CHAPTER 5

Socio-cultural and psychological barriers to effective communication:

1. Social Differentiation – Linguistic distinctiveness of a social group make it unfamiliar to others
2. Personality – inferiority complex, shyness, fears, defense mechanism
3. Bias and Insensitivity – prejudice, close minded or open minded
4. Language Barrier – Foreign language, accent, grammar
5. Technological Limits – absence of communication on personal level result to miscommunication

Dr. Sapir and Benjamin Whorf brought attention to relationship between language, thought and culture.
1. Linguistic Relativism – Certain thoughts cannot be understood by those who live in another language
2. Linguistic Determinism – Language determines how individuals think and how they see the world.

Discipline of Linguistics
Linguistics – scientific study of language in a cultural context.
Aims of Linguistic Study
1. Linguistic Competence – idealized understanding of the rules and construction of a given language.
2. Linguistic Performance – actual use of language as an output which involves production and
comprehension of actual utterances.

Language
- a structured system of arbitrary signs that communicate meaning.
- Is structured in such that individual sounds (phonemes) of language combine into meaningful words
(morphemes) that combine into meaningful phrases, clauses and sentence pattern (grammar).
- Is arbitrary because there is no natural or intrinsic relationship between a word and its meaning.

Sign
- basic unit of Language
- composed of signifier (sound image) and signified (concept or meaning)
2 Forms
1. Verbal – communication in the composition of words (spoken, listened, written, read)
2. Non-verbal – unwritten and unspoken language such as gestures, body posture, facial expression
Characteristics
1. Arbitrariness – link between linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of social convention or a
mutual understanding among those adopting it.
2. Duality – property of having levels of structures consisting of primary units or meaningful words
and secondary units or meaningless sounds.
3. Creativity – animal language do not have phonemes or articulated and differentiated sounds to
produce infinite set of words and sentences generating new meanings
4. Displacement – Ability to communicate about things that are physically absent or those that are
abstract concepts at the moment of communication.

Variations of Human Language

1. Dialect – variation of language base on regional or social speech patterns
2. Register – variety of language catered for specific purposes and settings
3. Archaism – type of language that is considered antiquated or old fashioned
4. Pidgin – an unstable auxillary contact language arising from the need of people to occasionally interact
in situations
5. Creole – stabilized pidgin language the become the base language of a native language
Scope of Linguistics
Polyglot – learns to communicate in many languages
Linguist – scientifically studies a language
1. Phonetics – study of speech sounds
2. Phonology – study of sound patterns (phonemes)
3. Morphology – study of smallest units of meaning (morphenes)
4. Syntax – study of the structure (grammar) off clauses, phrases
5. Semantics – study of linguistic meaning
6. Pragmatics – study of ways by which context or situation contributes to meaning
Special areas of particular interest of linguist
1. Historical Linguistics – concerned with occurring changes in languages over passing time
2. Sociolinguistics – concerned with ways language used in society
3. Psycholinguistics concerned with mental structure and processes involved in language
4. Neurolinguistics – concerned with brain activities involved in language information
5. Stylistics – concerned with interpretation of literary text from linguistic perspective

 Language Family – refers to a group of languages related through descent from a common
protolanguage (parent language).
6 major language families
1. Afro-Asiatic
2. Austronesian
3. Indo-European
4. Niger-Congo
5. Sino-Tibetan
6. Trans-New Guinea

 Ethnico-linguistic groups – refer to people grouped according to shared common indigenous language
which serves as part of their cultural identity.
8 Language with most number of native speaker
1. Cebuano
2. Tagalog
3. Ilokano
4. Bikol
5. Hiligaynon
6. Waray
7. Kapampangan
8. Pangasinense

 175 individual languages listed for Philippines, 171 are living language, while 4 indegenous language
are extinct namely Agta Dicamay, Agta Villaviciosa, Ayta Tayabas and Katabaga.
 Dr. David Crstystal’s arguments for the need to save endangered languages:
1. Linguistic diversity enriches our human ecology; 6,800 unique models for describing the world.
2. Languages are expressions of identity; a nation without a language is like a nation without a heart.
3. Language are repositories of history.
4. Languages contribute to the sum of human knowledge.
5. Languages are interesting subjects in their own right.
 Republic Act NO. 7104 – Formulate policies plans and programs to ensure the further development,
enrichment, propagation and preservation of Filipino and other Philippine Language.
 Protolanguage – reference to calling what is presumed to be an original parent language and
precursor of all other language in the world.
 Different social groups also develop and use their own lingo like jejemon, bekimon, salitang kanto
 The process of word formation contributes to language by:
1. Compounding – 2 or more words combine into single word resulting to a new meaning
2. Clipping – words are shortened
3. Blending – 2 or more words combine into a single word with combined meaning

Cyberlanguage
 Cyberculture – serves as an interface between internet users and the virtual world
1. Electronic Mail
2. Instant Messenger
3. Chat Room
4. Social Networking Site
5. Social Media Network
6. Internet Forum
7. Weblog

Functional Theories of Language

Following outline the functions of Language base on linguistic theories

1. Theory of Communicative Functions

1.1 Referential – convey message and contextual information
1.2 Aesthetic – indulge or reflect in language
1.3 Emotive – express exclamatory remarks
1.4 Conative – to persuade and influence others
1.5 Phatic – establish communion with others such as to relate
1.6 Metalingual – to clear up intentions and meanings
2. Theory of Meta-function
2.1 Ideational – constructs a model of experience both real and inner world
2.2 Interpersonal - maintains social relationships
2.3 Textual – making meanings encoded in wordings and grammatical sequences