Theory Unit 3:

El proceso de comunicación. Funciones del lenguaje. La lengua en uso. La negociación

del significado.
1. INTRODUCTION
When we use language to affect others or to relay information, we make use of a set of
sociolinguistic rules related to language use within the communicative context (pragmatics); thus,
pragmatics is concerned with the way language is used to communicate rather than with the way it is
structured.
Traditionally, linguists have viewed the five aspects of language –syntax, morphology, phonology,
semantics, and pragmatics- of equal importance; however, theoreticians are increasingly giving a more
important role to pragmatics, reasoning that language is heavily influenced by context and that a need
to communicate exists prior to the selection of content and form; these theoreticians (called
functionalist) see pragmatics as the overall organizing principle of language.
As specifically stated in the Foreign Language section of Decree 1105/2014, which regulates CSE, we
should mention that one of the types of competence that should be stressed in our Didactic Course
Plans is the Pragmatic and Discursive Competence, since, in order to communicate successfully in a
target language, it must be reasonably well developed. However, adopting pragmatic competence as a
single goal for L2 learning is a wrong step in our methodology, given that a substantial balance with
the other four types of competence, namely linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategic and sociocultural, must
be reached.

2. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

2.1. Types of communication

The term "communication" can imply two different, and sometimes conflicting, concepts. On the
one hand, it means having a thoughtful exchange of views (dialogue) with a small number of people,
perhaps only one. But it can also involve broadly disseminating a simple message (compare
broadcasting), without deep thought or appeals for feedback.

Interpersonal

The most basic forms of communication are primarily those which involve communicating with
people immediately present, such as one-on-one and group conversations.

Telecommunication

Telecommunication is communication over spatial distances. The term is most often used in
describing electronic means of communication, but can also include methods such as smoke signals
and semaphore.
 Animal

Humans are not the only creatures who communicate since animals also share information with
each other in a variety of ways.
 2.2. The nature of communication: characteristics

Following Breen and Candlin, Morrow and Widdowson, communication is understood to have
the following characteristics. It

a) is a form of social interaction, and is therefore normally acquired and used in social
interaction;

b) involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message;

c) takes place in discourse and sociocultural contexts which provide constraints on appropriate
language use and also clues as to correct interpretations of utterances;

d) is carried out under limiting psychological and other conditions such as memory constraints,
fatigue and distractions;

e) always has a purpose (for example, to establish social relations, to persuade, or to promise);

f) involves authentic, as opposed to textbook-contrived language; and

g) is judged as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes. (For example, communication
could be deemed successful in the case of a non-native English speaker who was trying to find the
train station in Toronto, uttered ‘How to go train’ to a passer-by, and was given directions to the train
station.)

2.3. Elements of the communication process

According to Shannon and Weaver, in any communicative act we find two actors: emitter or
addresser and recipient or addressee; both need to share a code, made up of a series of signs; these
signs are made of something material associated to a meaning. The relationship between the meaning
and the material sign is conventional, one meaning being assigned to such a sign because that is part of
a convention shared by the participants in the process of communication: the emitter codes a message
(for a linguistic message we will say encode a message) when s/he chooses a element of the code and
emits it; and the recipient decodes the message, when s/he understands it and responds accordingly.
The context is the situation where the communicative act is produced, and it is known by both the
emitter and the recipient. Finally, the channel is the medium through which the message is
transmitted.
Another concept which is present in the process of communication is that of noise; we call
noise any disturbance that may appear in the channel of communication. Its presence is the reason for
the quantity of redundancy we find in messages.
2.4.The stages of the communication process
Those stages are the following:
1.-The emitter selects the content s/he wants to transmit.
 2.-The message is encoded; that is, the right units and structures are selected in order to
express the content.
3.-The message is transmitted through the appropriate channel.
4.-The recipient decodes the message.
5.-Apprehension of the transmitted content( part of the context that the emitter wants to share
with the recipient) on the part of the recipient.

3. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
The culmination of language learning is not simply the mastery of the forms of language but the
mastery of forms in order to accomplish the communicative functions of language. While forms are
the manifestation of language, functions are the realization of those for the pragmatic (practical)
purpose. Communication is a series of communicative acts or speech acts which are used
systematically to accomplish particular purposes.
There have been many attempts to classify the purposes why people use language, considering the
functions of language from different points of view according to the concepts they are based on.
According to Malinowski (1923) the functions of language were two: pragmatic and magical. To
Bühler they were three: the expressive, the conative, and the representational functions.
3.1. Jakobson’s classification: he added three more functions: assertive, poetic, and metalinguistic.
We are going to present in detail the functions Jakobson analyses in language as a system of
communication:
1. Representational function: This function defines the relationship between the message and
the idea or object it refers to.
2. Emotive function: It defines the relationship between the emitter or addresser and the
message, his/her attitude towards the object of communication.
3. Conative function: It defines the relationship between the message and the recipient or
addressee.
4. Poetic function: It defines the relationship of the message with itself.
5. Assertive function: Its purpose is to consolidate, finish or keep the communication going on-a
typical example would be the constant use of pet expressions or tags by the speakers.
6. Metalinguistic function: It is useful to set the sign in the code where it gets its
communicative value.
All these functions appear simultaneously, mixed in different proportion and, depending on the type of
communication, one or some will predominate over the others.
3.2. Pragmatic classification: We can divide the functions of language into two broad pragmatic
functions:
3.2.1. Intrapersonal or transactional function (also called ideational by Halliday) is found in the
internal language used for memory, problem solving, and concept development. Language serves to
express the speaker’s experience of the real world
 3.2.2. Interpersonal or interactional function. It is used to communicate, to establish and maintain
social relations. Through this function social groups are delimited, and the individual is identified and
reinforced.
These two basic functions of language are also reflected in Bernstein’s studies about educational
failure, and thus it is very interesting to EFL teachers; his works suggest that in order to succeed in the
educational system, a child must know how to use language as a means of learning, and how to use it
in interpersonal interaction.
According to Halliday, there is a third function of language: the textual function, which enables
the speaker or writer to construct the texts, or connected passages of discourse that is situationally
relevant, and enables the listener or reader to distinguish a text from a random set of sentences. One
aspect of the textual function is the establishment of cohesive relations from one sentence to another in
a discourse.

