LANGUAGE IS COMMUNICATION

When we think of an intelligent being, we think of someone like us, a creature that is
able to think and communicate effectively. Communication or language is a process
every child learns from birth, and we continue to use it until our death. The structure of
our language gives us the ability for abstract thinking. Because of this we are able to
expand our knowledge and evolve as a society.

Language- is the system of words, terms or signs that people use in particular manner
and it carry a particular meaning to express thoughts and feelings to each other.
Language can also be described as use of building blocks called ‘words’, their
pronunciation, and the methods of combining them that can be used and understood by
a community. In a language each word carries a symbolic significance that can trigger a
particular thought. Language may also be referred to the cognitive ability to learn and
use systems of complex communication or to describe the set of rules that makes up
these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. Some
people say language originated from emotions while others say that it originated from
rational and logical thought. There are around 5000 to 7000 various languages around
the globe.

Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into
secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli, for example whistling, signed,
or braille. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and
children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old.

Uses of Language

Language is central to all our lives, and arguably the cultural tool that sets humans, i.e.
us, apart from any other species. We write, speak, and sign it. We work with language
and earn our living with language. We court and seduce, buy and sell, insult and praise,
all by means of language. We use language in many different ways, some of which are
irrelevant to any attempt to provide reasons for what we believed.

i) The informative use of language involves an effort to communicate some

content.
ii) An expressive use of language, on other hand, intends only to vent some
feeling, or perhaps to evoke some feeling from other people.
iii) Finally, the direct uses of language aim to cause or to prevent some overt
action by a human agent.
Whatever be the effective use of any language, it centres on using language for
communication.

Communication- it is simply the act of transferring information from one place to

another.

Although this is simple definition, when we think about how we may communicate the
subject becomes a lot more complex. There are various categories of communication
and more than one may occur at any time.

The different categories of communication include:

- Spoken or verbal communication: face to face. Telephone. Radio, or television

and other media.
- Non-verbal communication: body language, gestures, how we dress or act –
even our scent.
- Written communication: letters, emails, books, magazines, the internet or via
other media.
- Visualizations: graphs and charts, maps, logos and other visualizations can
communicate messages.

The Process of Communication:

- In every language-communication, there are always two participants, sender and

receiver of message.
- Message is utterance (usually in the form of sentences) used to convey idea,
thought, suggestion, etc.
- Every language – communication process is initiated with the process that the
sender formulates something he/she wants to utter in the form of idea or
thought frame. This process is called semantics encoding.
- Those ideas are then formulated into grammatical sentences, which are called
grammatical encoding.
- After being formulated into grammatical sentences, those ideas are then
uttered. The process is called phonological encoding.
- The utterance is then comprehended or decoded by the receiver or the listener.
The process is called decoding.
- The next process is the listener receives or comprehends the sound
(phonological decoding), then the grammatical sentences (grammatical
decoding), and the meaning of the message (semantic decoding).
There are two kinds of language-communication: one-way and two ways
communication. One-way communication means in the communication process, the
speaker or sender remains as the sender and the listener or receiver remains as the
receiver. In two-ways communication, the position of sender and receiver is
interchangeable.

So now we know what language is and what is communication, we can clearly see how
both of them are related and dependent on each other. I believe communication cannot
exist without language and there is no life of any language without communication.

Conclusion – The human language is unique

“An overwhelming body of natural experiments, in the form of adoption of children

between societies belonging to different language families, testifies that (pathology
aside) any human child is born with the capacity to master any human language.”

Humans are all born with the same capability to learn language and there are no groups
or cultures of people without a complex language. In fact, a complex language is what
defines humans. The difference between humans and animals is very clear when it
comes to communication, the human language contains grammar, semantics like noun,
verb, present and past to express human meaning. Animals are not able to
communicate about the past or the present for example. Human language is also the
only known communication system that is independent which means humans do not
only communicate in several different ways, for example humans are able to use sign
language and the written language to communicate. Language also makes science
possible for humans. Language makes theories about language possible as if English
allows humans to make a distinction between the meaning of communication and
language. When almost all species communicate in one way or another it is not even,
close to how humans communicate with language. The way humans communicate with
one another is uniquely important in our everyday lives. Without language, the world
would not have developed as it has and probably would have the same appearance as
million years ago. How humans have developed is constitutes how unique we are and
how different from other species we really are.