process. Language functions.

Language in use. Negotiation

of meaning
The dictionary definition of communication is “the imparting or exchange
of information by speaking, writing or by using some other medium
among people”. This process constitutes the basis of this topic. After
exploring the process of communication, I will deal with the various
functions of language. This will lead me on to language in use and finally
the negotiation of meaning.

I will begin by looking at the communication process. There is more to

communication than just one person speaking and another one listening.
As defined before, communication is the exchange and negotiation of
information between at least two individuals. However, we differentiate
verbal and non-verbal, written and oral, formal and informal, and
intentional and unintentional communication. The information we
communicate is never fixed; it is constantly changing and qualified by
such factors as further information, context, choice of language forms and
non-verbal behaviour. So, communication involves the continuous
evaluation and negotiation of meaning on the part of the participants.

I would like to distinguish between verbal and non-verbal communication.

Verbal communication is carried out by means of language. We can’t
forget that language is an essential tool for communication. Examples of
verbal communication are writing a letter, having a conversation or
watching a play. However, language is not the only way of communicating.
Gestures, facial expressions, body language, touch and so on are other
means of communication that should be taken into account, and which
are together referred to as non-verbal communication. Throughout this
topic I am going to concentrate mostly on verbal communication.

When a communicative event takes place, certain assumptions can be

made. Firstly, there is a reason for communicating (orally or in a written
 way). In a communicative exchange, there are two basic kinds of speech
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roles: that of giving and that of demanding. The thing given or demanded
may be something linguistic such as information or an opinion, or it may
be something non-linguistic, some type of goods or services. The speaker
or writer selects the appropriate or necessary items from his/her language
store to express that purpose. As for the listener or reader, it can be
assumed s/he is interested in the speaker’s communicative purpose and
is able to process a varied selection of language. Moreover, in order for
communication to be effective, the message has to be perceived and
have the same meaning for the receiver than for the issuer.

Taking all the previous aspects into account we can point out which the
features of communication are:

It is a form of social interaction, and it is normally acquired and used in such

an interaction.
It always has a purpose, which is to communicate.
It involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity, and therefore
successful communication should involve a reduction of uncertainty on behalf of
the participants.
It involves verbal and non-verbal language, such as gestures and body
language.
There have been many, sometimes conflicting attempts to classify the
main functions of language (macrofunctions) and the elements of
communication. The theory I am going to follow is one of the clearest and
most influential, which was formulated by the linguist Roman Jakobson
(1960), and further developed by Dell Hymes (1962). (The terms used here
are based on both accounts, without exactly following either). I am going
to begin by identifying the elements of communication:

· THE ADDRESSER is the person who originates the message. This is usually
the same as the person who is sending the message, but not always, as in
the case of messenger, spokespeople and town criers.

· THE ADDRESSEE is the person to whom the message is addressed. This is

usually the person who receives the message, but not necessarily so, as in
the case of intercepted letters, bugged telephone calls, and
eavesdropping.

· THE CHANNEL is the medium through which the message travels: sound
waves, marks on paper, telephone wires or word processor screens.

· THE MESSAGE FORM is the particular grammatical and lexical choices of

the message.

· THE TOPIC is the information carried in the message.

· THE CODE is the language or dialect used (Swedish, Yorkshire English…)

· THE SETTING is the social and physical context.

In Jacobson’s model, each of the elements of the communication process

are associated with one of the six macro-functions of language he
proposed. We are going to analyse them.

· Imagine the sentence “I am very happy that Tom Cruise is coming to the
party”. It centres upon the addresser, who communicates his inner states
and emotions. This type of macro-function is known as THE EMOTIVE
FUNCTION.

· Imagine the sentence ”Shut up and do your homework!”. Attention is

focused upon the addressee, seeking to affect his behaviour. This function
is known as THE DIRECTIVE FUNCTION.

· Take a sentence like “Clementine, can you hear me? Are you still on the
phone?” These types of sentences serve to open the channel or to check
that the channel is working for social or practical reasons. Speech is used
not to convey thoughts but to create ties of union by mere exchange of
words. This type of macro-function focuses on the channel and it is called
THE PHATIC FUNCTION. Phatic communication is speech for the sake of
social context. Greetings are part of it, since they serve to start
conversations, setting the tone and helping establish the relationship
between the speakers.

