Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 29, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 11
25

The ‘Communication Concept’ and the

‘Language Concept’ in Everyday
English*
CLIFF GODDARD
University of New England

This paper presents a semantic/conceptual analysis of the concepts of communication

and language, as represented in the lexicon of everyday English. Section 1 gives a brief
orientation to the method to be employed, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka. In the main body of the paper, I propose
semantic explications for several senses of the English words communicate, commu-
nication and language, supporting these explications by reference to naturally occurring
data, and, in the case of polysemy, by reference to distinctive grammatical or
phraseological properties of the polysemic meanings. The paper closes with observations
on how the differing semantics of the ‘communication concept’ and the ‘language
concept’ may contribute to the differing orientations of linguistics and communication
studies.

Keywords: Lexical Semantics; Communication; Language Concept; NSM

One could say that ours is an era which is now obsessed with the idea (or perhaps
even the ideology) of communication (Morley 2005: 50).

* I am grateful to Anna Wierzbicka, Anna Gladkova and Zhengdao Ye for valuable input and suggestions about
the explications. I would also like to thank my research assistant Vicki Knox both for her corpus work and for
many helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at ConCom05 ‘Conceptualizing Human
Communication’, an HCSNet conference held at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW in December
2005. Later versions were presented at the Easter NSM Semantics Workshop at the Australian National
University in 2006, and at a Linguistics Department seminar at Göteborg University, Sweden, in 2007. I thank
the participants of these gatherings for their many helpful comments. Two anonymous reviewers for AJL also
made helpful suggestions.

ISSN 0726-8602 print/ISSN 1469-2996 online/09/010011-15 # 2009 The Australian Linguistic Society
DOI: 10.1080/07268600802516350
12 C. Goddard
1. A Methodology for Conceptual Semantics
A typical dictionary definition of language goes like this: ‘a system of symbolic
communication’. That is, the word language is typically defined in terms of
communication. As for communication, dictionaries often define it as ‘an exchange
of information and messages’, while textbooks and scholarly articles use formula-
tions like: ‘Broadly defined, communication is a dynamic process of transmitting
and receiving meaningful information’ (Noels et al. 2003: 232). For the purposes
of systematic linguistic semantics, these familiar-sounding statements are not
suitable ways of describing the meanings of the words language or communication,
because they are formulated in terms which are themselves problematical and
obscure.
In order to describe the meanings of words in a systematic and disciplined fashion,
whether within a single language or across different languages, the terms in which one
formulates the description should meet two requirements. First, they should be as
simple as possible. Using maximally simple terms makes sense because in order to
explain anything to anybody, one has to explain it in terms with which they are
already familiar (otherwise the explanation raises new questions of its own). From a
practical point of view, therefore, the simpler the better. But there is also a powerful
theoretical reason for preferring analysis into maximally simple terms: namely, that in
this way one achieves the maximum resolution in the analysis. Second, the terms of
description should be language-neutral, i.e. transposable between languages without
distortion. They should not be words that just happen to be found in one language of
the world, such as English, but not in others. The putative definition of language as a
system of communication fails to pass muster on both these requirements, because the
word communication (not to mention system) is both semantically complex and
highly language-specific. Even many languages of Europe do not have a word exactly
matching the particular semantic configuration we find in the modern English word
communication.
Suitable terms for semantic description are provided by the semantic primes of the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka
2002; Peeters 2006; Goddard 2006, 2008). Semantic primes are simple indefinable
meanings, such as SOMEONE, SOMETHING, WANT, DO, SAY, KNOW, GOOD, BAD, and
BECAUSE. According to the available evidence, semantic primes appear as the
meanings of words or word-like expressions in all languages. They are listed in
Table 1 using English and Spanish exponents; comparable tables have been drawn up
for many languages, including Amharic (Ethiopia), Bunuba (Australia), Chinese,
Cree, Ewe (Ghana), French, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Malay, Makasai (East Timor),
Mbula (PNG), Polish, and Russian.
A semantic prime like SAY is very different to a language-specific word like
communicate. In any language of the world, as far as we know, one can express precise
equivalents to sentences like ‘What did he/she say?’ and ‘This person said something
 The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ 13

