TOPIC 3

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE IN

USE. NEGOTIATION OF MEANING

TEMA 3

EL PROCESO DE COMUNICACIÓN. FUNCIONES DEL LENGUAJE. LA LENGUA EN USO.

LA NEGOCIACIÓN DEL SIGNIFICADO

1. INTRODUCTION

2. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

2.1. COMMUNICATION

2.2. LANGUAGE

2.3. SEMIOTICS

3. THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

3.1. JAKOBSON’S APPROACH

4. LANGUAGE IN USE

4.1. BEHAVIOURISM

4.2. COGNITIVISM

4.3. PRAGMATICS

5. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING

6. CONCLUSION

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 1. INTRODUCTION

Language is mainly used for communication purposes, and it has frequently been
defined as the main code used by humans in order to communicate. However, in spite of this,
communication and language are different terms, and they cannot be put at the same level.
Language has other functions apart from being a means of communication. In the same
way, communication can be achieved without using any language. This topic deals with these
main concepts. We will review them, and emphasis will be put in the way in which language is
used and how meaning is transmitted and negotiated between speakers when actual
communication takes place.
To give an organised explanation of all the contents included in this topic, I will be
following this outline. First of all, we will give a brief explanation of the concepts language and
communication. To continue, we will deal with the functions of language. Next, language of
use will be addressed from different linguistic perspectives. The following section will be
devoted to the negotiation meaning. The last section will be the conclusion followed by the
bibliographical references used to develop this topic.

2. COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

2.1. COMMUNICATION
Communication is understood as “the exchange and negotiation of information
between, at least, two individuals through the use of verbal or non-verbal symbols”. Such
information is not fixed, but it is always changing and qualified by factors as further
information, context of communication, choice of language forms and non-verbal behaviour.
According to Palmer (1978), authentic communication involves a “reduction of uncertainty”.
That is to say, if uncertainty on the side of at least one of the participants is not reduced,
communication does not take place.
Roman Jakobson (1896-1982, one of the founders of the Prague School of linguistics),
from a Structuralist point of view, provided a diagram to explain how the communication
process takes place. This model is not the only one, but it is the best-known model, because of
its simplicity.

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 CONTEXT

ISSUER MESSAGE RECEIVER

CHANNEL

CODE

• ISSUER (also called “encoder” or “addresser”): The participant who addresses a message
to another one.
• RECEIVER (“addressee” or “decoder”): The participant who gets the message. It can be,
or not, the one selected by the issuer. For instance, if a person overhears a private
conversation, s/he is the receiver, but not the selected one.
• MESSAGE: The information the issuer wants to transmit.
• CHANNEL: The physical medium used to transmit the message.
• CODE: The group of symbols and usage rules in which the message is expressed. It can be
linguistic (a language) or non-linguistic, but it has to be known by both the issuer and the
receiver; the issuer has to encode the message, the receiver will decode it.
• CONTEXT: The overall situation surrounding the communication process. According to
Halliday, it has three main elements: tenor, field and mode (see topic 29).
Later on, other elements were added to Jakobson’s diagram:
• ENTROPY or NOISE diminishes the integrity of the message and distorts it, so that the
receiver may find decodification difficult.
• REDUNDANCY is the repetition of elements within a message. It prevents the failure of
communication because of entropy.
• FEEDBACK: The sources tend to be responsive to their own behaviour and to the
context; interaction between human beings cannot function without the ability of the
message sender to calculate the effect of his/her own words in the listener, and self-
correct if necessary.
Communication is fundamental in current methods of language teaching, most of which
are based on the concept of COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE. This concept will be analysed
in further detail in section ‘4.3 Pragmatics’ of this topic.

