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Speech Communication

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Faiz Sathi Abdullah

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 8

SPEECH COMMUNICATION
Faiz S. Abdullah

Introduction

As an area of study at the undergraduate level, ‘speech communication’ deals

with aspects of communication theory as well as the practice of speaking in social
contexts with special reference to ESL (English as a Second Language). As an
introductory course at the university, it surveys the broad field of communication
to sample relevant theory and research, and devotes attention to important
communication skills and strategies. Hence, it caters to students with little or no
prior background in human speech communication by providing a sound
foundation in the general principles of this liberal rhetorical art that will serve as
the basis for more advanced and specialised study of spoken discourse.
Given that the target reader of this chapter is probably an English language
major in a degree programme, there will be, as I mentioned above, a sharper focus
on ESL use in interpersonal as well as small group settings. Thus I will explore the
definitional, theoretical and componential aspects of oral communication as well
as appropriate strategies that students can employ to meet their own verbal
interaction needs in such settings and which tend to be common in their immediate
academic context. Hence, let us start with an overview of this course of study and
its learning objectives, which specify the expected learning outcomes. In other
words, by the end of the course, students will be able to:
1. identify the social functions of speech at the levels of the community and
the individual speaker, respectively;
2. describe the speech communication process using an appropriate theoretical
model as well as its integral linguistic and non-linguistic elements; and
3. apply appropriate strategies to satisfy their own speech needs in a variety of
interpersonal and small group situations.
From the outset, it must be said that these objectives take cognisance of two
basic assumptions about every act of communication: There is always a social
context that is present (‘Nature abhors a vacuum.’), and whether we are aware of it
or not, there is always some kind of purpose for communication to be instantiated.
The former may be an ‘area’ or even ‘type’ of communication (including
intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, institutional, public, mass, and
intercultural communication). The latter precept covers the context-specific form
of one or more of the general purposes of communication i.e. to discover, to relate,
2 Speech Communication

to help, to persuade, and to play or to entertain. That said, the speech

communication course itself covers the following topics:
1. What is 'speech communication?
2. Speech in the community: macro/micro functions
3. Speech as process: models of speech communication
4. Dimensions of culture in speech communication
5. Listening matters: the listening process and effective listening strategies
6. The individual communicator: individual needs, motives, and drives
7. The language in communication I: general features of verbal messages
8. The language in communication II: verbal barriers and their correction
9. Extra-linguistic factors in speech
10. Interpersonal speech
11. Review: synoptic discussion and reflection

Defining speech communication

Harold Lasswell, a communication theorist, defines ‘communication’ as “Who

(says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect” (Lasswell, n.d.,
WWW). But given that theoretical definitions of the term tend to be slippery, to
say the least, perhaps this five-part definition is better left till later in this chapter
when more basic concepts have been addressed to some extent. To start with a
‘working definition’, the verb 'communicate' may be taken to mean “to pass on by
speaking or writing', and the noun 'communication' as “the act of passing on news,
information, views, opinions etc.” In this respect, the Merriam Webster Dictionary
(Internet edition) traces the origin of the word(s) to the 14th century, and defines
'communication' both as process and product i.e. "a process by which information
is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs or
behaviour" and as "information communicated or transferred as a verbal or written
message", respectively. Hence, the act of communicating via speech constitutes
the process and the instance of communication produced refers to the product (e.g.
The question ‘Have you received my communication?’ is like asking ‘Have you
received my message?’).
The 14th century Latin root words of 'communication' are cum (meaning
"with"), and munis (indicating "public work") are significant here even if these
elements have been combined later into larger units such as communis (to mean
‘common’). It is interesting to learn that all these units of meaning underlie the
word 'community'. Thus, as Gronbeck (1997: 6) notes, "Communities are defined
into existence by public talk; human conversation creates, sustains, and alters the
sense of community one has with each other”. What this means is that every time
we speak up (and sometimes even when we don't speak, as we shall see later), we
indicate our sense of 'togetherness' with and belonging to a special community of
Speech Communication 3