Table 1 Semantic primes*English and Spanish

I, YOU, SOMEONE, YO, TU, ALGUIEN, Substantives
SOMETHING/THING, PEOPLE, BODY ALGO/COSA, GENTE, CUERPO
KIND, PART TIPO, PARTE Relational substantives
THIS, THE SAME, OTHER/ELSE ESTO, LO MISMO, OTRO Determiners
ONE, TWO, MUCH/MANY, SOME, UNO, DOS, MUCHO, ALGUNOS, Quantifiers
ALL TODO
GOOD, BAD BUENO, MALO Evaluators
BIG, SMALL GRANDE, PEQUEÑO Descriptors
THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, PENSAR, SABER, QUERER, SENTIR, Mental predicates
SEE, HEAR VER, OÍR
SAY, WORDS, TRUE DECIR, PALABRAS, VERDAD Speech
DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, TOUCH HACER, PASAR, MOVERSE, TOCAR Actions, events,
movement, contact
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, HAVE, ESTAR, HAY, TENER, Location, existence,
BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) SER possession,
specification
LIVE, DIE VIVIR, MORIR Life and death
WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, CUÁNDO/TIEMPO, AHORA, ANTES, Time
AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, DESPUÉS, MUCHO TIEMPO, POCO
FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT TIEMPO, POR UN TIEMPO,
MOMENTO
WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, DÓNDE/SITIO, AQUÍ, ARRIBA, Space
BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE DEBAJO, CERCA, LEJOS, LADO,
DENTRO
NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF NO, TAL VEZ, PODER, PORQUE, SI Logical concepts
VERY, MORE MUY, MÁS Augmentor, intensifier
LIKE/WAY COMO Similarity

Notes: Primes exist as the meanings of lexical units (not at the level of lexemes).
Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes.
They can be formally complex.
They can have combinatorial variants (allolexes).
Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties.

good/bad about you’. The NSM method makes use of semantic primes and their
associated rules of combination as a metalanguage for semantic/conceptual explica-
tion. NSM explications are extended paraphrases framed entirely in semantic primes.
In the main body of this paper, I will present and justify a series of explications
intended to deconstruct the English concepts of communication and language. The
kind of semantic elements that are needed to unpack the meanings of these words,
and related words such as information and message, include (among others): PEOPLE,
SOMEONE, SOMETHING/THING, SOMEWHERE/PLACE, WANT, SAY, KNOW, DO, and also
WORDS. Like any semantic explication, the ones I will propose are intended to be
‘substitutable’ into natural contexts of use. They ought to make intuitive sense to
native speakers, and they ought to match and predict the range of distribution of the
word, and generate the appropriate entailments and implications.
14 C. Goddard
2. Conceptual Semantics of the Verb Communicate
The modern sense of communicate is said to have its roots in the formative period of
modernity, the late seventeenth century (Porter 2000). In a perceptive essay, Peters
(1989) traces it back to John Locke’s (1690) remarkable and profoundly influential Essay
Concerning Human Understanding. Deeply entrenched in present-day English, com-
munication is intimately connected with the words message and information; and in turn
all three are frequently collocated with words recruited from the domain of physical
space [cf. Reddy’s (1979) ‘conduit metaphor’]. Arguably these three deeply culture-
specific words*communication, message, information*belong to and help constitute a
key cultural model of modern Anglo culture (Wierzbicka 1997, 2006). On the
importance of the ‘communication concept’ in everyday life, especially in America,
see Katriel and Philipsen (1981), Carbaugh (1988), and Morley (2005). In the following,
I will start with the verb communicate, and then move on to the noun communication.
In the Cobuild Word Bank of English (50 million words), the most frequent
phrase-mate of communicate is a with-phrase identifying an intended ‘recipient’.
Almost one-third of the 650 tokens in the corpus are communicate with (someone).
On closer examination, one can identify two primary meanings, which I will
designate as communicate1 and communicate2. Both of these meanings are compatible
with a recipient with-phrase, but they can be distinguished on other grounds.
Communicate1 typically occurs with modifiers of manner, especially evaluators (e.g.
communicate well, communicate clearly, communicate better, communicate directly,
etc.), and/or with modals or semi-modals such as can, can’t, try, attempt, and need.
Typical uses are shown in examples (1a)
(1e). Communicate1 is also the meaning
found in expressions like interpersonal communication, communication skills, and a
good communicator.
(1) a. She can’t communicate with her colleagues.
b. Too many teachers can’t communicate effectively in the classroom.
c. How well can you communicate, especially under stress?
d. We need to communicate directly with the people who work for us.
e. They learn how to communicate, work in a team, take responsibility.