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2.2. LANGUAGE
Although the term language has innumerable definitions, it is widely accepted that
languages are the main codes used by humans for communication. According to the Dutch
linguist Simon S. Dik, it has to accomplish a communicative function but, as we will see later,
it may also accomplish other functions.
Different authors have attempted to define the essential characteristics of human
language. Hall, for example, says that human language has two main characteristics: it is oral-
auditory, and it is made up by arbitrary symbols.
Using a different approach, Charles F. Hockett used a zoological mode of enquiry to
describe spoken human language, by comparing it with other forms of communication found
in animals or humans. He suggested a set of 13 design features of communication using
spoken human language.
1. Auditory-vocal channel. Sound is used between mouth and ear, as opposed to a visual or
tactile means.
2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception. A signal can be heard by any
auditory system within earshot, and the source can be located using the ear’s direction-
finding ability.
3. Rapid fading. Auditory signals are transitory, unlike writing.
4. Interchangeability. Speakers of a language can reproduce any linguistic message they can
understand, unlike the courtship behaviour in some animal species.
5. Total feedback. Speakers hear and can reflect upon everything that they say, unlike the
visual displays in animal courtship, which are not visible to the displayer.
6. Specialization. The sound waves’ function is to signal meaning, unlike the audible panting
of dogs, with a biological purpose.
7. Semanticity. The elements of the signal have a meaning, unlike dog panting, which does
not mean that the dog is hot, but is a part of being hot.
8. Arbitrariness. There is no relation between the signal and the nature of the reality to
which it refers, unlike the speed of the bee dancing, which reflects the distance from the
nectar.
9. Discreteness. All sound elements of speech contrast with each other, unlike growling
which is differentiated by the strength.
10. Displacement. It is possible to talk about events remote in place and time to the moment
of talking, unlike animal cries.

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11. Productivity. There is an infinite capacity to express and understand meaning, unlike the
fixed set of calls of animals.
12. Traditional transmission. Language is transmitted from one generation to the next by a
process of teaching and learning, unlike bees’ ability which is passed genetically.
13. Duality of patterning. The sounds of language have no meaning. They combine in
different ways to form elements that convey meaning (words), unlike animal calls, which
do not have these two levels of structure.

2.3. SEMIOTICS
Semiotics is the science which studies the structure of all possible sign systems. So, it
studies language as well as other ways of communication, that is to say, non-linguistic
communication. Semiotics distinguishes five modes of communication, which are related to
the five senses: auditory-vocal, visual, tactile, olfactory and gustatory. Let’s see which role
they play in human communication:
• Auditory-vocal. The structured use of this mode results in speech. Non-linguistic uses of
the vocal tract, such as snoring or whistling are also possible.
• Visual. This mode has a linguistic use in deaf sign languages or written language. Written-
based codes such as Morse are also included here.
Non-linguistic use of the visual communication includes the system of facial and body
language, studied by kinesics.
• Tactile. Tactile communication has a very limited linguistic function, in blind language, e.g.
Braille, and secret codes based on spoken or written language. Its main uses are non-
linguistic. In relation to this, we can also mention the study of how humans use space
when communicating. The science which studies this is proxemics.
• Olfactory and gustatory. These modes have very little role in human communication, in
contrast with the important role they play in animal communication.

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 3. THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
We are so familiar with speech and writing that we don’t appreciate the complexity of
the skills we have learnt, most of all, when we try to define the functions of language. The
most widely recognised function of language is “to communicate our ideas”.
One of the classifications of the functions was made by the anthropologist Malinowski
(1923), who distinguished two uses of the language. The first, the practical and pragmatic use
of the language was subdivided into active and narrative. The second was the ritual or magical
use of the language.
A different classification was made by Karl Bühler (1934). He differentiated the
expressive language, oriented to the speaker; the conative language, oriented to the listener,
and the third person, oriented to the rest of the reality. This distinction is based on Plato’s
theories.

