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LA LENGUA COMO COMUNICACIN: LENGUAJE ORAL Y LENGUAJE ESCRITO.
FACTORES QUE DEFINEN UNA SITUACIN COMUNICATIVA: EMISOR,
RECEPTOR, FUNCIONALIDAD Y CONTEXTO

The present essay aims to study language and its functions, and more
precisely to develop the notion of communication as one of these functions. For this
purpose, I will divide the topic into three main sections. First, I will deal with the
definition and the main properties of language in a communicative context. In order to
do so, I will address the following question: what is language?. Second, I will
compare spoken and written language, dealing first with the historical attitudes and
then outstanding the main differences between writing and speech. Third, I will deal
with the communication theory, its definition and the key factors that affect any
communicative interaction, which will lead to the concept of communicative
competence. Finally, I will compile the main conclusions and the bibliography used to
develop this topic.

Let me introduce this topic by providing a brief historical contextualization of the role
that language studies have played in the last centuries:
Traditionally, Language theories focused on items of language in isolation and
their main aim was the written language. However, in the last decades, there has been a
remarkably tendency towards a communication-oriented approach in the context of
languages studies. This evolution is also evident in the foreign languages teaching. In
the past, people got to know about the language (learned a language) but could not use it
in a real context (couldnt communicate in the foreign language). Nowadays, the focus
of the foreign languages teaching has also evolved towards the importance of
communication. In this context, let me develop the topic and present the main features
of language and communication.



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After this brief introduction, I will deal with the DEFINITION AND PROPERTIES
OF LANGUAGE, by answering the question: What is language?.

Language can be defined as a system of conventional spoken or written symbols
by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its
culture, communicate
1
.

Let us go on distinguishing its main properties:
Cultural transmission.- Language is passed on from one generation to the next.
Communicative versus informative.- We use communicative signals (as the
language itself) to intentionally communicate something, but we can also provide
information unintentionally via the informative signals (by means of prosody or
paralinguistic devices).
Productivity.- The potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.
Arbitrariness.- There is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its
meaning.
Discreteness.- The sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct.
Reciprocity.- any speaker sender of a linguistic exchange can also be a listener
receiver.
Displacement.- The users of language speak about things and events not present in
the immediate environment (i.e., describing Future, Past and Present actions).



1
Otra definicin: Language is considered to be a system of communicating with other
people using sounds, symbols and words expressing a meaning, idea or thought. This
language can be used in many forms, primarily through oral and written
communication, as well as using expression through body language.
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Now that the key properties of language have been argued, I will go on to develop
the second part of the topic: a comparison of the SPOKEN AND WRITTEN
LANGUAGE. For this purpose, I will firstly deal with the historical attitudes towards
them, and then, I will establish the main differences between speech and writing.

With regard to the historical attitudes, written language was considered to be
superior to spoken language for many centuries. This is due to the fact that written
language was the medium of literature and literature was considered the standards of
linguistic excellence. Contrary to this traditional point of view, during the 20
th
century a
group of linguists argued in favour of studying speech because this is the primary
medium of communication. Also, spoken language is the way in which every native
speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned later. In view of this
criterion, many linguists came to think of written language as a tool of secondary
importance.

Nowadays, there is no sense in the view that one medium of communication is
intrinsically better. Writing cannot substitute for speech, nor speech for writing. The
functions of speech and writing are usually said to complement each other.

Let us go on distinguishing the main differences of spoken and written language.

The main distinction between speech and writing is clear: Speech uses the
transmitting medium of 'phonic substance', typically air-pressure movements
produced by the vocal organs, whereas writing uses the transmitting medium of
'graphic substance', typically marks on a surface made by a hand using a tool.

However, many other differences can be pointed out. I will analyse the relationship
between speech and writing in terms of six additional points of contrast:

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Speech is time-bound, dynamic, and temporary. Writing is space-bound, static, and
permanent.

Speech is part of an interaction in which both participants are usually present, and
the speaker has a particular addressee in mind; whereas the writer is usually distant
from the reader, and often does not know who the reader is going to be.

Because participants in oral interactions are typically face-to-face, they can rely on
such extralinguistic clues as facial expression and gesture to aid meaning. Lack of
visual contact in written language means that participants cannot rely on situational
context to make their meaning clear.

The spontaneity and speed of speech promote looser constructions, repetition,
rephrasing, and comment clauses ('you know', 'mind you', 'I mean'). Writing
promotes careful organisation with often intricate sentence structures.

Lengthy coordinate sentences are normally used in speech. Multiple instances of
subordination in the same sentence, elaborated syntactic patterns, and the long
sentences are typical in written texts.

Unique features of speech include most of the prosody. Intonation, loudness,
tempo, rhythm provide highly efficient hints. Unique features of writing include
spatial organisation and several aspects of punctuation.

