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Tema-1 “ LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION: ORAL AND WRITTEN ...

Tema-1 “ LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION: ORAL AND WRITTEN ...

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SAPIR (1921) said that <strong>“</strong>language is a purely human non-instinctive method of communicating<br />

ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols”. HALL (1964) defined language<br />

as <strong>“</strong>the institution whereby humans communicate and interact whith each other by means of habitually<br />

used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols”. As we can see in these two definitions it is diffi cult to make a<br />

precise and comprehensive statement about formal adn functional universal properties of language so<br />

some linguists have trien to indentify the various properties that are thought to be its essential defining<br />

characteristics.<br />

The most widely acknowledged comparative approach has been the one proposed by Charles<br />

HOCKETT. His set of 13 design features of communication using spoken language were as follows:<br />

- Auditory-vocal channel: sound is used between mouth and ear.<br />

- Broadcast transmission and directional reception: a signal can be heard by any auditory system<br />

within earshot, and the source can be located using the ears’ direction-finding ability.<br />

- Rapid fading: auditory signals are transitory.<br />

- Interchangeability: speakers of a language can reproduce any linguistic message they can understand.<br />

- Total feedback: speakers hear and can reflect upon everything that they say.<br />

- Specitalization: the sound waves of speech have no other function than to signal meaning.<br />

- Semanticity: the elemens of the signal convey meaning through their stable association with realworld<br />

situations.<br />

- Arbitrariness: there is no dependence of the element of the signal on the nature of the reality to which<br />

it refers.<br />

- Discreteness: speech uses a small set of sound elements tha clearly contrast whith each other.

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