3.1. JAKOBSON’S APPROACH

The Prague School, and particularly Roman Jakobson (1960) adapted Bühler’s
scheme. He called Bühler’s functions, respectively, emotive, conative, and referential, and
added three more functions: poetic, phatic and metalinguistic. These functions are closely
related to the scheme of communication we have previously seen:
- The emotive function is oriented towards the issuer of the message, who expresses
his/her own feelings and emotions. E.g. “I hate this!”
- The conative function is oriented towards the receiver of the language; the speaker wants
to make him/her do something. E.g.: “Pete, open the door.”
- The referential function is oriented towards the referent, that is, to the extralinguistic
situation to which the message refers. E.g. “That book is green”.
- The poetic function is oriented towards the form of the message, as in poetry.
- The phatic function is oriented towards the channel. It’s the function which appears in the
messages whose function is to establish or maintain communication. E.g. “Hello! How are
you?”
- The metalinguistic function is oriented towards the code. It is used when we use the
language to speak about language, as in “What does ‘communicate’ mean?”

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 4. LANGUAGE IN USE

In this point we will review how language is used, according to three major linguistic
theories: behaviourism, cognitivism and pragmatics.

4.1. BEHAVIOURISM
From this point of view, any action consists of a stimulus that causes a reaction to
happen. This reaction can be reinforced. This process is represented by the following
diagram:
S → R (r) [Stimulus - Reaction]
Positive reinforcement will lead to repetition and, in the long run, to learning. If the
reaction is reinforced negatively, it will not be repeated.
Language is regarded as a substitute linguistic reaction. When a human being has a
stimulus, s/he can have a “normal” physical reaction. But s/he can also have a substitutive
linguistic reaction, which will become the stimulus for the hearer. That’s why language allows
for other people to show the reaction, when somebody has the stimulus.
S1 → (R1→S2) → R2
|_______________|
In the following dialogue, we can observe an example of how language in use is studied
following the behaviourist view.
Speaker 1: It’s raining cats and dogs! → S1
Speaker 2: That’s true! Do you have an umbrella I can borrow? → R1 → S2
Speaker 1: Sure! → R2
In this example, the first utterance works as the first stimulus (S1) for the hearer. Then,
the conversation starts and the second speaker responds, being this the first reaction (R1). As
we can observe, this reaction becomes the second stimulus (S2) for the first speaker. Hence,
the answer to this utterance is regarded as the second reaction (R2).

4.2. COGNITIVISM
From this point of view, we should bear in mind the well-known difference between
competence and performance devised by Chomsky in the year 1965. It is obvious, then, that
there is a clear difference between the system itself and the innumerable uses speakers may
make of it.

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 Therefore, on the one hand, competence can be defined as the ideal language system
that enables speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences in their
language, and to distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical ones. In other words,
competence is the mental knowledge that a speaker or listener has of language. On the other
hand, performance was defined as the actual use of language in concrete situations. In this
sense, Chomsky was competence more important than performance.

4.3. PRAGMATICS
Contrary to what Chomsky claimed, there was a shift of direction in linguistics which
took place during the 80s. Therefore, the focus changed from competence to performance, that
is, from a formal paradigm to a functional paradigm. Among the linguists who supported this
idea, we can highlight:
J. Austin, How to do things with words.
J. Searle, Speech Acts.
P. Grice, Logic and Conversation.
In addition, we can also mention Hymes, who coined the term communicative
competence in reaction to Chomsky’s ideas. This author claimed that in order to use a
language appropriately, we should not only acquire grammatical competence but also socio-
linguistic. Then, a speaker needs to use language correctly, grammatically speaking, and also
appropriately, taking context into consideration. The term communicative competence was
developed by Canale and Swain (1980) following Hymes’ initial conceptions on the matter.
They claimed that in order to communicate a speaker should have a linguistic, socio-linguistic,
strategic and discourse competences.

