Chapter 2: Human Communication: Three Systems
CHAPTER 2 HUMAN COMMUNICATION: THREE SYSTEMS
hrough symbols humans can produce an unlimited number of messages. The power and scope of our ability to communicate are enhanced by the fact that we have not one but three systems of communication: speech, writing, and gestures. For most people, speech is the basic system of communication. Writing, however, allows the preservations of communications over space and through time, and its great importance in human history and in complex societies would be hard to overestimate. The role of gesture is less obvious. Among the deaf, of course, it may replace speech as the principal form of communication; but for most people it is an important supplement to speech. Together these systems allow us to communicate in a variety of situations with subtle shades of meaning.
Speech Speech requires the manipulation of the tongue, lips, vocal cords, lungs, velum, and all other parts of what is commonly called vocal tract . Physiologically, it requires such complex integration of nerves and muscles that it is difficult to imagine how anyone ever learns to speak. The speech centers of the brain are physically more extensive than the centers controlling any other form of activity. The portions of the brain apparently involved in controlling tongue movements alone
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are nearly twenty times larger than those controlling leg movements, despite the fact that the tongue muscles are only a fraction of the weight of leg muscles. The large size of the speech centers reflects the complexity of speech. When we are speaking, the tongue is in constant motion, and its position in relation to other elements of the vocal tract is essential to the production of appropriate sounds. In producing speech, the brain conceives a notion to say something and sets in motion a series of electrical impulses to all the muscles of the vocal tract. These muscles, in turn, set up a complex sound wave, and the result is that something is “said”. Thus, when humans communicate by means of spoken language, they express meanings that are conveyed through sounds. Understanding the relationship between meaning and sound is the departure point for linguistic inquiry.
SOUND AND MEANING There is no logical or necessary relationship between the sounds of words and their meanings. Speech is arbitrary and segmentable. For example, the word cat may be divided into at least three segments or units of sounds: a k-like sound, a vowel, and a t-like sound. There is nothing about these three sounds that suggests felinity. These sounds, moreover, recur regularly in English and may be recombined in different orders to form different words, such as act and tack . Thus no sound carries meaning by itself ; but when sounds are put into sequences with other sounds, these sequences may carry meaning.
Some words seem contradict the principle that the relationship between sound and meaning is arbitrary. Onomatopoeic words such as buzz, swish, bang, and meow , for example, sound like the things they represent. Similarly, some words contain sounds that have become imbued, in part, with meaning, such as the sl- in slime , slippery, slush, and slop . Similarly, the gl- in such words as glow, glimmer, glitter, and glisten may convey a certain meaning. However, these words make up only a tiny fraction of language; for most words, the relationship between sound and meaning is almost completely arbitrary. Certain modern words like television and typewriter seem to be predictable from other existing forms like tele “across”, vision “sight”, type “print’, and writer “source of writing”; but the meanings of these forms are ultimately arbitrary, too.
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This arbitrary relation is also indicated by the fact that the world’s languages use somewhat different sounds. For example, the clicking sounds of some African languages do not occur in English; in fact, most speakers of English would find it difficult to integrate these sounds into speech. Certain English sounds, like the initial sounds in judge and then , are difficult many non-English speakers to produce in a speech context.
At any rate, whatever sounds a language employs must be strong together to form a message. Sounds are strung together to form meaning-bearing units, and these units are strung together to form sentences. This stringing-together is accomplished according to a system of rules called grammar . According to the most popular modern conception of a grammar, it contains three components: a phonological , a syntactic, and a semantic component. The phonological component is concerned with the sound of a language; the syntactic component is concerned with the combining of meaning-bearing units into the sentences of a language; and semantic component is concerned with the meanings of sentences. All languages are assumed to share some basic underlying similarities in their grammars.
SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS The relationship between syntax and semantics is close and complex. For example, consider the three meaningful units boy, girl, and love . Languages have two means of expressing relationship between such units; word order and word endings. Thus, in English, word order (structure) establishes the difference in meaning between The boy loves the girl and The girl loves the boy . Not all languages that use word order to specify relationships use the same order. English is basically a subject-verb-object language (SVO); Japanese is a subject- object-verb language (SOV); and Tagalog is verb-subject-object language (VSO). In classical Latin, word order was relatively unimportant as a means of expressing relationship; instead, word ending (inflections) specified most relationships.