4. LANGUAGE IN USE
4.1.Speech act
Each sentence, taken as a whole, is designed to serve a specific function. According to Austin
and Searle, every time speakers utter a sentence, they are attempting to accomplish something with the
words; speakers are performing a speech act or, as Austin called it, an illocutionary act. In other
words, a speech act is a unit of linguistic communication, which is expressed according to
grammatical and pragmatic rules, and which functions to convey a speaker’s conceptual
representations and intentions; in speech act theory the minimal unit of communication is not a word
or a sentence but the performance of an act such as asking a question, giving a command, thanking and
so on. The speech act is a larger conceptual unit than the syntactic and semantic units.
The concept of speech act was first introduced by John Austin (1962). He theorized that
discourse is composed not of words or sentences but of speech acts. Searle (1965) strengthened this
point by stating that “it is the (...) performance of the speech of act that constitutes the basic unit of
linguistic communication”. According to Austin, each speech of act can be analyzed into three parts:
locutions or propositions, illocutions or intentions and perlocutions or the listener’s interpretations.
Searle further clarified Austin work and he proposed the following speech act categories:
1) Representatives: Statements that convey a belief of disbelief in some proposition, such as
assertion, and can be judged for true value.
2) Directives: Attempts to influence the listener to do something, such as a demand or command
(“Can we get ready in time? Hurry up!”, “I need you to do something”, etc)
3) Commissives: Commitments of self to some future course of action, such as a vow, promise
or swear.
4) Expressives: Expressions of a psychological state, such as thanking, apologizing,
complimenting, expressions of joy, like or dislike, disappointment, or deploring. Typical of
poetic language.
 5) Declaratives: Statements of facts that presume to alter a state of affairs (“I declare you man
and wife/innocent”, “abracadabra, now you are a frog”)
The speaker’s attitude towards the proposition is found in the speaker’s intentions, that is in the
illocutionary force, rather than his/her actual words; thus an utterance with fixed form and semantic
content can fulfil several intentions. The reverse is also possible: several different forms or
propositions can fulfil a single intention or function (for example, you can ask for the salt using many
different forms). This leads to the notion of indirect speech acts, for example although in English the
standard way to command someone to do something is to use the imperative form (direct command
“Pass the salt”), that is not the only way (indirect command “Can you pass the salt?”,” May I have the
salt, please?).
Obviously, the particular form of the speech act depends on the communicative context. Speakers
expect listeners to recognise the functions of the sentences they speak, because otherwise it is
considered a misunderstanding even though they must have taken in everything else about the
utterance. Speech act theorists attempt to go beyond the literal meaning of the words and sentences by
classifying utterances according to their implicit, rather than their explicit functions.
4.2. Different dimensions of language use
Language use is a class of human activity in which language is but one ingredient; language use is
more than language structures in motion.
The essence of these activities can be organized around four dimensions; which allow us to represent
the main factors that go into a speaker’s choice of what to utter, and a listener’s understanding of what
the speaker meant.
4.2.1 The bipersonal dimension: It refers to the purposive relation between a speaker and
listener. When two people engage in a social process in which the actions of one depend, in part, on
the actions of the other, they must choose their actions based on their common ground. The relation
between speaker and listener is defined by two notions: the speaker’s meaning and the listener’s
understanding or recognition of that meaning; this would be impossible without reference to their
common ground.
4.2.2 The audience dimension: Different listeners may be assigned different roles at any point in
a conversation: the speaker listens to his/her utterances to correct poor phrasing and outright errors,
assuming the role of self-monitor; other listeners are divided into those truly participating in
the conversation at the moment (participants) and those who are not (overhearers) the latter falling in
two main kinds: bystanders, openly present at the conversation though they do not take part in it,
and eavesdroppers who listen without the speaker’s awareness.
In designing his/her utterances, the speaker must pay special attention to the distinction
between two types of participants: addressees, those the utterance is addressed to and side
participants, those the utterance is not addressed to.
This dimension let us know how the speakers tailors his/her utterances for different types of
listeners and why distinct listeners make different interpretations of the same utterance.
 4.2.3 The layered dimension: Language is also used in settings where there is layer upon layer
of participants and communication. With layering we can make sense of a diversity of language
uses: conversation, personal letters, even works of fiction (Hamlet requires three layers: the layer
with the characters, the layers with the actors, and the layer of Shakespeare creating a fiction for a
contemporary audience).
4.2.4 The temporal dimension: Human activities take place in time, and language use is no
exception. Speech is evanescent, thus the speaker and listener must synchronize their listening
with their speaking, or communication will fail. This synchrony requirement has diverse
consequences: turn taking, sentential structure, and discourse structure. Although much language
use occurs when speaker and listener are at a distance in place, time or both, the synchrony
requirement is still present but in altered form; think of letters, newspapers reports, essays,
telephone calls, and so on.
4.2.5 Coordination of action: At first it appears that these four dimensions have little in
common, as the features they cover are too diverse. But a closer look reveals a common core
which is central to language use: coordination of action, since each dimension specifies a set of
elements that must be coordinated by the participants in the communication; coordination is on the
bipersonal dimension, but it is also required on the audience dimension, the speaker may design
utterances depending on what s/he wants the overhearers to understand, so it is only when the
participants worry about the audience dimension too that the they see what the speaker really
means.
Coordination on the layered dimension is usually achieved by the setting, given that the
settings create the right layers for the words to be understood (in the theatre we expect the players
on stage to act out parts, not to converse as themselves).
Coordination on the temporal dimension takes the form of synchrony. These four dimensions,
then, define elements that the participants in a communication need to coordinate. The
fundamental problem is for the speaker and the listener to coordinate what s/he means and s/he
understands; but to do so they must regard all four dimensions at once.

5. NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
In planning what to say speakers implicitly have a problem to solve, namely, what linguistic
devices should be selected to affect the listener in the way that the speaker intends to; in order to find a
solution to this problem we have to considerate the following aspects:
1) Knowledge of the listener: depending on what speakers think listeners know they will refer to a
third as she, my next door neighbour, the woman over there, etc.
2) The cooperative principle: speakers expect listeners to assume that they are trying to be
cooperative, that they are trying to tell the truth, be informative, be relevant, and be clear.
3) The reality principle: speakers expect to assume they will talk about comprehensible events,
states, and facts.
 4) The social context: different social contexts lead to different vocabulary; for example, depending
on the formality of the situation they will refer to police as policemen or cops.
5)The linguistic devices available: many things speakers want to talk about have no ready linguistic
expression; for example, to refer to an odd-looking house, one may use a circumlocution like ranch-
style cottage with California Gothic trim, simply because there is no better single expression available.
The term problem-solving may suggest that people are consciously weighing alternatives and
making explicit choices. However, in the planning of what to say the problem solving is usually
accomplished so quickly and easily that people are not aware of what they are doing, but as any
planning it is a process with choices, heuristics-that is, the use of experience and practical efforts to
find answers to questions-, and a goal to be accomplished, in that sense the planning of what to say is
viewed as a kind of problem solving.
Discourse has certain important features: it is connected, it has a purpose, and it is a
cooperative effort; these features give rise to a general principle of communication, the cooperative
principle, which participants are expected to observe: “Make your conversational contribution such
as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, and by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice, 1975).
One of the most important notions which have emerged in text studies in recent years is that of
implicature, that is, the question of how we come to understand more than it is actually said; Grice
uses the term implicature to refer to what the speaker means or implies rather than what s/he really
says: for example, the following exchange:
A: Shall we go for a walk?
B: It’s raining
How does A or anyone observing the scene know how to relate the utterance It’s raining – a mere
comment on the weather- to the question of going for a walk, why do we assume that It’s raining is an
answer to the above question? Implied meaning, which is not signalled with textual resources, derives
from the cooperative principle and the following maxims associated with it:
1) Quantity: make your contribution as informative as it is required, do not do make your
contribution more informative than required.
2) Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically do not say what you
believe to be false and do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
3) Relevance: make your contributions relevant to the current exchange
4) Manner: be clear, avoiding obscurity of expression and ambiguity, be brief and orderly.