With all these innovations in the field of linguistics, the term pragmatics appeared.
This term can be defined as the study of the language in use, of the relationship between the
linguistic expression and the users. Pragmatics studies:
• What you say
• What you mean
• What the hearer understands

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 Nowadays, we cannot understand language without pragmatics. According to Leech´s
(1983), “Pragmatics is the way language is used in communication”. Pragmatics studies the
relation between abstract meaning or sense of the linguistic expression and the
communicative force which those expressions have for speakers and listeners. One
traditional distinction of language contrasts pragmatics with syntax and semantics:
• Semantics considers meaning in an abstract context
• Pragmatics considers meaning in a specific context

According to Leech (1983), semantics is rule governed and pragmatics is principle

governed, where rules constitute the activity and principles regulate the activity. Pragmatics
studies the “Utterances” not the sentences.
Austin together with Searle developed The Speech Act Theory. They considered that
verbal utterances were social actions, and that sentences in a specific context are assigned
additional meaning. Austin considered that when using language (speech acts) we are
performing 3 acts at the same time:
• Locutionary Act: the performance of an utterance, i.e. of the speech act itself.
• Illocutionary Act: the effect the speaker intends to produce with his/her act,
his/her intended meaning.
• Perlocutionary Act: the effect it has on the hearer.

In this sense, performative verbs (inside the illocutionary acts), that perform an
action by the simple fact of being used (e.g. apologize, promise, name ...) were distinguished.
The speech acts (the actions performed by the utterances) are given specific labels: apology,
complaint, promise, request, among others. The intention of the speaker is very important, the
same words can refer to different speech acts. In this way, Searle believed that the basic unit
of human linguistic communication is the illocutionary act.
Another important element is that of implicature introduced by Grice, that is, more is
being communicated than is being said. You communicate more than you say and you must
have some cooperative principles to understand what they mean. Grice elaborated 4
subprinciples called maxims:

1. The maxim of quality states that speakers' contributions to a conversation ought to

be true. They should not say what they believe to be false, nor should they say anything for
which they lack adequate evidence.

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 2. The maxim of quantity states that the contribution should be as informative as is
required for the purposes of the conversation. One should say neither too little nor too
much.
3. The maxim of relevance states that contributions should clearly relate to the purpose
of the exchange.
4. The maxim of manner states that the contribution should be perspicuous -in
particular, that it should be orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity.

The principle of relevance has recently attracted most attention, as it has been
proposed as a fundamental explanatory principle for a theory of human communication.
Listeners will normally assume that speakers are following these criteria. Speakers may of
course break these maxims -for example, they may lie, be sarcastic, try to be different, or
clever -but conversation proceeds on the assumption that they are not doing so. Listeners may
then draw inferences from what speakers have said (the literal meaning of the utterance)
concerning what they have not said (the implications, or 'implicatures' of the utterance).
Grice distinguished 5 different ways of non-observance as the maxims:
• Flouting a maxim: a speaker fails to observe a maxim blatantly, because s/he wants
the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from, or in addition to the expressed
meaning. E.g. there are two possible killers, and one of them was with me at the time of
the murderer – The speaker deliberately generates an implicature.
• Violating a maxim: the unostentatious non observance of a maxim. If a speaker
violates a maxim s/he will probably be missunderstood. E.g. A man says to his wife: “Is
there another man?” And the wife answers: “No, there is not another man” when in fact
it was a woman.
• Infringing a maxim: it is unvoluntarily, because of imperfect linguistic performance
rather from any desire on part of the speaker to generate an implicature.
• Opting out a maxim: indicating unwillingness to cooperate in the way the maxim
requires. Examples of it occur frequently in public life, when a speaker cannot perhaps
by legal or ethical reasons reply the way expected.
• Suspending a maxim: there are occasions when there is no need to opt out of
observing the maxims because there are certain events in which there are no
expectations on the part of any participant that they will be fulfilled.

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 All these skills are naturally adopted and performed by native speakers of the
language who have a great command of them. But learning the use of the language of a L2 is
quite difficult becuase it involves a series of extralinguistic (cultural) elements that L2
students are not familiar with. Thus, our aim as teachers is trying to provide our students with
these extralinguistic skills in order to make them acquire a good command of the English
language in real situations.