Most language today use both word order and word endings to indicate relationship between words. In English, word order is extremely important for establishing these relationships, and word endings are used less frequently. For instance, we distinguish between the subject, object, and possessive forms of pronouns: he and she are
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subject forms: him and her are object forms, his and hers are possessive forms. We mark verb for the third person singular present tense by ending –s (she runs ); and for most verbs, we mark the past tense with the ending –d. Our system of adjectives is somewhat divided in that the comparative form of some adjectives is marked by the ending –er (bigger, prettier ) whereas others require the addition of the word more (more beautiful, more ridiculous ). Thus, learning a language involves mastering both its word endings of inflection s and its word order or structure. Only then one can understand the full range of messages conveyed by a language.
Writing Linguists are usually more interested in speech than in writing, and writing has often been viewed as a reflection of speech. Although we have no proof, we assume that speech preceded writing. This assumption is supported by the observations that children can learn to speak before they learn to write and that many of the world’s peoples do not possess written forms of their language. Many scholars believe that Continental Celtic, the language of much of Europe before the Roman Empire, was unwritten as a result of a religious prohibition on any graphic representation of speech.
At some points, however, early humans discovered that they could communicate by making marks on material. The earliest known pictures, cave drawing, date from about 20,000 B.C., but we cannot be certain that they were intended to communicate; that is, to transmit in formation from one person to another. Writing as we now it today developed rather late—hardly more than five or six thousand years ago—but it has become particularly important since the invention of the printing press some five hundred years ago. Today there are three basic types of writing: logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic.
Logographic Writing Many languages of the world, most notably Chinese, have a writing system in which each symbol represent a word; such a writing system is called logographic . Thus, in Chinese the symbols means “man”, means “woman”, and means “mountain” respectively. This system developed out of a much less stylized system in which, for example, the symbols for mountain was .. These earlier symbols, which provided a more pictorial representation of the
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concepts to be communicated, are called pictographs . The likelihood is strong that the first picture messages were memory aids or personal records of events. However, at some points they were used to convey a meaning to another person in much the same way that one draws a map for a friend who needs directions. The pictures eventually became formalized, at which time they became logographs rather than simply pictures. Many of the symbols in a logographic system bear little resemblance to the objects they are meant to represent.
The logographic system has its advantages. Speakers of the different dialects in China today have difficulty communicating with each other in speech, but two Chinese may readily communicate with each other in writing. No matter how a word may be pronounced in various Chinese dialects, its logograph is the same across China. On the other hand, a disadvantage is readily apparent; one must learn an enormous number of logographs before one can read and write Chinese.
It is not quite correct to say that each logograph is different, however, for a logograph typically is compounded of several parts. The Chinese word meaning “peace”, for instance, is , which derives from the idea of a woman ( ) under a roof ( ). These two symbols recur frequently in compound logograph, including many whose meanings bear little or no relationship to either womanhood or roofs.
Most writing systems include a number of logographic characters, even if they use an alphabetic system otherwise. Numerals (1, 2, 3,…), for example, are logograph. There is nothing about the symbols 1 that suggests it should be pronounced like the word won ; in most languages of the world it is not. Similarly, the symbol & is logograph, as are $, %, +, and =.
Syllabic Writing In a syllabic writing system , each symbol represents a syllable. The Egyptian hieroglyphs originally were logographs, but eventually they were used as syllabic symbols as well. A symbol would be taken first to represent a word and would then be extended to represent the sound sequence of that word. Certain hieroglyphs represented specific consonants; for instance, a hand , represented the sound “d + a vowel.” Vowels were not represented in the writings of the Egyptians; thus, we do not know the actual pronunciation of the vowel. The cuneiform writing system of the ancient Mesopotamians,
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which was wedge-shaped script, contained characters for such syllables as tim, ma and mut .
The Kana syllabaries of Japanese are another good example of a syllabic writing system. In Japanese, a syllable consists either of a vowel sound or of a consonant plus a vowel. The word ame , for instance, consists of the syllables –a plus –me . The Japanese writing system includes two syllabaries, hiragama and katakana , which are used for different kinds of words or situations; in both syllabaries, each syllable is given its own symbols. For example, 6, >, and 6.
Alphabetic Writing Syllabic writing served as the source for alphabetic writing. Greek traders in the second millennium B.C. encountered numerous North American and Near Eastern groups that wrote with syllabaries descended from early Egyptian. From one or another of these groups, most likely from the Phoenicians, the Greek took the script and adapted it to serve their own language. In the process, symbols for vowels were established and the syllabic symbols degenerated into symbols for consonants. This Greek alphabet was adopted and adapted by the Roman, from whom most of the peoples of the Western world borrowed their alphabets.