For communicate1 as shown in the examples in (1), I would propose the following
semantic explication. For convenience, what is presented in [A1] is an explication for
an actual (representative) sentence in English, but it is intended to be adaptable in a
fairly straightforward way to all the examples given above.
[A1] She can’t communicate1 with her colleagues:
a. at some times she wants to say some things to her colleagues
b. at these times she wants them to know well what she wants to say
c. because of this, she says some things to them
d. when she says these things, they don’t know well what she wants to say to them
e. this is not good
f. it can be not like this if she says these things in another way
 The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ 15

For many readers, an explication phrased almost exclusively in semantic primes

will be an unfamiliar style of representation, so let us track through it one component
at a time. Components (a) and (c) set the scene, as it were, by referring to situations
in which the subject wants to say some things to some other people (in this case, her
colleagues), wants her addressees to ‘know well what she wants to say’, and
consequently says some things to them. Component (d) states, however, that when
she says these things it is not effective: the addressees do not actually know well what
she wants to say. This situation is evaluated as ‘not good’, in component (e). Finally,
component (f) envisages the possibility that the situation could be different ‘if she
(i.e. the subject) says these things in another way’. With the exception of the word
‘colleagues’, and she which have been carried over from the original sentence, all the
words in explication [A1] are semantic primes, and they are being used in conformity
with the allowable grammatical patterns of the natural semantic metalanguage.
Communicate1 also allows an object expression designating a topic and an
addressee in a to-phrase, e.g. communicate thoughts/feelings/information to someone.
Examples are given in (2a)
(2d). As we will see, the potential to occur in this
grammatical frame is a point of difference from communicate2.
(2) a. The problem was their utter failure to communicate any economic message
to the voters.
b. You must communicate your needs clearly to him.
c. Children learn to concentrate, communicate feelings, develop self-
confidence, . . .
d. They are unable to communicate mathematical ideas and processes clearly.

In this slightly different grammatical frame (i.e. with a topic expression and to-
addressee phrase), the meaning expressed by communicate1 can be explicated as
follows. Again, what is presented is an explication for a representative English
sentence, and again, with the exception of one or two words (‘economy’, ‘voters’), it is
composed purely in terms of semantic primes.
[A2] They failed to communicate1 any economic message to the voters:
a. at some times they wanted to say some things about the economy to the voters
b. at these times they wanted them to know well what they wanted to say about it
c. because of this, they said some things to the voters
d. when they said these things, the voters didn’t know well what they wanted to say to them
e. this was not good
f. it could have been not like this if they said these things in another way

Notably, behind the meaning communicate1 there is a fairly high standard of

comprehensibility. The implied intention is to ensure that the addressee not only
knows, but ‘knows well’ what one wants to say*in more idiomatic, but English-
specific terms, that the addressee fully ‘understands’ what the speaker ‘means’.
Communicate2 is somewhat simpler. It refers to a ‘means of communication’
typically used to bridge some physical separation, i.e. to allow someone to say what
16 C. Goddard
they want to say to someone else in another place. Naturally, communicate2 normally
occurs with phrases indicating a means, e.g. by email, by letter, by telegraph, by
blinking, or a medium, e.g. in writing, through an intermediary. The potential to occur
with such means or medium phrases, in particular with by-phrases, is a point of
difference with communicate1. Many uses of communicate2 are related to the noun
communications.
(3) a. She communicates with him by email.
b. They could only communicate with England via letter, and it took six
months for a ship to make the voyage.
c. The nurses found that he [a stroke victim] could communicate by
blinking.