The principles outlined above provide points of orientation rather than strict rules, we can do refuse to
adhere to the maxims in some situations, for example, in order to avoid a topic or question.
6. CURRICULAR IMPLICATIONS

Both the National Act on Education published in 2006 (LOE in Spanish) and the National
Act for the Improvement of Quality in Education, published in 2013 (LOMCE in Spanish) indicate
that, among the general objectives of Secondary Education is the acquisition of a basic communicative
competence in a foreign language, this entailing that students will thus have to be able to understand
and convey messages in a variety of daily-life communicative situations (both written and spoken).
This said, one of the innovative aspects of the National Act for the Improvement of Quality in
Education is that it defines the curriculum as the regulation of the elements determining the teaching
and learning process for each educational stage, being integrated by:
(a) Aims: References relating to outcomes that students should achieve at the end of the
educational process, as a result of planned teaching/learning experiences to this end.
(b) Key Competences: Capacities to apply, in an integrated manner, the contents of each teaching
process and educational stage, in order to implement activities properly and resolve complex
problems efficiently.
(c) Contents: All knowledge, abilities, skills, and attitudes that contribute to the achievement of
the aims of the teaching process, educational stage and the development of competences.
(d) Teaching methodology: comprising the description of teaching practices strategies and the
organization of teachers' work .
(e) Measurable learning standards and outcomes: Specifications of evaluation criteria that
allow defining learning outcomes and establishing what students should know, understand, and
know how in each subject; they must be observable, measurable and assessable and allow grading
performance or achievement reached. Course plans should contribute and facilitate the design of
standardized and comparable evidence.
(f) Evaluation criteria: They are the specific reference to assess the learning of students and
describe what students must achieve, both in knowledge and skills.

In addition, National Decree 1105/ 2014 establishes the following blocks of contents for the area
of foreign language in Secondary Education:
- block 1: comprehension of oral texts
- block 2: production of oral texts: expression and interaction
- block 3: comprehension of written texts
- block 4: production of written texts: expression and interaction

Therefore, all the previous sections of this theory unit point in the direction that we should pursue a
holistic approach to the teaching and learning of foreign languages, since all curricular elements and
blocks of contents will be directly affected by the approach implemented.
7. CONCLUSION
The different phenomena discussed in this topic are of primary importance in foreign language
teaching; firstly, because it reveals the real nature of communication by means of language, and also it
gives direct guidance as to what to teach and how to do it. The shift towards communicative teaching
was possible once the process of communication was clearly defined. On the other hand, defining
functions of language helps syllabus builder to find a principle according to which the rest of linguistic
material is presented.
Finally, we should focus on the direct and practical classroom implications of the teaching of language
as a communicative tool, among which we can mention the following:

• Interactive group work in the classroom is essential.

• Language should be taught from a communicative approach, and therefore it should be
fluency-focused.
• Students should be provided with as many opportunities for genuine practice as possible.
• Students should acquire communicative competence, in order to be able to grasp the meaning
of a sentence, even if the different functions of language make it difficult.
• Strategies and techniques should be provided to students in order that they can overcome their
communicative problems.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY
COUNCIL OF EUROPE. 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:
Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
BREEN, M. P. 2001. ‘Syllabus design'. In Carter, R. and D. Nunan (eds.) The Cambridge
Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: C.U.P.
ELLIS, R. 1997. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press
HARRIS, M. and McCANN, P. 1994. Assessment. Oxford: Heinemann.
HOWATT, A.P.R. 1984. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
KRASHEN, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford:
Pergamon.
NUNAN, D. 1988. Syllabus Design. Oxford University Press.
PIAGET, J. 1986. Psicología y pedagogía. Planeta Agostini. Barcelona.
WILLIS, J. 1986. A Framework for Task-based Learning. London: Longman.
WILLIS, J. 1988. Teaching English through English. Longman Group Limited.