speakers. In other words, excluding those occasions when we speak to ourselves

('inner speech' or intrapersonal communication), we always speak publicly to one
or more listeners.
And when we do, we 'position' ourselves in some way as a member of a
particular speech community whose norms, beliefs and values we share and
reproduce in social situations. For example, you may be speaking to your children
as a father representing the 'community of fathers' that has its own 'culture', so to
speak. Or you may be talking to a friend as a stamp-collector representing, as it
were, a 'stamp-collecting culture'. More interestingly, you may be standing silently
in rapt attention while the Malaysian national anthem is being played at the end of
a badminton tournament (with a win for the Malaysian team, of course!). Here, not
speaking at all too communicates your sense of 'with-ness' as a member of the
larger Malaysian community. To the extent that non-speech is communication,
speech is of itself communication rather than ‘a medium of communication’ (See
Widdowson, 1978; 1979 vis-à-vis his arguments for a repositioning in the field
from ‘language for communication’ to ‘language as communication’).
Nonetheless, the ideas of 'community' and ‘culture’ alluded to in the above
paragraphs are rather abstract ones because we can be members of different
communities and cultures on different occasions and in different contexts. This
broad affinity between community and culture might be better explained by the
roles that speech plays in the affairs of the community. We turn to this in the next
section.

Speech in the community

To address the role(s) of speech in the community, we must look at the

relationship between the spoken word, the instinct to create community, and the
need to preserve diversity within the community with reference to the meanings of
the Latinate roots of cum, munis, and communis. How do these meanings relate to
speech as communication in a community? Put differently, how does speech work,
and further, what benefits may we derive by studying the why, what, and how we
speak in public?
Speech, or rather the use of oral language, is the main means by which we
communicate, create community, and promote diversity. The broad rationale for
speech communication above is probably better understood in terms of its ‘macro’
and ‘micro’ functions, respectively. These are listed below under these headings:

Macro functions of speech (overall community goals):

1. To build community: speaking serves to create, maintain, and when
necessary, change the sense of community among individuals; and
4 Speech Communication

2. To promote and engage with cultural diversity: speakers have a right to be

heard and treated as fellow members of the community in that their rights
and views, including those of minorities, must be respected.

Micro functions of speech (specific individual goals):

1. To define the self i.e. what it means to be a member of a particular
community, including participating in the communicative events involving
one’s own community e.g. meetings, political rallies, and even gossip;
2. To spread information within and outside the community e.g. conventions,
public statements, press releases, research presentations;
3. To debate social issues impinging on the affairs of the community and the
world at large. e.g. engaging in ‘verbal combat’ by way of public speech,
debate and dialogue; and
4. To bring about individual and/or group change via interpersonal, group,
institutional, mass, and intercultural communication (Gronbeck et al, 1997:
5 – 10).
It is important to note that these functions are simultaneously present albeit at
varying degrees in all human speech communities and that they are in constant
interaction with each other, both within the macro and micro dimensions,
respectively, as well as across them. Thus when politicians speak at a public rally,
they are attempting to build solidarity at the communal level while they make
allowances for dissenting views and opinions. They also speak as individuals to
construct particular (political) identities, to disseminate information, to argue
for/against certain viewpoints, and to seek social change in their communities (by
appealing to people to vote for them!).
It is also important for us to learn about the process of speech
communication and its products within our cultural communities and beyond. The
knowledge that we derive from such study (sometimes called ‘declarative
knowledge’) facilitates personal and social awareness and enables the effective use
of appropriate speaking skills and strategies for our needs in a variety of situations,
particularly the following:
1. To function efficiently in job-related situations e.g. job interviews,
professional meetings, problem-solving sessions at work, etc.;
2. To communicate effectively in public forums e.g. neighborhood meetings,
coffee room discussions, student councils, political forums, public hearings,
lecture-discussions, etc.; and
3. To become a fully-developed, thinking, and forceful individual
Put simply, we become productive, participatory members of our communities.
Speech Communication 5

Speech as process: models of speech communication

Traditionally speaking, the act of communicating via speech has been viewed
as a two-way process between speaker and listener(s) that involves the
‘productive’ skill of speaking and the ‘receptive’ skill of listening. However, it is
recognized now that the speaker and the listener both participate actively in the
process i.e. the speaker encodes the message to be conveyed using appropriate
language, and the listener decodes (or interprets) the message. This is an extremely
basic notion or model of the human speech communication process.
In normal speech situations, the message contains a large amount of
information comprising both spoken (i.e. linguistic) and ‘unspoken’ (extra-
linguistic and non-linguistic) signals. Much of this information is often already
known to the speaker/listener and may be viewed as 'redundant' information that is
intuitively shared between speaker and listener who therefore processes it with
minimum attention. This shared ‘knowledge in our heads’ that makes
communication possible includes information about the common language and its
sound patterns, the time and place of conversation, the type of relationship
between the communicators, facial and body movements, norms, beliefs, and
values; and other cultural features. It also makes the process of speech a very
complex one. Current theories and models of speech communication attempt to
capture this complexity. In this section, we briefly examine two such models, the
‘message model’, and the ‘transactional model’.