For this second meaning of communicate, I would like to propose the explication in
[B]. Again, the explication is for a representative English sentence. Component (a)
sets the scene by referring to situations in which the subject wants to say something to
someone. As a consequence of this, as set out in component (b), the subject does
some things of a particular kind. Typically this involves using some kind of
instruments or technological devices (letters, email, telegraph, smoke signals, etc.),
but not necessarily so, as shown in (3c) above. Although, as mentioned, the addressee
is typically separated in space from the subject, this is not necessarily so, as shown
also by example (3c), so no such specification is included in the explication.
Whatever the means used, they are (in the case of positive statements) implied to be
potentially effective for the purpose, as per component (c).1
[B] She communicates2 with him by email:
a. at some times she wants to say some things to him
b. because of this, at these times she does things of one kind (uses email, sends letters, etc.)
c. when she does things of this kind, he can know what she wants to say

In general outline, all three explications*[A1], [A2] and [B]*can be character-

ized as active, as ‘manner-oriented’, and as focused on message content. They are
about saying or doing things, so that someone else can know what we want to say.2
Explications [A1] and [A2] focus particular attention on the importance of the
addressee not only knowing, but knowing well, what the subject wants to say. In this
focus on what one might call (using other Anglo key words) the efficient or successful

1
While the numbering communicate1 and communicate2 is based on frequency in contemporary corpora, from
a historical point of view, the order of priority is very likely the reverse. I don’t mean to say that either of the
contemporary meanings existed in the seventeenth century, for example, but rather that the antecedent of
communicate2 most probably pre-dated the antecedent of communicate1. Research in historical semantics is
notoriously difficult (Wierzbicka 2006; Bromhead in press), so these remarks are speculative.
2
There are also a smaller number of examples like the following, in which the subject expression does not
designate a person: (i) Facial expressions communicate emotions; (ii) Dogs communicate by sound, sight, touch and
smell; (iii) This process controls how cells divide and communicate with each other; (iv) For two computers to
communicate a modem is required. I regard these as extended, polysemic uses of the core meaning of
communicate and I will not deal with them in this paper.
 The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ 17

transmission of one’s message, the concept behind communicate1 encapsulates a

particular culture-specific attitude towards verbal interaction. From a position within
Anglo culture (and within the English language), this attitude can seem so natural as
to go unnoticed, but the fact is that people can say things to other people for a great
variety of reasons. For example, one may say some things just because one wants to
say them (to ‘express’ oneself), or because one wants someone else to do something,
or to feel something, or to think something. In these different frames of reference, it
may not be particularly important whether the other person knows exactly what one
wants to say to them. Other considerations may prevail. When saying things is
described using the verb communicate1, however, it is assumed that the speaker wants
the addressee to understand well what he/she has to say, and that he/she is prepared
to take steps to ensure that this objective is met.

3. The Noun Communication

The noun communication is actually more common than the verb in the Cobuild
Word Bank corpus: the ratio is roughly 60:40. The vast majority of the corpus
examples of the noun communication are based transparently on one or other of the
two senses of communicate, as just explicated. Consistent with this, the range of
collocations corresponds closely to that of the verb. One set of common adjectives are
evaluators, such as good, poor, open, and effective, and along with these, various
common phrases on the same theme, e.g. lack of communication, communication
breakdown/failure/problems, and communication skills. These relate to communicate1.
Some examples are given below.
(4) a. It’s important to have good communication in a marriage (in the
workplace, etc).
b. A lack of communication between education departments and software
houses had led to the industry not knowing what the education
departments required.
c. There was little playfulness, communication, or spontaneity*in short,
little life.