· Advertising slogans like “Beanz means Heinz”, “Revilla, ¡qué maravilla! or

tongue-twisters show that the particular form chosen is the essence of the
message, that is, the form is more important than the message itself. This
type of function centres upon the message form and is called THE POETIC
FUNCTION.

· Sentences such as “The earth turns around the sun” are used to carry
information. They focus on the topic and this use is known as THE
REFERENCTIAL FUNCTION.

· A sentence like “What does this word mean?” or “This bone is known as
the femur” focuses attention upon the code itself, to clarify or negotiate it.
This function is known as THE METALINGUISTIC FUNTION.

· Finally, the sentences “Let’s start the lecture” or “Right” are used to create
a particular kind of communication. They focus on the context and
develop the function called THE CONTEXTUAL FUNCTION.

Related to the functions of language is the notion of functional

development. When a crying baby realises that by controlling her cries
and producing them at will rather than automatically, she can influence
the behaviour of her parents, she has progressed from the emotive to the
directive function. Phatic communication also begins very early. The poetic
function too is apparent at an early stage: when young children latch on to
a phrase and repeat it endlessly, without conveying any information. The
referential function gains its prominence only at a later stage, and the
metalinguistic function also comes later; these are the functions on which
a considerable amount of attention is lavished at school. Surprisingly,
considering this course of development, a good deal of foreign language
teaching begins with the metalinguistic function, by explicitly stating the
rules of grammar.

If we accept this categorization of language into a small number of

macrofuntions, we might then go on to subdivide each function and
specify more delicate categories or microfunctions. A breakdown of the
directive function for example may look something like this:
 Questions requests for action

Orders requests for information

Directive function Requests requests

for help

Pleas requests for sympathy

Prayers

It is easy to imagine a similar division of any of the other six

macrofunctions, resulting in a list of functions used as the basis of
functional language courses. Functional courses set out to list the
purposes for which students might wish to use language, and then to
teach them to do so.

Jacobson and Hymes’ theory was used as the basis for future theories on
the functions of language. Whilst linguists have sought to understand how,
as speakers, people are able to produce an infinite number of sentences
given a finite set of rules, philosophers have tried to explain how an infinite
number of sentences may reflect a finite set of functions. These theories
belong to the field of semantics. One of the most important ones is known
as speech act theory. Philosophers such as Austin (1962) and Searle (1969)
argued that utterances could be classified into a set of speech act
functions. They reasoned that since the number of things people do with
words is limited, people ought to be able to assign functions to utterances.
Hence, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical
structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances, which are
generally called speech acts such as apology or request. The speaker and
hearer are usually helped in this process by the circumstances
surrounding the utterance. These utterances, including others, are called
the speech event. It is also necessary to bear in mind that speech is never
completely context free due to factors such as status, age, gender, and so
on, which determine social constraints.

Regarding speech acts, the action performed by producing an utterance

will consist of three related acts. There is a locutionary act, which is the
basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
Mostly we do not just produce well-formed utterances with no purpose. We
form an utterance with some kind of function in mind. This is the second
dimension, or the illocutionary act. An example is I’ve just made some
coffee. I might utter it to make a statement, an offer, or for some other
communicative purpose. This is known as the illocutionary force of the
utterance. Moreover, we create an utterance with a function intending it to
have an effect. This effect is the perlocutionary act. Depending on the
circumstance, you will utter an utterance on the assumption that the
hearer will recognize the effect you intended, for example to account for
the wonderful smell of the coffee or to get the hearer to drink some. This is
known as the perlocutionary effect. Then, the same utterance or
locutionary act can have different illocutionary and perlocutionary forces.

One of the most widely used taxonomies of speech act types is that
proposed by Searle (1976). There are 5 types of general functions
performed by speech acts:

Directives (Requests). Those speech acts that speakers use to get someone
else to do something. They are commands, orders, requests, suggestions;
positive or negatives. Some verbs include: suggest, prohibit, order… for
example: “Don´t touch that!” The imperative and polite imperative are usually
taught in foreign language teaching. The relationship between the roles of the
speaker and addressee acts as a constraint and if these constraints are ignored
or unknown, offence may be taken.
Commissives. Those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit
themselves to some future action. They express what the speaker intends. They
are promises, threats, refusals, pledges… Commissives are also language and
culture bound differing across status, situation and according to some gender.
Some verbs used are: guarantee, swear, promise…. An example is: “I’ll be back”
· Representatives. A speaker expresses his/her belief that the propositional
content of the utterance is true, so modality is an important element here.
He may express an attitude of belief using several types of acts: asserting,
predicting, describing, advising… Some verbs include: affirm, advise,
suggest… for example: “the earth is flat”.

