the channel open, facilitating the acquisition of new lexis and grammatical rules. Among the
main conversational devices the speaker use to avoid problems, within strategies we may mention
checking meaning, predicting, and selecting a topic. Within tactics used to solve the problem, we
mainly mention asking for clarification and repetition, and topic switching.
3.2. NEGOTIATION OF MEANING, LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LANGUAGE
TEACHING
For many years, it was believed that comprehensible input was enough to trigger acquisition.
However, other second and first language acquisition theories such as Swain’s comprehensible
output hypothesis highlighted the relevance of output in this process.
Under this new perspective the relevance of negotiation of meaning comes to the front, as it is
through the negotiation of meaning in interaction that input can become comprehensible and thus
prompt acquisition. Output produced through the negotiation of meaning and through the different
strategies mentioned above will help the understanding and clarification.
Employing the notion of comprehensible input, Long (1996) argues that input is made more
comprehensible through the NfM process. The term negotiation here refers to the modification and
restructuring of interaction between interlocutors when they experience comprehension difficulties.
The features of negotiation in this case include the listener’s request for message clarification and
confirmation; the speaker may then repeat, elaborate, or simplify the original message. The majority
of Negotiation for Meaning is particularly concerned with lexis, as unfamiliar words can be
substituted or defined in isolation.
Lyster and Ranta (1997) examine the effectiveness of various types of feedback in ESL classrooms.
They find that types such as negotiation strategies (clarification requests, repetition), elicitation, and
metalinguistic feedback (feedback “which contains either comments, information” pertaining “to
the wellformedness of the student’s utterance, without explicitly providing the correct form”) lead
to student-generated repair, while explicit types such as correction and recasting do not. Lyster
(1998) argues that recasts (yes/no questions functioning as a confirmation check), which are mostly
used by teachers rather than learners, do not lead to negotiation and are not as effective in
promoting language learning.
As teachers we should promote, not only input, but also interaction activities that imply the need of
negotiation of meaning. Information gap activities and problem solving activities that involve the
learners in interaction forcing them negotiate meaning in order to complete the given tasks are
highly productive in achieving students acquisition.
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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