Module 1: Language and Communication

• Language

  A system of arbitrary, conventionalized oral, written, and gestured symbols used for communication
• Language does not explain the relationship between the word and the word-image in our minds
• 40% of languages are endangered
• Nonverbal communication

  Includes carriers of meaning such as eye contact, facial expression, gestures, body orientation, touch, quality of voice, silence
• Language as a system

  Consists of speech sounds, words, sentences used to convey meanings; governed by rules
• According to Ethnologue, there are more than 7,000 languages in the world today
• Edward Sapir: '“Language is purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”'
• The Philippines is home to about 187 languages: 158 alive, 14 in trouble, 11 dying, and 4 extinct
• Conventionalized language

  Emerges from agreement to associate a word to a word-image for majority understanding
• Communication

  Creation and deployment of meanings through shared verbal and nonverbal systems
• Language based on utility

  • Tool for communication, means to conduct business transactions, way to express ideas and emotions
• Verbal communication

  Words used in oral and written exchanges
• Nonverbals contribute more to the deployment and creation of meaning compared with verbal forms
• Only about 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s population
• Language based on theoretical understanding


  • Linguistic concepts such as form, structure, phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse, Universal grammar
• Arbitrary

  Based on random choice, rather than any reason or system
• Animals can communicate interspecies, sometimes crossing the boundaries of their genetic design, however their method of communication is not called “language”
• Nonverbals contribute more to the deployment and creation of meaning compared with verbal forms


  Experts believe
• We use our senses to communicate, including eyes, speaking, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting
• Ideation

  Refers to our capacity to create, assess, and send messages to other people
• Without language, there would be no communication possible between or among people
• Edward Sapir's theory fits at the end to modify the word communication in the definition of language
• Ideation is cognitive and happens in our brains
• There would be no use for language if there is no attempt to communicate
• We send and receive messages through our senses
• Edward Sapir: '“Language is purely human and non-instinctive method of communication.”'
• Definition of language

  Language is a system of arbitrary, conventionalized oral, written, and gestured symbols used for human communication
• Language manifests through our senses

  1. Tactile belongs to proxemics

  2. Visual belongs to kinesics

  3. Olfactory and gustatory belong to zoosemiotics

  4. Auditory and vocal belong to speech sciences
• David Crystal (2011): '“Communication is the ideational definition of language.”'
• Language is unique to humans and not shared with animals
• David Crystal: '“We humans communicate using our senses.”'
• Language manifests itself through communication