Generally speaking, the principle of alphabetic writing is that each letter represents a particular spoken sound of the language. But no language is perfect in this respect, although English is unquestionably writing cat, act ) and sometimes “soft” (as in cider, receive ), and is thus associated with at least two distinct sounds (cello and spacious ) illustrate that c is associated with other sounds as well). In fact, only a few letters of English alphabet—f, l, m, and a few others—are usually related to one and only one sound. English is notorious for exceptions, however; notice the difference, for example, in the final f sounds of off and of .
This inconsistent relationship between letters and sounds results from the fact that languages are constantly changing, whereas writing systems tend to be preserved. For example, in 1922 the Turkish government decided to abandon use of the Arabic alphabet. To replace it, Turkish linguists devised a Roman-type alphabet in which each Turkish sound was represented by its own letter. Thus, in 1922 Turkish had near-perfect one-letter/one-sound alphabet. Today, little
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more than half century later, Turkish pronunciation has changed sufficiently for the correspondence between letters and sounds to be less perfect, and in the future the relationship will be progressively less consistent.
Modern English spelling is about four hundred years old, and English pronunciation has changed a good deal in European languages, while by no means perfectly consistent, are much more regular than English in the relationship they maintain between spelling and pronunciation.
Many attempts to reform English spelling have taken place in the last hundred years or so. President Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, tried to institute spelling reforms in White House memoranda to provide an example to the rest of the country, and the a good part of his fortune to anyone who could devise a better alphabet foe English in accordance with his suggestions. Interestingly, several alphabetic systems commonly used in English are more efficient than our familiar alphabet; for example, speed writing (F U cn rd ths U cn gt a gd jb as a scrtry).
MIXED WRITING SYSTEM When archeologists find a previously undiscovered writing system on clay tablets, they can rather easily determine what kind of writing system they are facing. If the number of symbols is fewer than forty, they may be reasonably confident that the system is an alphabetic one, for few languages have an alphabet of more than forty letters. On the other hand, if there appear to be more than sixty or so symbols, they may be confident that they have a syllabary in hand; moreover, the language probably has a fairly simple syllabic structure similar to that of Japanese. It would be difficult to imagine a syllabic script that would do justice to English, which has well over two thousand possible syllables. Finally, if the number of distinct symbols is very large, the archeologist may conclude that the writing system is logographic.
A language may use several writing system, however. We have seen that language, an alphabetic system, uses some logographs. Japanese writing is a good example of how different writing systems can be
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mixed together to form a more or less sensible and cohesive whole, although its complexities make it a challenge to learn. There are basically four writing systems in Japanese. Kanji are logographs. Each Kanji symbol that was adopted from the Chinese represents a word or concept, but most kanji symbols have at least two pronunciations. When used by itself, a kanji symbol is given the Japanese pronunciation. The symbols, for instance, is pronounced “yama” (“mountain”) in isolation. When used in compounds, however, the Chinese pronunciation “shan”, derived from Mandarin Chinese, is used. In this case, is pronounced “san” as in Fujisan (never Fujiyama ) Hiragama and Katakana are the two Japanese syllabaries. Hiragana, the more cursive of the two, is used for any word written in Kanji and for all grammatical endings. Katakana is used primarily for formal official writing and for words of foreign origin, such as beisubo-ru (“baseball”). Romaji is the Japanese system of writing that uses the Roman alphabet. Although it is not commonly used in ordinary writing, it is frequently found on public signs such as street signs. Japanese is interesting in the extent to which it combines the three systems of writing. The combination reflects Japanese history, in which China at one time and, more recently, the West have been influential. In other languages as well, the system of writing can reveal historical processes in language. More generally, writing helps to preserve history. Its role in the development and functioning of societies is vast. In contrast, gestures are most important in personal, face-to-face communication.
Gestures Although speech and writing seem more systematized and pervasive than gestures, gesture was probably the first form of communication. The term gesture is used here to include all human communication than involves waving of hands and facial signals, grunts and other vocalizations that do not make up words, what is frequently called body language , and various manipulations of the environment that have communicative intent such as smoke signals. A gesture, then, is a physical manipulation that is neither verbal nor graphic but is communicative.
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One cannot doubt that gesture was basic to the development of human communication and that it is still much used. Even when it is inappropriate, people gesture while they speak. If you watch people talking on the telephone, you will see them nodding, waving their free hands, shrugging, and otherwise complementing their speech with a whole repertory of motions that are completely wasted on the person at the other end of the line.
To some people, gestural communication is a necessity. The deaf, for example, depend greatly on the use of gestures. Communication is also conducted through gestures at distances when speech is impractical. For example, referees at football games use a system of gestures to communicate the infraction of rules to the crowd.
