A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

communication 89
common (adj.) A term used in grammatical description to refer to the unmarked
morphological form of a grammatical category. In English, for example,
the form of the noun other than the genitive could be called the ‘common case’
form. Similarly, one might use ‘common gender’ in a language where only one
contrast is made (e.g. feminine v. masculine/neuter, etc.), or where sex is indeterminate
out of context (as in French enfant, ‘child’). In traditional grammar,
‘common nouns’ were a semantically defined subclass of nouns (referring to
‘general concepts’) contrasted with proper nouns (names of individuals, etc.);
linguistic approaches tend to emphasize the formal distinctions that can be
made between such subclasses (e.g. different patterns of article usage).
common core A term used in some sociolinguistic and stylistic studies,
referring to the range of linguistic features found in all varieties, dialects,
etc., of a language. Common core features of a language would include its basic
rules of word-order and word-formation, and its high-frequency vocabulary.
A usage such as thou in English, for example, would not be part of the
English common core, as it is restricted to certain dialects and religious contexts.
However, it is by no means clear just how many features in a language
can be legitimately called ‘common’ in this way, and the notion is especially
difficult to apply in relation to certain areas, such as the vowel system.
common ground A term used in pragmatics for the set of propositions
assumed by participants in a discourse to be held by the other participants as
uncontroversially true. It is their perceived shared background knowledge.
communication (n.) A fundamental notion in the study of behaviour, which
acts as a frame of reference for linguistic and phonetic studies. Communication
refers to the transmission and reception of information (a ‘message’)
between a source and a receiver using a signalling system: in linguistic contexts,
source and receiver are interpreted in human terms, the system involved is a
language, and the notion of response to (or acknowledgement of) the message
becomes of crucial importance. In theory, communication is said to have taken
place if the information received is the same as that sent: in practice, one has to
allow for all kinds of interfering factors, or ‘noise’, which reduce the efficiency
of the transmission (e.g. unintelligibility of articulation, idiosyncratic associations
of words). One has also to allow for different levels of control in the
transmission of the message: speakers’ purposive selection of signals will be
accompanied by signals which communicate ‘despite themselves’, as when voice
quality signals the fact that a person has a cold, is tired/old/male, etc. The
scientific study of all aspects of communication is sometimes called communication
science: the domain includes linguistics and phonetics, their various branches,
and relevant applications of associated subjects (e.g. acoustics, anatomy).
Human communication may take place using any of the available sensory
modes (hearing, sight, etc.), and the differential study of these modes, as used
in communicative activity, is carried on by semiotics. A contrast which is
often made, especially by psychologists, is between verbal and non-verbal communication
(NVC) to refer to the linguistic v. the non-linguistic features of
communication (the latter including facial expressions, gestures, etc., both in
humans and animals). However, the ambiguity of the term ‘verbal’ here, implying