5. NEGOTIATION OF MEANING

Whenever oral interaction takes place, there exists a problem regarding the meaning of
the utterances. In order to deal with such a problem, we should start by defining what
“meaning” is. It denotes what is intended to be expressed or actually indicated.
Competent language users know what the words mean literally. Besides, they also
know that, given the different functions of language, it is not always used in a literal way.
Therefore, in order to interact linguistically, speakers need to know how to operate
grammatically and how to be sensitive to changes in word value. This is not always something
speakers do automatically, and that’s why a constant negotiation of meaning between speaker
and addressee is required. Such a negotiation of meaning is carried out by means of the use of
strategies and techniques (also called tactics).
Communication strategies are conversational devices used to avoid trouble, such as
checking the meaning, selecting the topic or predicting.
Communicative tactics are the devices used to solve problems, such as asking for
clarification or repetition, or even switching topics.
Speakers, thus, use a combination of both strategies and techniques in order to
negotiate meaning, achieving in this way their communicative purposes. From the point of
view of L2 learners, we find this negotiation of menaing in conversations including native
speakers for example. The learner and native speaker together strive to overcome the
communicative difficulties which are always likely to arise as a result of the learner's limited
L2 resources. In this case we would also find that the srtategies used would be checking
comprehension, or the tactics request for clarification, even using a slow pace, repeating
utterances or stressing key words (by part of the native speaker). The learner also needs to
contribute to the negotiation of meaning, however, as it is a joint enterprise. He can do so by
giving clear signals when he has understood or not understood and, most important, by
refusing to give up. The result of the negotiation of meaning is that particular types of input

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and interaction result. In particular, it has been hypothesized that negotiation makes input
comprehensible. It can be interesting how native speakers are able to adjust their speech, and
we find three possible ways:
• Regression: the native speaker unconsciously moves back through the stages of
development that characterized his own acquisition of the language until he reaches an
appropriate level for the person he is addressing.
• Matching: the native speaker assesses the learner's language system and then
imitates the language forms he identifies in it.
• Negotiation: the native speaker simplifies and clarifies in accordance with the
feedback that he obtains from the learner.

Hatch considers all three explanations and concludes that negotiation is the most
convincing one. She argues that regression is very unlikely and is not borne out by the
observed features of foreigner talk. Matching is asking a lot of the native speaker to measure
simultaneously the learner's phonology, lexicon, syntax, and discourse with sufficient
accuracy to adjust his own language output. Negotiation provides an interactional rather than
a psycholinguistic explanation. It does not tell us what mental processes the native speaker
operates in order to make adjustments to his speech.

6. CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, it is interesting to speak about the classroom implications of language

teaching as a communicative tool. In this sense, we have seen that the aim of teaching a
foreign language implies not only learning the language, but, more importantly, learning how
to communicate with it. In order to achieve this goal, we should foster interaction among
students, teach the language implementing a communicative approach and give importance to
fluency, not just correctness.
In addition, students should also be provided with opportunities for genuine
contextualised language practice. By doing so, they will be able to boost their communicative
competence to get the meaning of an utterance, even if the use of language functions makes it
difficult. Finally, in order to allow our pupils to communicate successfully in real contexts, we
should provide them with the necessary strategies to negotiate meaning and overcome
problems that may arise during the communication process.

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7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Canale, M. & SWAIN. M. 1980. «Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testing». Applied Linguistics 1/1: 1-47.
• Coulthard, Malcolm. 1985. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.
• Hockett, C. F. 1960. The origin of speech. Scientific American 203 (September)
• Hymes, D.H. 1972. "On communicative competence". In Pride, J.B. & Holmes, J.(eds.):
Sociolinguislics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
• Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: CUP.
• Widdowson, H.G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: O.U.P.

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