UNIT 3: THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE.

LANGUAGE IN
USE. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING.

INTRODUCTION:
Can you imagine a world without communication? It is quite difficult nowadays thinking about life without
communicating with others.
Peter Drucker once said, “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said”. And
this is true and very important because the quality of our relationships depends on the quality of our
communication (i.e. How could be a couple together for more than 20 years if they have no communication
or their communication skills are not developed at its finest?)
Before starting this topic, I would like to tell you about the structure I am going to follow.
First and foremost, I will give you some knowledge about the bibliography I have asked in order to create
this essay, further to this, I will justify this topic in the curriculum of La Rioja; thirdly, I will give you an
introduction of the topic before analyzing the contents and I will finish with a conclusion relating the topic to
its practical application to our language classes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
As I have just said, I will start with the bibliography, the sources I have used to create this essay are:

- Spoken and Written Language, Oxford. OUP. 1989; Austin, J. L.

- On Communicative Competence, Harmonsworth, England. Penguin Books.1972.
- www.britannica.com
- The Oxford English Dictionary

JUSTIFICATION

Once I have mentioned the bibliography it’s time to tell you about the justification of this topic. According to
our current legislation based on the LOMLOE from 2020, the teaching of a foreign language must be based
on the basic knowledge of communication, plurilingualism and interculturality. This topic contributes to
communication which is an essential part of a language learning process as nowadays, teaching
methodologies are based on the communicative approach to make our students not only knowing about
language but also knowing how to use it in real life situations. We must bear in mind that as teachers we
need to stress the communicative nature of language.
Once I have introduced the topic as well as I have mentioned the bibliography used and I have justified the
topic, we are ready to start by analyzing the processes of word-formation in English.

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Before explaining what the communication process consists of, it is time to define the concept of
communication.

According to Crystal (1985) communication is the sending or receiving of information, the

exchange of meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols. There is verbal
and non-verbal, oral and written, formal and informal, intentional and unintentional, human and
animal, and human-computer communication.

Thus, communication is a form of social interaction, it always has a purpose, involves a degree of
unpredictability and creativity and it should involve a reduction of uncertainty on behalf of the
participants.

1
THE CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE is defined by Halliday (1973) as “an instrument of social
interaction with a clear communicative purpose”. At this point, it is relevant to establish the
characteristics of human communication, as opposed to other systems of communication.
Among the design features of human language, we may mention first, a specialised auditory-
vocal channel which only humans are gifted with; secondly, the possibility for individuals to
reproduce messages to say anything in any context; thirdly, productivity, as there is an infinite
number of possible messages to be expressed; fourth, displacement, since we may talk about
events remote in space or time; fifth, duality, as sounds with no intrinsic meaning may be
combined in different ways to form elements with meaning. Then, we talk about the concept of
arbitrariness by which words and their meaning have no a priori connection. And finally,
traditional transmission, since language is transmitted from one generation to the next by a
process of teaching and learning.
Once we have defined the concept of LANGUAGE and the concept of human communication, we
are going to focus on Jakobson’s model OF COMMUNICATION.
To this regard, Jakobson’s model’s clarity has made it become the best-known model to be
followed on language theory. So, following Jakobson (1960) on how language works as the code
of communication, all communicative acts, being them oral or written, are based on six constituent
elements.
Any act of communication takes place in a context, and it involves a sender and a receiver. 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.
FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

If we take into account the communication process definition, each element is associated with a
language function. Such relationship is established as follows:
- The referential function refers to the context, to what is being spoken of and what is being
referred to.
- The attitude of the addresser is related to the emotive or expressive function through
emphasis, intonation, loudness, or pace etc.
- The response in the addressee is associated with the conative function.
- The poetic function focuses on the message by means of associations (equivalence,
similarity and dissimilarity, synonyms and antonyms), repetition of sounds values, stresses,
accents, and the word and phrase boundaries relationships.
- The metalinguistic function is related to the use of the same codes for the messages to be
understood.
- The channel is associated to the phatic function, enabling both addresser and addressee to
enter and stay in communication.