In these uses, the meaning is based directly on communicate1 as explicated in [A1].

For example, when discussing good communication in a marriage, what is at issue is
how husband and wife go about saying things to one another, so that their partners
can know well what they mean, i.e. what they really want to say. Likewise, when
discussing cross-cultural communication, the idea is that when people from different
cultures want to say things to each other, it can easily happen that the interlocutors
do not understand fully what is intended, hence the need to go about it in certain
ways.
A second set of adjectives to collocate with communication are adjectives which
indicate the means, medium or method adopted by the subject: verbal (and non-
verbal), oral, written, and electronic. These relate to communicate2. This sense is also
18 C. Goddard
found in an expression like the history of communication, which concerns the means
and media that have been used for this purpose over history. In what follows we
will confine ourselves to the sense of communication which is related to
communicate1, because this is the sense that is most relevant to the theme of this
Special Issue.
As an abstract noun, communication1 poses certain problems of explication which
are shared by other abstract nouns. The top-level components of [C] below represent
a particular solution to these problems (developed in Goddard & Wierzbicka
forthcoming) which cannot be discussed at any length here. In brief, the two top-level
components say that communication is ‘something’ that can be identified via the label
‘communication’. Though this may look circular, it is not, because in component (b)
the term ‘communication’ is functioning simply as a word-form. In current NSM
thinking, many complex nouns have top-level components like (a) and (b), i.e.
components which combine a reference to ‘something’ (or to ‘something of one
kind’) with an explicit reference to a particular word (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2008).
Components (c) and (d) are specific to particular kinds of abstract nouns. Essentially,
they say that the word can be used to say something about something when a speaker
is thinking in accordance with a certain mental model of how things can be. In the
case of communication1, the content of this model is spelt out in components (e)
(j).
It can be seen that these components bear a close relationship to the meaning of the
verb communicate1.
[C] communication1:
a. something
b. people can say what with the word communication
c. people can want to say something about something with this word when they
think like this:
d. ‘it can be like this:
e. at some times someone wants to say some things to someone else
f. at these times this someone wants this other someone to know well what
he/she wants to say
g. because of this, this someone says some things to this other someone
h. when he/she says it, this other someone can know well what this someone
wants to say
i. it is good if it can be like this
j. it can be not like this if this someone says these things in another way’

The communication1 concept explicated in [C] represents a certain potential model

of someone saying something to another person, with a certain implied purpose (i.e.
a high level of understanding), and in the context of a certain evaluative attitude. As
with the verb communicate1, this model, this purpose and this evaluative slant are so
normal and naturalized in English as to hardly attract attention, but in cross-cultural
 The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ 19

and historical perspective, they stand out as encapsulating an eminently modern

attitude.3
How then does the ‘communication concept’ compare with the ‘language concept’?

4. The Conceptual Semantics of Language

Most English-speaking people take the word language for granted, and linguists are
no less guilty than others in that respect. In fact, however, many languages of the
world do not have a lexical meaning corresponding precisely to that of English
language. They may have a word for ‘talk’, or for something like ‘a way of speaking’,
but that is not the same as language. Goddard (to appear) analyses several different
meanings of the English word language. The following is an abbreviated version of the
analysis presented in that study. I emphasize at the outset that we are concerned with
meanings of the ordinary English word language, not with technical linguistic
notions.
Linguistic historiographers and language historians have established that the
concept of language, as we know it in English, is linked with the social processes of
language standardization; and from the beginning, language standardization was
linked with territories and nations. A benchmark date is 1492. Not only was this the
year of Christopher Columbus’s famous voyage, it was also the year of Antonio de
Nebrija’s standardizing grammar of Spanish. His Grammática Catellana was
presented to the king as a way in which ‘to aggrandize the things of our nation’
(Joseph 2000: 3). Needless to say, there was (and still is) a great deal of variation in
ways of speaking in different parts of the Iberian peninsula; but in codifying ‘one
correct way’, the standardization process assumes, and in a sense creates, the concept
of single unified entity, a language (hence the term ‘language making’, used by
some authors). In short, as argued by Harris (1980), the concept of a language is a
cultural product of post-Renaissance Europe. Conversely, it has also been argued that
‘print-languages’ have been one of the foundational elements in the development of
national consciousness (Anderson 1983: 43
46).
Linguistic usage provides clear evidence that the ‘language concept’ is linked with
places, because many language names are systematically related to the names of
countries and to the names of people who live in these countries. For example, there
is China, and there is Chinese*meaning either the Chinese people or the Chinese
language; likewise, we have Germany and German, France and French, Greece and
Greek, and so on. Explication [D] below is consistent with this connection between
the names of languages, on the one hand, and place-names and the names of peoples,