· Expressives. Also called “evaluatives”, they are utterances that have an

expressive function, stating what the speaker feels. They express
psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes,
dislikes, joy or sorrow. They are about the speaker’s experience. Some
verbs include: greet, apologise, compliment… for example,
“Congratulations!” Many of the stereotypes regarding cultures are bound
up with expressives.

· Declaratives and Performatives. The issuer informs objectively about the

external reality or about his/her ideas about it. They, when uttered, bring
about a new state of being, for example when a priest says, “I pronounce
you man and wife” the status of the couple changes. The person who
utters it must have the power to do so.

The above five speech acts can be described as direct speech acts since
there is a match between sentences meaning and speaker meaning, i.e.
that the form of the utterance coincides with its function. However, much of
what people say is not direct. People often use statements to make
requests and even to give orders. For instance, the statement “Today there
is a nice film on, isn’t there?” according to Searle would be a
representative. However, the listener might also attach an extra, indirect
meaning, such us “Can you switch on the TV?” In this case it is performing
an indirect speech act, when there is an indirect relationship between a
structure and a function. In English, indirect speech acts are generally
associated with greater politeness than direct speech acts.

Now let’s have a look at language in use. To understand language use we

need to look at the propositions a sentence produces, that is, what is
talked about in an utterance and the illocutionary acts performed through
the expression of those propositions, which involve doing and not just
saying something. For example people promise, warn or invite. Propositions
and illocutionary acts do not occur in isolation but combine to form what is
termed discourse (stretches of language perceived to be meaningful,
unified and purposive). The propositions expressed are linked to what has
gone before by means of linguistic clues which act as markers to guide us
through the discourse, i.e. “cohesion”. The illocutionary acts performed by
the propositions also fit together, that is, they are “coherent”.

Communication depends on co-operation to function smoothly and this

entails making certain assumptions. I assume a speaker/writer intends
what s/he says to be informative and relevant. Moreover meaning is not
always explicitly stated but has to be inferred. We also learn that different
linguistic elements occur with certain frequency, and that discourse has
common patterns. All this knowledge constitutes “common sense”
conventions or a set of basic rules. People find out about these
conventions through their experience of language use.

Discourse can often be unclear or ambiguous in which case participants

are required to negotiate what meaning they are conveying e.g. a warning
or a threat. This process, that is, the negotiation of meaning, is the subject
of my last section. 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 or
vaguely. To make communication successful is difficult. An excellent
example of difficult communication is the doctor-patient relationships,
where most patients fin it difficult 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
mutual understanding.

When communicating, speakers often experience considerable difficulty

when their resources in their foreign or native language are limited. A
major feature of conversation involving L2 learners is that the learner and
native speaker together strive to overcome the communicating difficulties
which are always likely to arise as a result of the learner’s limited L2
resources. This has become known as the negotiation of meaning. On the
part of the native speaker, this involves the use of strategies and tactics.
Strategies are conversational devices used to avoid trouble; examples are
relinquishing topic control, selecting salient topics, and checking
comprehension. Tactics are devices for repairing trouble; examples are
topic switching and requests for clarification. Other devices such as using
a slow pace, repeating utterances, or stressing key words can serve as
both tactics and strategies. The learner also needs to contribute to the
negotiation of meaning, however, and he can do so by giving clear signals
when he has or not understood and, most important, by refusing to give
up. The result of the negotiation of meaning is that particular types of input
and interaction result. In particular, it has been hypothesized that
negotiation makes input comprehensible and in this way promotes L2
acquisition.

To sum up, this topic has focused on the communication process and I
have analysed some aspects involved in it. I began by talking about the
main characteristic of the communication process. Once this was clear, I
discussed the main elements of the communication and its relation with
macrofunctions. Then I dealt with the functions of language analysing the
speech act theory and the five main speech acts established. After this, I
concluded my topic with the language in use and the negotiation of
meaning. As a final word, I would like to say that communication is a very
complex phenomenon involving a number of different variables, and that
is complex to make generalizations about it. The role of context is essential
when analysing the meaning conveyed by any communicative act.

Tags: tema 3 inglés secundaria