The Message Model

The message model, sometimes called the ‘two-box model’ of speech,
provides a rather simple account of the complexities involved in human
communication (see figure below). It is derived from theories of animal
communication systems, which suppose that animals of the same species function
as the message senders as well as the message receivers (Akmajian, Demers, and
Farmer, 1995). Using the linguistic resources at his disposal, the sender encodes
the meaning (M) into a public signal, the Expression (E). The receiver decodes the
signal to get (M) even if the exact nature of the broadcast message is not yet clear.

SPEAKER HEARER
(M) (E) (M)
Public Sounds
Encoding Decoding

Figure: The Message Model of Speech Communication (Adapted from:

Akmajian, Demers, and Farmer, 1995: 15).
6 Speech Communication

Hence, private ideas are communicated by making public sounds with the use
of language. Akmajian, Demers, and Farmer (1995) say that the message model
does not account for many established principles in linguistic communication,
which include linguistically ambiguous expressions, unique reference,
communicative intent, non-literal speech, and indirect speech. Suffice to say here
that the message model does not take into account the shared system of beliefs,
values, attitudes, and inferences that function as communication strategies in
context. Learning to communicate involves acquiring a range of such shared
culture systems, presumptions as well as a system of inferential strategies. Such
aspects of complexity are better represented in the transactional model (see
Gronbeck et al., 1997: 11; Devito, 2000: 10).

The Transactional Model

The transactional model is based on the view that speech communication is a
transaction and that the process involves an intricate interplay among various basic
elements comprising the speaker, listener, message, feedback, ‘noise’, channel,
speech situation, and cultural context (Gronbeck et al., 1997: 11 – 20). The
elements involved in the transactional process of speech communication function
interactively and dynamically in that change in one element affects others
(sometimes called the ‘spider’s web’ effect), and that no single element controls
the entire process. Clearly, the term ‘transaction’ has been borrowed from
economics (i.e. buying and selling goods and services), and in the current model of
speech may be taken to mean the transaction or negotiation of meaning. A
descriptive listing of the components of the model is as follows:
1. Speaker (as source-receiver simultaneously encodes and decodes messages)
2. Listener (as source-receiver simultaneously decodes and encodes messages)
3. Message (has content, structure, and style and each message is a packages
of verbal and/or non-verbal signals)
4. Feedback (special category of message that is a reaction to what was said by
the speaker or as ‘feedforward previews what is to come)
5. Noise (interference or distortion of the message/feedback that may be
physical, psychological and/or semantic in nature)
6. Channel (medium through which the message passes and often multiple
channels are in operation simultaneously)
7. Context of Situation (comprises physical, socio-psychological, and temporal
setting, respectively)
8. Context of Culture (Norms, values, beliefs, attitudes, rules and cultural
maxims)
9. Communication Effects (intellectual, affective, and psychomotor changes in
speakers and listeners as a result of engaging in speech)
Thus far, various aspects of speech communication have been dealt with to set
the stage, so to speak, for the more specific principles, skills, and strategies that are
Speech Communication 7

presented later in the course for reflection and practice, and which are now
previewed under topical headings below.

Dimensions of Culture

What is 'culture'? How may culture be classified from a linguistic anthropological

perspective? What is the impact of these classifications on speech practice in the
community? What strategies help speakers to minimize problems in intercultural
communication? These are some of the questions that will help us put verbal
communication within a cultural perspective to appreciate the extent to which
culture, whether primary or secondary, permeates what we say and how we say it
in our social interactions.

Listening Matters

Listening does matter a great deal in communication because it is no longer

regarded as a passive, receptive skill, but an active, interactive one that is as
important as speaking (if not more so). Hence, a distinction is first made between
‘hearing’ and ‘listening’ before an analysis of the complex process of listening
itself to provide some insights into the different types of listening and their
functions in real-life speech communication (Brown, 1990). Finally, some
strategies for effective listening are outlined for practice.

The Individual Communicator

What happens when people perceive objects, events, and other people in their
communication environment? How is the process of perception related to aspects
of the self, which is to say how do we perceive our ‘self’ within the context of
events that happen around us? Again, from a particularly interesting theory of the
self, the Johari Window (Luft, 1969, 1984, In Devito, 2000: 75 – 77; Tubbs &
Moss, 2006: 281 – 282), the course proceeds logically to concepts related to the
self, and more importantly to strategies for self-development.

The Language in Communication I

This important section of the course opens with an overview of the various levels
of linguistic analysis of speech, namely the phonological, morphological,
syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels. It then takes a closer look at some
8 Speech Communication

features and principles of message communication from the field of discourse

studies, including selected principles of pragmatics and speech act theory (Austin,
1972).