2
  FUNCTIONS:
1. Emotive function: focuses on the first person. Reflect speaker's attitude to the topic of the
discourse. emphatic speech, interjections.
2. Conative function: refers to the addressee. Focused on the second person. Vocative,
imperative.
3. Referential function: refers to the context. Communications always refers to something
contextual. Equated with cognitive use of language  informational content of an utterance.
4. Phatic function: to establish contact between two speakers. To notice that the channel is open.
5. Metalinguistic function: verbal code itself metalanguage. To clarify the way in which the verbal
code is used  correction or clarification through questions. Sorry, what did you say?
6. Poetic function: message decorated. Rhetorical figures, pitch or loudness.

If we want to provide a complete view of the first section of this writing, “the process of
communication and functions of language”, it is required to focus on Halliday’s functional
grammar model, which complements Jakobson’s model since his contribution includes the social
aspect of language.
Halliday’s model emphasizes the functions of language in use by giving prominence to a social
mode of expression, as register influences the selection from a language’s system. Therefore,
meaning comes from the connection between a system and its environment. This relationship
shapes our reality, creating a picture of people, places, things, qualities, and various situations.
For Halliday, there are three macro-functions that, in combination, provide the basic functions on
learning a foreign language. They are the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual:
 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
meaning.

 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
include intonation, rhythm and syllabic and phonemic articulation.
On combining these interrelated functions, Halliday proposes seven basic functions on language
use, and they are listed as follows:
1. instrumental to express desires and needs.
2. regulatory, where rules, instructions, orders and suggestions are included.
3. interactional, where we may include patterns of greeting, leave-taking, thanking, good
wishes and excusing.
4. personal function, which encourages people to talk about themselves and express their
feelings.
3
 5. heuristic function focuses on asking question.
6. imaginative function, which is used for supposing, hypothesizing, and creating for the love
of sound and image.
7. informative function emphasizes affirmative and negative sentences.
All in all, Halliday’s functional grammar model provides a description of how the structure of
English relates to the variables of the social context in which the language is functioning. In this
way, it is uniquely productive as an educational resource for teaching how the grammatical form of
language is structured to achieve purposes in a variety of social contexts.

LANGUAGE IN USE AND THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING

IN THE NEXT SECTION OF OUR TOPIC we will tackle with the concept of LANGUAGE IN USE.
To start, we should highlight that an important shift in the study of language was brought about by
the birth of pragmatics. One of the first authors to draw attention on how language and specific
communicative acts affect the actions of participants was Austin (1962), who paid attention to
utterances, as opposed to sentences as a goal of study.
In “How to do things with words”, he distinguishes two main types of functional potential:
1. performative, related to utterances that perform acts
2. constative, which refers to utterances which assert something that it is either true or false.
At the same time, Austin studied how utterances affect the speaker and listener’s behaviour
through his model of speech act using a threefold distinction: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts
ad perlocutionary acts.
 A locutionary act is the say of something which is meaningful and can be understood. For
instance, “set up the table” is a locutionary act if the hearer understands the four words and
can identify the particular table referred to.
 An illocutionary act is related to the speaker’s intention when using a sentence to perform
a function. For example, “shoot the snake” may be intended as an order or a piece of
advice.
 Finally, a perlocutionary act is the result or effect that is produced by means of saying
something. In this case, shooting the snake or setting up the table would be perlocutionary
acts.
In connection with illocutionary acts, Searle (1969) classifies into five basic types, namely
representatives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations:
 In representatives, the speaker is committed, in varying degrees, to the truth of a
proposition, for example: affirm, believe, conclude, deny, or report.
 In directives, the speaker tries to get the hearer to do something, as for instance: ask,
challenge, command, insist, or request.
 In commissives, the speaker is committed, in varying degrees, to a certain course of
action, exempli gratia: guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, or vow.
 In expressives, the speakers expresses an attitude about a state of affairs, as for instance:
apologize, deplore, congratulate, thank, welcome, etc.
 Finally, in declarations, the speaker alters the external status or conditions of an object or
situation solely by making the utterance, for example: “I resign, I baptize, You’re fired”.

4
As it is derived from Austin and Searle’s model of speech act theory, it is by means of linguistics
expressions, this is, language in use, that the state of things changes in the context where they
are produced. And to interpret the meaning of such expressions, we shall follow authors like Grice
and his cooperative principle, to see how as from quantity and quality criteria information is
decoded.