3
It is not feasible here to trace the historical pathways by which this and related concepts arose and took hold,
but it would make a fascinating study in historical semantics. Urbanization likely played a part, insofar as it
accentuated interpersonal communication problems by bringing together people of different social strata and
regional origins and ensuring frequent day-to-day contacts between them; cf. Brier and Finlay (1986) on mid-
seventeenth century London, the cradle of Anglo modernity; see also Himmelfarb (2005), and Porter (2000).
Later, free and public association between people of different social roles became one of the hallmarks of the new
society of America, one of the constant themes in Tocqueville’s (1840) Democracy in America.
20 C. Goddard
on the other. The initial reference to places and to kinds of people also accounts for
the links between the concepts of language and culture*because the ‘culture concept’
evokes a similar set of ideas (cf. Goddard 2005).
Component (a) of the explication says that a language is ‘something of one kind’.
The expression ‘something of one kind’ reflects the fact that language1 is a count
noun, and, like most other count nouns, represents individual things as instances of a
‘kind’ (or class). As in the previous explication, components (b) and (c) state that a
particular word (in this case language) is a verbal label for something of this kind, and
that people can want to say something about something with this word when they are
thinking in terms of a certain mental model. The bulk of the explication spells out the
content of the mental model. Section (d) lays the basis in terms of some assumptions
about people and places; in particular, the notion that certain ‘kinds of people’ live in
certain places: ‘one kind of people in one place, another kind of people in another
place’. There is of course essentialization here*in the assumption that there are
‘kinds of people’ who belong in particular places (normally, their country or named
region). The components in (e) and (f) essentially say that people in these individual
places have their own distinctive ways of speaking, i.e. that they express themselves
using ‘words of one kind’, and that these distinctive ways of speaking are
comprehensible to other people in this place because ‘they know these words’. These
references to understanding and speaking being dependent on ‘knowing words’ are
consistent with expressions such as to know a language, to learn a language, and to
speak a language. Section (g) caps the explication off with the specification that when
people in other places express themselves, they do it ‘in another way, with words of
another kind’.
[D] language1, e.g. a language (as in ‘different languages’):
a. something of one kind
b. people can say what kind with the word language
c. people can want to say something about something with this word when they think
like this:
d. ‘it is like this:
there are many kinds of people, these people live in many places, one kind of
people in one place, another kind of people in another place
e. when people in one of these places want to say something to other people,
they say it in one way, they say it with words of one kind
f. other people in this place can know what these people want to say,
because they know these words
l. when people in another place want to say something, they say it in
another way, they say it with words of another kind’

Explication [D] serves to pull apart the rich portfolio of assumptions which
underlie the English folk concept of language, and at the same time to show how the
notion intertwines a particular set of views about relationships between people,
places, words, and ways of speaking. That the language concept is just that, i.e. a
 The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ 21

