Topic 1.

LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION: SPOKEN AND WRITTEN

LANGUAGE. FACTORS DEFINING A COMMUNICATIVE
SITUATION: ADDRESSE, ADDRESSE, FUNCTION AND CONTEX.
INDEX
1. INTRODUCTION.
2. LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION.
2.1. COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT).
2.2. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE.
3. SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE.
3.1. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW.
3.2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SPOKEN AND WRITTEN
LANGUAGE.
4.

ELEMENTS DEFINING A COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION.

5.

LINGUISTICS FUNCTIONS.
5.1.
5.2.
5.3.
5.4.

6.

MALINOWSKIS CLASSIFICATION (1923)

BUHLERS CONSTITUTIVE FACTORS (1934)
JACOBSONS LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONS
HALLIDAYS CLASSIFICATION

CONCLUSIONS

1. INTRODUCTION
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In the introduction to the Foreign Languages Part which can be read in the
1513/2006 Royal Decree, it is said that the main aim of this area is learning to
communicate in the language studied and developing communicative competence.
Communication can be defined as the exchange of information between
individuals through a common code. According to the linguistic David Crystal,
language is the most frequently used form of human communication we possess.
Language, as a means to communication, can be described within the general
scheme valid for any transmission of information, whose elements are: addresser,
addressee, message, contact and code.
In this topic, I am going to see all these contents in more detail. And finally I
will see briefly some classifications of the linguistics functions as well.

2. LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION
The word language has many definitions.
Sapir said that language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and desires.
Hall defined language as the institution whereby humans communicate and
interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory symbols.
David Crystal said that language is the most frequently used and most highly
developed form of human communication we possess.
The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of
language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes
referred to as communicative competence.

2.1. COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)

Communicative Language Teaching or CLT is the commonly accepted norm
form effective language learning. It is an approach that parts from a theory of language
as communication, being its main aim the development of communicative competence,
that is, the knowledge and the ability necessary to be able to communicate in a natural
way.
CLT was founded at the end of the 60s but it really emerged during the second
half of the 70s, when a group of British Applied linguistics (led Widdowson and
Johnson) reacted against prevalent methodologies that forgot teaching communicative
proficiency since they were in favour of language as a set of structures. These
methodologies are Grammar-translation and Audiolingualism and I am going to see
why:
- In Grammar-translation most of the lesson was taught in the mother tongue: so,
there was very little speaking in the target language. Learners had a good
mastery of reading and writing but they usually were not able to use the
language for direct communication. The teacher worked as an instructor who
connected students in order to develop accuracy (through task of
descontextualised language).
- Audiolingualism presented some differences if compared with grammar
translation: mother tongue was used with a lesser frequency and the teacher, as a
driller, connected students only when it was considered necessary, so accuracy
was developed in a lesser way as well.
- CLT proposed a very different way of teaching: the teacher worked as a
facilitator who taught students to understand and communication in the target
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language using tasks of real and contextualized language and correcting them
very few. In fact, sometimes they were not corrected at all because the main aim
was the development of their fluency.
However, CLT also presented some aspects that were considered to be necessary
to revise:
- The appropriate point between accuracy and fluency: children can need
accuracy in order to be understood more easily by others and to pass some
specific tests required at school.
- The use of rules.
- Error treatment: formal errors sometimes need to be corrected in order to
eliminate them.
- Mother tongue can be very useful for clarification at specific moments.
- Authentic language sometimes is very difficult for students to understand.
Artificial language can be used to adapt the contents to pupils needs.
- Language manipulation is necessary to help students to understand specific
contents.
- Teachers role: teachers cant work always as facilitators since sometimes
other roles are necessary (for example, the pedagogical role for teaching new
contents).