Therefore, IN THE LAST SECTION OF THIS DOCUMENT, we will focus on the idea of
NEGOTIATION OF MEANING. Different authors have paid attention to this issue.
To begin with, Saussure conceptualized the linguistic sign as the addition of a signifier and
signified; on the other hand, Odgen and Richard proposed different mental representations of the
meaning of linguistic expressions; at the same time, problems may arise from polysemy, etc.
Nevertheless, the interpretation of how linguistic expressions are understood in the context where
they occur is best explained by Grice’s Cooperative Principle. This accounts for how, as for
instance, the utterance “I’m cold”, which is a representative, is correctly interpreted by the hearer
as a directive such that they close a window.
Earlier studies by Austin (1962) and Seale (1969) focused on how direct and indirect speech acts
relate to each other and the idea that words can perform actions. There was also more interest in
the meaning of what people say, not just the sentences they use. Using language is an action, like
opening a door or closing a window. It was noted that at the discourse level, there isn't always a
direct connection between how something is said and its meaning. A single meaning can come
from many indirect actions. Grice emphasized this difference between what we say and what we
mean.
The question is: how do speakers create these hidden meanings? And how can they be sure that
their listeners will understand what they really mean? He wants to find out how this works. Let’s
look at this example:
- Person A says: “Is there another pint of milk?”
- And person B answers: “I’m going to the supermarket in five minutes”.
As it can be seen, a competent speaker of English would have little trouble inferring the meaning
that there is no more milk at the moment, but that some will be bought from the supermarket
shortly. This process of implications is explained by Grice’s four maxims of his Cooperative
Principle. The principle says: “make your contribution such as required, at the stage in which it
occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”
(Grice 1975).
The four maxims are:
1. Quantity, by which we make our contributions as informative as required and not more
informative that it is required
2. Quality, by which we don’t say that we believe to be false or that for which we lack of
evidence.
3. Relation, by which we are relevant; and finally.
4. Manner, by which we avoid obscurity of expression or ambiguity.
Grice suggests that there is an accepted way of speaking which we all accept as standard
behaviour. When we produce, or hear, an utterance, we assume that it will generally be true, have
the right amount of information, be relevant and will be couched in understandable terms. If an
utterance does not appear to conform one of these maxims, as B’s utterance earlier, then we do
not assume that the utterance is nonsense; rather, we assume that an appropriate meaning is
there to be inferred.

5
As stated at the beginning of the document, we have first dealt with the process of communication
and the language functions. To do so, the concept of language have been defined as well as its
functions by means of two important model, Jakobson’s and Halliday’s. Second, the notion of
language have been study through Austin and Searle’s model of speech acts. Finally, attention
has been paid to notion of meaning negotiation, following Grice’s Cooperative Principle and his
four maxims.

CONCLUSION

After all the referred above, communication can be concluded to refer to a means of exchange of
information which goes far beyond pure linguistic codes and signs and which heavily relies on a
set of given social rules and behaviour shared by all the participants involved. Coming back to the
beginning of this essay, it would be impossible to live in a world without communication, as it is
one of the most important life skills to learn. Communication brings people together and closer. It
bridges the gap between individuals and it is the most important skill for teachers.

DIDACTIC IMPLICATIONS

The current Fundamental Law of Education, called LOMLOE, greatly influences the curriculum for
English as a Foreign Language. The subject is designed to focus on communication, aiming to
develop students' ability to interact in real-life situations.
An analysis of the curriculum for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education shows that the main
goal is for students to meet specific communication needs in different contexts. While there are no
strict rules about teaching methods, it's recommended to use language situations that relate to
students' lives. This approach helps develop key skills, especially in communication and
multilingualism, as well as specific knowledge outlined in official guidelines.
In simple terms, students need to learn various skills to express and understand meanings, not
just follow a limited set of rules. Mistakes should be identified and addressed in a way that doesn't
disrupt communication, as suggested by the CEFRL. Lastly, the law emphasizes that assessment
should be ongoing and focused on helping students improve their communication skills in foreign
language learning.