concept, and not a faithful picture of reality is clear from the perennial difficulties
discussed by linguists under the rubric of the ‘language/dialect’ question (e.g. Haugen
1972; Simpson 1994).
Aside from language1, the word language has several other polysemic meanings. In
terms of frequency and historical priority, the most significant is that found in
expressions such as bad language, simple language, and Shakespeare’s language. This
meaning, which I will designate as language2, shows a notable parallelism in structure
to language1, but unlike language1, it is a mass (non-count) noun. Aside from
combinations with adjectives, such as those just mentioned, language2 occurs also
with modifying prepositional phrases, e.g. the language of the resolution, the language
of Shakespeare, the language of hatred, and with modifying clauses, e.g. language that
was calculated to confuse the audience. Essentially, language2 refers to how someone
expresses something in a distinctive way through their words and ‘wording’. From a
semantic point of view, the typical modifiers (whether adjectival, phrasal, or clausal)
of language2 fall into four groups: they can characterize the kind of words and
wording used; identify a certain person, group or occupational domain as the origin
of the words and wording; identify a document; or they can characterize a motive or
illocutionary function (e.g. the language of hatred means, roughly speaking, ‘how
people speak when they want to incite hatred’).
Explication [E] for language2 is based around the idea*given in component (e)*
that someone can go about saying something in a particular way, with words of one
particular kind, because they want to do so. Component (f) provides for the
distinctiveness of such particular ways of expression: ‘if someone else wants to say
something like this, they can say it in another way, they can say it with words of
another kind’.
[E] language2 (e.g. bad language, Shakespeare’s language, the language of hatred)
a. something
b. people can say what with the word language
c. people can want to say something about something with this word when they
think like this:
d. ‘it is like this:
e. when someone wants to say something to other people, this someone can say
it in one way, with words of one kind, because this someone wants to say
it like this
f. if someone else wants to say something like this, they can say it in another
way, they can say it with words of another kind’

The collocational patterns mentioned above for language2 are consistent with
explication [E], because they provide further specification or amplification of the
basic ‘way-of-saying-things, using-certain-words’ meaning articulated in the explica-
tion.
There is a third, more abstract and semi-scientific, concept of language. This is
employed in common expressions such as language and culture and the origins of
22 C. Goddard
language, and in questions such as Do dolphins have language? This concept, which I
designate language3, is also a mass noun. It can be explicated as in [F].
[F] language3 (e.g. language reflects thought, the origin of language):
a. something
b. people can say what with the word language
c. people can want to say something about something with this word when they
think like this:
d. ‘it is like this:
e. when people want to say something to other people, they can say it with
words
f. other people can know what these people want to say, because they know
these words’

After this abbreviated exposition of the conceptual semantics of language,4 we are

in a position to compare it with the conceptual semantics of communicate and
communication.

5. The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ Compared

I will be concerned here with what I take to be the primary meanings of
communication1 and language1 in modern English, and especially in academic
discourse, i.e. the meanings designated in the previous discussion as communication1
and language1.
To begin with, we can ask: what accounts for the status of the word communication
as a cultural key word of modern English*recognized, for example, in Raymond
Williams’ (1976) classic work Keywords and in the recent collection New Keywords
(Bennett et al. 2005)? One reason must surely be its congruence with other key
modern Anglo concepts, such as information and message. A second reason is
presumably that the communication concept dovetails so readily with the phraseology
(and the technology) of physical transport and transference. There is an obvious
homology or mapping between communicating something (a message) to someone
else, and giving or sending something to someone else*because the verbs give and
send involve someone having something, wanting someone else to have it, and then
doing something so that the other person comes to have it [cf. Goddard (1998): 284

285) on send; Wierzbicka (1996) and Goddard (2001) on give]. It has often been
observed that until the invention of electronic means, physical transference (via a
messenger, a courier, etc.) was the primary method by which one could ‘commu-
nicate’ a message to someone any distance away. Third, in some ways the
communication concept is broader and more inclusive than the language concept,
and could be taken to subsume it (as assumed in those definitions of language as a

4
An additional polysemic sense of language is found in expressions such as the language of music (art, etc.)
(Goddard to appear).
 The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ 23