The most-discussed forms of gestural communication fall under the heading of kinesics , which is the study of the positioning and movement of the body and its parts during conversation. These gestures range from a wink to nodding the head to thumbing the nose. Different cultures often employ different gestures (for example, the difference between the handshakes of the two middle-aged American business-people and two young inner-city blacks), although certain gestures, such as a smile, are more or less universal.
Modulation of the voice, often called paralanguage , also affect communication. For example, the language of affection is spoken in a soft voice whereas aggressive arguments are conducted in a loud voice with extreme shifts in pitch. Proxemics is the study of the space maintained between two speakers in conversation—another factor in gestural communication. This “social space” varies from culture to culture. Generally, individual from the Middle East and certain Mediteranian countries position themselves much more closely to each other during speech than Americans and Northern Europeans do.
The broad definition of gesture outlined here includes still other forms of communication like lip reading, which is a combination of speech and gesture. A deaf person may perceive certain movements of the lips and tongue and interpret their probable sequence. The word mope, for example, would be perceived as the sequence lip closure, open rounded lips, lips closure. Lips readers are quite restricted in what they can actually see—movements of the lips and, to some extent,
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movements of the tip of the tongue. The amount of information they can draw from these gestures is only a fraction of what is going on. Generally, lips readers supplement this information with data drawn from facial expression, body gestures, and the like; thus, lip reading is really only a part of what the deaf generally call face reading . In fact, one of the major problems that face readers encounter is the well- intentioned speaker who speaks slowly and exaggeratedly for their benefit. Slow, exaggerated speech is unnatural and distorted, and the deaf find it far more difficult to interpret that naturally paced speech.
All these forms—kinesics, paralanguage, proxemics, lip and face reading—occur most often along with speech, not in place of it. But gestures can also substitute for speech, as the use of systems of tones and manual signs illustrate.
Many languages, including most of the Chinese dialects a number of African languages, are tone language ; that is, they use pitch to communicate or to distinguish among meanings. As a result, speakers of these languages develop a sensitivity to tone, a sensitivity that some peoples have applied to gestural systems of communication.
Some African groups also use tone as the basis of distant communication. Instead of whistling, however, they use a set of drums, each of which has a different musical note; they beat out the tune of a sentence in much the same way that the Mazatecans whistle it.
English speaking people, who do not use pitch to differentiate words, probably could not develop an adequate communicative system using only whistles or drums. Both drum and whistle communications depend directly on the tonal aspects of the spoken language. Mazatecans will learn whistling as they learn their verbal language, and each member of an African tribe is capable of understanding the drummed version of the tribe’s speech (although only a few specialists learn the art of doing the drum-work).
Much more familiar to us is the Indian sign language, in which hand movements stands for concepts. Throughout the American Plains, from Canada to Mexico, Indian tribes whose languages were completely different used sign language. These tribes frequently met while following the great buffalo herds, and sign communication
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evolved over a period of time well before whites came on the scene. Most of the signs were readily apparent because they were not arbitrary but related to their meanings.
The Indians are by no means the only people who have used sign language for regular communication. Although the deaf are adept at lip and face reading, they do not “speak” at each other. Like the Indians, the deaf can communicate through a sign language in which each gesture is imbued with some standardized meaning. American Sign Language is an example. There are more than fifteen hundred signs that are standard among users of sign language, with a certain amount of variation from one community to another. Although a few correspondences exist between Indian and deaf signs (such as the sign for “see”), most of the deaf signs developed independently of the Indian system.
Like the Indian sign language, deaf signs do not represent words, but concepts. Shades of meaning between words such as exhausted and fatiqued are designated not in the sign itself but in the manner and force with which the sign is made. Because the face is important in conveying these shades of meaning, the deaf tend to watch the face of the person who is speaking to them. A great majority of deaf signs are made at face level. Whereas the Indian sign for “good” begins at heart level, the deaf sign begins at the lips. Even the feet function in communication with the deaf. A stamp of the food is usually interpreted as a call for attention; its vibration can be perceived readily by a deaf person close by.
Even with these modulations, however, the signs for concepts are relatively limited and very general in meaning. Accuracy requires greater specification of meaning than is possible with these signs. An alternative is finger spelling, in which gestures of the fingers represent sounds, not concepts. Interestingly, the better-educated use fingers spelling much more than do those with less education.
Of the three methods of communication discussed, speech is by far the quickest and the most efficient. Also, subtle nuances of meaning can be indicated through vocal tone as well as actual words.
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