2.2. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

The main aim for learning a language is developing communicative competence,
that is acquiring linguistic means to carry out different types of functions or learning to
use the language. Meaning is more important than form.
In Hymes view, a person who develops communicative competence acquires
both knowledge and ability to use the language.
Canale and Swain identified the different dimensions of communicative
competence:
- Grammatical Competence. This refers to what Chomsky calls linguistic
competence and what Hymes intends by what is formally possible (language
code). It includes features and rules of language.
- Sociolinguistic Competence. It refers to an understanding of the social
context in which communication takes place.
- Discourse Competence. How to combine grammatical forms and meanings
in order to achieve different text-types through cohesion in form and
coherence in meaning.
- Strategic competence. It contains verbal and non-verbal communication
strategies that may be used to compensate for breakdowns in communication
or to improve the effect of it.
- Sociocultural competence is also includes in comunicative comepetence: it
considers the social and cultural context.
According to Canale and Swain this competence is included within the
sociolinguistic competence.

3. SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE

3.1. SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE: A HISTORICAL
OVERVIEW
Historically, written language has been considered superior to oral language for
many centuries. But the 20th century, Bloomfield insisted that writing is not language,
but visible marks, and mentioned several factors:
- Speech is many centuries older than written language.
- It develops naturally in children.
- Written systems usually derive from the sounds of speech.
Writing came to be excluded from the primary subject matter of linguistic
science. Nowadays, writing cannot substitute speech, nor speech writing. The
functions of speech and writing are usually said to complement each other.

3.2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SPOKEN AND WRITTEN

LANGUAGE
These two types of language are different. We could start pointing out that the
maim difference is physical:
- Speech uses oral substance
- Writing uses graphic substance
According to David Crystal:
- Speech is time-bound, dynamic and transient, and participants are present.
- Writing is space-bound, static and permanent, and producer is distant from
receiver.
Daniel Madrid and Neil McLaren also pointed out some differences that can be
showed in the following table:
Oral language
-Spontaneous and unpredictable
-simple
-repetitive and redundant
-fillers
-gestures
-phonetic variations

Written language
-planned and revised
-complex syntax
-less redundant
-avoidance of fillers
-no gestures
-no phonetic variations

There are many respects in which the written and the spoken language have
mutually interacted. We normally use the written language in order to improve our
command of vocabulary, active or passive, spoken or written. Loan words may come
into a country in a written form, and sometimes, everything we know about a language
is its writing, as happens with Latin.

4. ELEMENTS DEFINING A COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION

Jakobson said that in any act of verbal communication there are six constituents:
- Addresser: the person who sends a message.
- Addressee: the person who receives the message.
- Message: the information sent by the addresser.
- Context: the circumstances outside the speech act itself, where the message
is.
- Code: the language used to transmit the message.
- Contact: the channel of communication between speaker and addressee

CONTEXT
ADDRESSER

MESSAGE

ADDRESSEE

CONTACT
CODE
5. LINGUISTICS FUNCTIONS
People expect to achieve by talking and writing, and by listening and reading, a
large number of different aims and different purposes. There are a lot of different
classifications of linguistic functions. I am going to see some of them.

5.1. MALINOWSKIS CLASSIFICATION

This author, classified the linguistic functions in the two broad categories of
pragmatic or practical, which he divided into active and narrative, and magical or ritual
(related to religious acts of ceremonies of the culture).

5.2. BUHLERS CONSTITUTIVE FACTORS

He distinguised expressive language (oriented towards the speaker), conative
language (oriented towards the listener) and representational language (oriented towards
the rest of reality).
The functional structure has four factors: sign, speaker, hearer and context. The
relation of the first (sign) with the other determines speech functions:
- Sign + hearer: Conative function
- Sign + speaker: Expressive function
- Sign + context: Representational function

5.3. JACOBSONS LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONS

According to this author, each of the components of a communicative situation
system (addresser, addressee, message, contact and code) performs a linguistic function:
- Addresser: Emotive function
- Addressee: Conative function
- Context: Referential function
- Contact: Phatic function
- Message: Poetic function
- Code: Metalinguistic function

5.4. HALLIDAYS CLASSIFICATION

Halliday described seven basic functions.

Instrumental function: using language to get things.

Regulatory function: using language to control the behavior of others.
Personal function: using it to express personal feelings and meanings
Imaginative function: using language to create a world of the imagination
Heuristic function: using it to learn and discover
Representational function: using language to communicate
Interactional function: to create interactions with others.