‘system of verbal/symbolic communication’). Fourth, from the point of view of

academic discourse, the word communication has the attraction of disciplinary
neutrality in comparison with the word language, which has been adopted as the key
word of the discipline of linguistics.
Despite its attractions, however, there are also some drawbacks of the commu-
nication concept. First, it does not carry with it any acknowledgement of the
important role of words in the process5; second, through its focus on ‘message
content’, it covertly privileges something like information transfer as the paradigm
case of human interaction; third, and perhaps most importantly, it does nothing to
tip the attention towards cultural, regional or historical variability. On the contrary, it
is all too easy to speak in general terms of ‘human communication’, and in the process
to elide the tremendous differences in communication practices across languages and
cultures. As Peters (1989) puts it (in the language of a literary theorist):

It [i.e. communication] is a term which makes insight into the topic it designates
difficult for it backgrounds language and the materiality of cultural forms and
foregrounds the individual mind as sovereign (Peters 1989: 394).

In other words, talk of communication is likely to tip our attention away from
differences between languages and cultures*differences which are at least implicit in
the concept of a language, which suggests geographical differences in ways of speaking
and ‘ways with words’. It is hard to speak about different languages without some
allowance for cultural differences and particularities.6
It is equally true, of course, that talk of languages comes with conceptual pitfalls of
its own. The language concept is essentializing, both in reifying word use and ways of
speaking into something akin to natural kinds (French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.), and,
perhaps more insidiously, in its implicit linkage between different ways of speaking
and putatively different ‘kinds of people’ belonging in their different places. Though
the language concept maps rather neatly onto the culture concept [essentially, the idea
that people living in different places have different ways of thinking, feeling and
behaving (Goddard 2005)], the culture concept itself is equally open to charges of
reification and essentialism. In my view, these potential problems do not necessarily
make communication, language and culture ‘pernicious’ concepts [as Pennycook
(2006) describes language], but it does mean that they have to be handled with care.

5
Despite the way in which the role of WORDS is backgrounded in the communication concept, it remains true
that the concept is oriented around the semantic prime SAY, and that the normal way of saying things involves
words. In other languages there may be important concepts representing cultural ideals about how one person
can know the feelings, wants and thoughts of another person without SAYING (or WORDS) necessarily being
involved. In this connection, a reviewer points out the existence of the Chinese word xinling-goutong and
Japanese word ishindenshin, normally glossed ‘heart spirit communication’ and ‘beyond heart transmission’,
respectively. Clearly, however, glosses such as ‘communication’ and ‘transmission’ can only give a rough and
distorted picture of the true meanings of these words.
6
Generative linguists often manage it by confining themselves to the generalized sense language3.
24 C. Goddard
In particular, when we use these concepts we have to be aware of the presuppositions
and conceptual framing they bring with them.7
On the basis of the semantic analysis presented in this study, one could make the
following predictions. If one is carrying out a discussion in terms of languages, then
one will tend to notice and tune towards cultural and geographical variability. On the
other hand, if one is carrying out the discussion in terms of communication, one will
tend instead to think in terms of active individual agents choosing certain means to
get across what they want to say. Although these predictions are derived from the
semantics of words in ordinary English, rather than in academic discourse, in my
view they correspond rather well with the discursive orientations of linguistics and
communication studies, respectively.

6. Concluding Remark
In this paper, I have presented semantic/conceptual analyses for two concepts
(communication and language), which arguably have key word status in contempor-
ary general English and in Anglophone academic discourses. I have also suggested
that the semantic content of the two concepts can point us in different directions, i.e.
that they can shape or direct our thinking in different ways. In the end, however, I
would argue that neither communication nor language (nor competing terms such as
discourse, interaction, semiotics, ‘languaging’, etc.) are suitable conceptual tools for the
human sciences, because they are language-specific and culture-bound, and because
they are too conceptually complex to allow clear formulation of testable hypotheses.
The more promising approach would be to decompose these and other useful, but
language-specific terms, into configurations of semantic primes, such as SAY, WORDS,
DO, WANT, KNOW, and others. This would serve to detach the terminology from the
grip of any single language and at the same time greatly advance conceptual clarity. To
do this is a project for the future, but I would hope that the present study is a step in
the right direction.

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