Language as a means of communication. The processes of understanding and verbalizing. Text and discourse as units of communication

“Communicare” means to share with, to make common. As a linguistic term comm means the intentional transmission of information by means of some signaling system (John Lyons)

Comm consists of 2 reciprocal processes: speech production or verbalization & understanding.

Both processes can be viewed as multi-level activities.

According to Kassevich, verbalization starts with the level of motive & intention, which emerge in a definite comm. Situation as a part of some practical activity. On the second level the speaker’s thought is shaped 1^st as topic-comment structure, then – as a propositional structure based on semantic syntax. 3^rdlevel – choice of verbal means. 4^th – utterance, which is written or pronounced.

The process of understanding refers to accurate reception of the intended stimuli. Successful comm. Depends on the hearer’s knowledge of the speaker’s motives and intention: they predetermine the wording, intonation etc.

According to Kamenskaya, there are 3 levels: 1) motivation; 2) initial text processing; 3) profound text processing. But Kassevich considers such division not valid, while we perform all these functions simultaneously. Otherwise understanding would be totally impossible.

Dell Hymes lists several components of communication: 1) participants, minimally speaker and addressee; 2) code used by interlocutors; 3) channel (e.g. speaking, writing, non-verbal signals) 4) setting or context; 5) form of genre (conversation, folktale, debate, etc.); 6) topics and attitudes.

A speech situation consists of seven main components:

Scene: setting (Time, Space, Location, use of space)

Participants: who they are, roles they take

Purpose (function)

Topic or message content

Genre

Key (tone)

Channel: verbal (speaking, writing), non-verbal, contextual

Background knowledge

By genre Hymes means any speech event which has fairly predictable sets of speech acts, participants, topics, settings, or other regularly occurring and conventional forms. Speech acts and speech situation.

Key: the tone or the mood, the manner in which an act or event is performed. The first question one must ask of any utterance is whether it is intended seriously. Thus, "how marvelous" uttered with a sarcastic tone is taken to mean exactly the opposite.

Settings

Settings of communicative events provide arenas for action, both in a physical and social sense. They help define events as particular kinds of occasions, invoking certain behaviors and restricting others. Settings for communication can be classified along the continuum of formality or informality. The array of settings in each category differs across cultures. Increased structuring of formal events is reflected in rules of etiquette.

All people have multiple roles or identities: parent, friend, teacher, president of an organization. Formal situations define people by their “positional and public” rather than “personal” identities. Social distance rather than intimacy is stressed. It is often reflected linguistically in forms of address.

Norms for communicative behavior in informal settings are more diffuse and flexible, although participants always assess speech and nonverbal actions according to cultural models of appropriateness. Structuring of informal situations is relatively loose.

People choose ways of speaking after evaluating an entire communicative and social situation.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants in speech events include speakers, addressees, and audience. Individuals usually change roles during a given event. In two party conversations each person is alternatively speaker or addressee as they exchange speaking turns. But even if one person monopolizes the right to speak, audiences have a communicative role.

Choice of topic also depends on the speaker’s awareness of cultural and individual expectations.

Topics or Message content

People choose topics based on combinations of their personal interests and sensitivity of preferences of co-participants, all within boundaries set by cultural norms. Formal contexts such as ceremonies, lectures, or governmental proceedings tend to predetermine a specific range of topics. Informal interactions are less constraining, but cultural values are relevant to choice of topic, too.

Several kinds of speech acts - greetings, parting, apologies, etc. - are frequently expressed by highly predictable and stereotypical linguistic routines.

PURPOSE

All speech events have a purpose.

Gorodetsky distinguishes between a communicative goal and a purpose related to the activity in which the interlocutors are involved (other than communication). Our communication is successful if we achieve the purpose and/or if we penetrate into the goal and motives of our interlocutor.

Background knowledge

It includes encyclopedia and linguistic knowledge. Three types of knowledge which people use to interpret discourse: scripts, world knowledge, adjacency sequences (predictable sequences of utterances).

The main characteristics of communication:

- intentional,

- conventional (routinised),

- jointly negotiated between speakers and hearers,

- varied according to context and language users, according to social relations between participants,

- involves commonsense knowledge,

- sequential (retrospective and prospective),

- accomplished in time and space,

- interpretative.

The largest unit of verbal communication is text or discourse.

There are different approaches to them: 1) synonyms, 2) T is written, D. is oral, 3) ! D. is situationally bound, message content.

Text can be defined in different ways:

1. It’s any utterance which consists of 1 or more sentences and which is complete in terms of meaning and the speaker’s intention. (Москальская)
2. It’s a written result of some creative process which consists of the title and a number of paragraphs united by all kinds of lexical, grammatical, logical, stylistic links. (Гальперин)
3. It’s a means of transmitting and getting information. In the process of transmitting this information is presented by the speaker in some form providing for its adequate understanding (cognitive definition).
4. Text can be defined as a more or less complete fragment of verbal interaction which is structured according to certain rules and which manifests the cognitive, psychological and social aspects of communication. There are two main criteria for identifying this largest unit of communication: it has a structure and it gives information (Колшанский).

In text analysis one of the primary tasks is to explore the linguistic features which characterize texts. One of the most important features of texts is that they have cohesion, the elements of a text are tied together. There are two basic types of cohesion: lexical and grammatical. Repetition of words, use of sense relations, use of words belonging to the same semantic fields, etc. Grammatical cohesion is achieved with the help of conjunctions, grammatical substitution (one, do), co-reference (pronouns).

T.A. Van Dijk looks at text coherence from a cognitive perspective. Discourse is coherent when it has a topic, when its respective sentences are sequentially coherent, and when the adressee is able to imagine a situation in/for which the text could be true., or, in other words, when it has a mental model. Coherence is also based on functional realtions between the sentences (propositions). E.g., sentence B can be a generalization, specification, example, consequence, presupposition of sentence A.

Another important feature of texts is that they are informative. Galperin distinguishes between factual and conceptual information, i.e. information about facts and events and information about the author’s attitude to these events, the causal links, possible consequences, etc. Some information can be implied.

According to Van Dijk, implications or implicatures are propositions that are inferred from the meaning of actually expressed words, phrases, sentences. These inferences are derive from from our socially shared knowledge. Implications can be also our assumptions about the intentions of the speaker/writer.

Texts are continuous and complete. “Continuous” means continuing without interruption, i.e. the sequence of facts and events occurs in time and space. A text is complete if the speaker’s intention is fulfilled.

Types of links: topic – comment relations, thematic nets.

A text is often presented as an aggregate of sentences. In discourse analysis these sentences are transformed into utterances each of which has a certain communicative intention.

Up to the late 60s there were very few books on discourse analysis. It took some time and effort to understand that discourse or text cannot be described in terms of formal grammatical units. Discourse can be used interchangeably with the word “text”, but some scholars insist that “text” can be only written, and discourse is oral. Other scholars point out that the term “discourse” is different because it presupposes on-line processing of a verbally presented message (word by word) within a framework of a certain social domain as a consitutent part of a speech event.

Sinclair proposed the term “discourse” as a new level with its own rank scale of units and its own type of relations among these units.

Discourse presupposes on-line processing of a verbally presented message (word by word) within a framework of a certain social domain as a constituent part of a speech event.

D. is the largest unit of communication.