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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