The Language in Communication II

The principles and/or ‘rules of speaking’ presented in this second section on

spoken language use include the Gricean cooperative principle and conversational
maxims (Grice, 1975) as well as barriers to verbal messages such as polarization,
intensional orientation, racism, and sexism in speech practice. As always, updates
are provided on students’ knowledge of effective communication strategies and
ways to overcome the barriers investigated.

Extralinguistic Aspects of Speech

Extralinguistic elements in speech communication comprise in the main non-

verbal components, which include the contextual elements of space, time, senses
of touch, smell, touch, sight, taste and sound, movement, body language and
gestures, and feelings. More importantly, the course highlights how these elements
interact with verbal ones in the sending and receiving of messages. Students’
understanding of some of the complex processes involved will help them develop
appropriate speaking strategies when communicating with others.

Interpersonal Speech

According to Nolasco and Arthur (1987: 5), 'conversation' is "any spoken

encounter or interaction… when two or more people have the right to talk or listen
without having to follow a fixed schedule, such as an agenda". Both unplanned
speech in casual encounters and planned interactions in relatively structured
situations are highlighted, including the five functional stages of opening,
feedforward, business, feedback, and closing. The course content under this topic
also explores the theory underlying the conversation process, particularly in
planned contexts of spoken language use and related principles of practice. It also
discusses aspects of problem prevention and repair together with some findings
from discourse analysis about conversational turns, backchannelling cues, and
conversational wants (Devito, 2000: 159-60).
Speech Communication 9

Review and concluding remarks

The course closes with a selection of topics and/or issues that help stimulate
students to think critically about the ideas, skills, and strategies that have been
presented. Students work in small groups to read and think about each of the given
statements with a view towards a critical evaluation of its acceptability or validity
in the light of what they now know about the theory and practice of speech
communication. Since each statement is related to a specific topic in the course,
the class discussion that ensues group activity is directed at the ‘big picture’, as it
were, about the role of speech in students’ respective communities as well as the
relevance of culture, ethics, skills, strategies, and how their communication needs
may be addressed via effective practice.

References

Akmajian, A., Demers, R. A. and Farmer, A. K. & Harnish, R. M. (1995).

Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication. 4th ed.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Austin, J. L. (1972). How to do things with words. In Jaworski, A. and Coupland,
N. (1999) (Eds.) The discourse reader (pp. 63 – 75). London: Routledge.
Brown, G. (1990). Listening to spoken English. London: Longman.
Communication theory. Retrieved December 19, 2005, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_theory.
DeVito, J. A. (2000). Human communication: The basic course. 8th ed. London:
Longman.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Jaworski, A. and N. Coupland.
(1999) (Eds.) The discourse reader (pp. 76 – 88). London: Routledge.
Gronbeck, B. E., McKerrow, R. E., Ehninger, D. & Monroe, A. H. (1997).
Principles and types of speech communication. New York: Longman.
Lasswell, H. In Harold Lasswell. Retrieved December 10, 2005, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_ Lasswell.
Merriam Webster Dictionary (Internet ed.). Retrieved April 10, 1999, from
http://www.m-w.com/cgi.bin/ dictionary.
Nolasco, R. & Arthur, L. (1987). Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tubbs, S. L. & Moss, S. (2006). Human communication: Principles and contexts.
10th ed. Singapore: McGraw Hill Higher Education.
Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Widdowson, H. G. (1979). Explorations in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
 10 Speech Communication

Evaluation of Student Performance

The following scheme is used to assess students’ performance in the course:

Evaluation Scheme:

Component Allocated Marks (%)

In-class tasks & quizzes 20
Mid-semester test 20
Library research project 20
Final examination 40
Total marks 100

1. In-class tasks are designed to help the students engage in dyadic or group
work to discuss a social issue and/or to solve a problem. Task
performance is assessed on the basis of a verbal report to the class.
Quizzes require written answers to oral questions about students’
knowledge about course content.
2. The mid-semester test comprises both objective and subjective questions
that reviews topics/areas covered up to the mid-point of the course.
3. The library research project is an extended writing exercise. Students are
required to search for information relevant to a given issue (e.g. ‘free
speech’) from a variety of sources, including the Internet, and to discuss
it in small groups before presenting the ‘findings’ in the form of a written
paper. The paper format is provided as a general guide.
4. The final examination evaluates students’ overall knowledge about the
theory and practice of speech communication via multiple-choice
questions as well as a compulsory essay-type question.

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