Exam 1 (Communication) Flashcards
Nonverbal communication
acial expressions, tones of voice, gestures, eye contact, spatial arrangements (proxemics), patterns of touch (haptics) and expressive movement
Proxemics
the meaning of spatial arrangements
Concepts for describing and thinking about Language
- Phonemes
- Morphemes
- Orthography
- Grammar/Syntax
- Semantics
- Pragmatics
Phoneme
sounds that signal a difference in meaning. The smallest unit of sound in speech that will indicate a difference in meaning, the sounds that native speakers recognize as distinct
Morpheme
the smallest units of meaning (Suffix, Prefix)
Orthography
The written script used to communicate language
Semantics
the study of meaning
Pragmatics
the study of language in the context of its use (field of sociolinguistics)
Linguistic context
the other words in the utterance
Non-linguistic context
physical surroundings, recent
thoughts, the whole life of the speaker, the culture of the speaker.
Ethnopragmatics
using ethnography to explain how speech both reflects and influences social relationships
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language that a person speaks and how that person thinks about, and acts in, the world
cultural emphasis
Vocabulary tends to emphasize words that are adaptively important in a culture
Language
Symbolic system of sounds that conveys meaning when put together according to a set of rules
Features of language
- Duality of Patterning
- Productivity
- Interchangeability
- Arbitrariness
- Displacement in time, space, role…
- Specialization
- Cultural Transmission
Duality of Patterning
associates a system of sounds with a system
of meanings, repeated re-organized use of sounds ex. cat/act/tack
Productivity
a finite set of symbols and rules can be combined into an infinite set of novel messages (openness 2&3)
Interchangeability
any human native speaker can send and receive any message in that language
Arbitrariness
there is no fundamental association between a word and its meaning.
(sound and meaning, sound and grammar, word size and thing size ex. microorganism) onomatopoeia is an exception ex. buzz, bang
Displacement (in time, space, role, etc.)
language can be used to talk about topics not currently being experienced
ex yesterday, in China, she or I did.
Specialization
language only serves the purpose of
communication
Cultural Transmission
specifics of the language must be learned
anew by each person (though brain and voicebox/mouth/lungs are hardwired for it)
language revitalization
the restoration of natural intergenerational transmission
Pidgin
a contact language that emerges when different languages come together in close proximity and need to communicate