In speech, there is an opportunity to rethink an utterance while it is in progress
(starting again, adding a qualification). However, errors, once spoken, cannot be
withdrawn. On the other hand, written errors in our writing can be eliminated
without the reader ever knowing. Also interruptions, if they have occurred while
writing, are also invisible in the final product.


Despite these differences, there are many aspects in which the written and spoken
language have mutually interacted. Nowadays, their dependence has proved to be
mutual.
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Now that we have examined the differences between speech and writing, we shall
concentrate on the third part of the essay: COMMUNICATION THEORY.

Communication is defined as the process of passing information and
understanding from one person to another through a common system of symbols. The
communication process involves six basic elements: sender (encoder), message,
channel, receiver (decoder), feedback and noise.
1. The sender is the person that initiates the communication process. He or she
encodes a message, and selects a channel for transmitting the message to a receiver.
(To encode is to put a message into symbols, that is to say, words or images).
2. The message is the information that the sender wants to transmit.
3. The channel is the path a message follows from the sender to the receiver.
4. The receiver is the person or group for whom the communication is intended. He or
she decodes the message.
5. The receiver provides feedback, which is the transfer of information from the
receiver back to the sender. It ensures that mutual understanding has taken place in
a communication. Thus, in the feedback loop, the receiver becomes the sender and
the sender becomes the receiver.
6. Finally, in a communicative situation we can also find noise, which is anything that
interferes with the communication.

After presenting the concept of communication, and its main components, I will
analyse the intended effects of our communicative interactions (or the communicative
functions) and the environment in which they are exchanged (or the context).

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Following the Jakobsons model, the main communicative functions are classified
as follows:
- The emotive or expressive function focuses on the sender and his/her own emotions
towards the content of the message are emphasized. Examples are emphatic speech
or interjections.
- The poetic function is allocated to the message. It is based on the phonetic features
of language, such as rhetorical figures, pitch or loudness.
- The phatic function helps to establish contact and refers to the channel of
communication. It refers to the social use of language.
- The conative or appellative function is directed to the receiver. One example is the
vocative use of language.
- The metalinguistic function deals with the code itself. This is the function of using
language to communicate about language.
- The referential function refers to the context. Language is usually used to
communicate ideas.

Apart from these functions, there is another key feature which may be taken into
account: the context of the communicative interaction. This concept could be defined as
the parts that precede and follow a word or passage and contribute to its full
meaning, which refers to the linguistic context. But this context may not be enough to
fully understand a speech act, as it doesnt make reference to the outside world; then a
definition of the context of the situation may be added: the conditions and
circumstances that are relevant to an event, fact, etc.

Thus, a more complete and appropriate definition of communicative context would
be: Any communicative interaction is contextualized by the written or spoken parts that
precede and follow a word or passage, but also by the conditions and circumstances
that are relevant to the context of the interaction.

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Now that I have presented the main elements involved in a communicative process, it
may be appropriate to develop the concept of communicative competence. Hymes
2

stated that, in order to learn a language, a native speaker does not only utter
grammatically correct forms (as it was thought by Chomsky), he also has to know where
and when to use a sentence, and to whom. This is known as communicative competence.

Next, I am going to highlight the four main aspects of the communicative
competence:
- Systematic potential.- A native speaker possesses a potential for creating language
using a system.
- Appropriacy.- A native speaker knows what language is appropriate in a given
situation (according to the setting, participants, channel, topic).
- Occurrence.- A native speaker knows how often something is used in a language,
and grades its use accordingly.
- Feasibility.- A native speaker knows whether something is possible in the language
or not (although some structures are grammatically correct, they are not possible in
the language).

These four categories have been adopted for teaching purposes by the Spanish
Education Administrations. In fact, the recent educational reforms pay special attention
to the effective achievement of communicative competence. This key element for the
foreign languages learning is also highlighted in the European portfolio Common
European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment
3
,
which has become a key reference for the present Spanish educational system. This
European portfolio classifies communicative competence in the following components:
- Linguistic competence, or the ability to use the formal resources of language to
assemble well-formed and meaningful messages. This component includes lexical,
phonological and syntactical dimensions of language.
- Sociolinguistic competence, which refers to the sociocultural conditions of language
use. This competence affects the communication between participants of different
cultures and fosters sensitivity to social conventions. (It includes linguistic markers of
social relations, politeness conventions, expressions of folk wisdom, dialects and accents and
register differences).
- Pragmatic competence is concerned with the functional use of linguistic resources. It
involves the mastery of discourse, identification of text types and their functions.

2
Dell Hymes (1972) On Communicative Competence. Article in Linguistic
Anthropology.
3
Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages: learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
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As a CONCLUSION of this topic, I would like to highlight that communication
is the main purpose of any language, and it is a key word for us as English teachers. Not
only is it the essence of human interaction, it is also the centre of language learning,
where both oral and written communication are included.