2021

TEMARIO OPOSICIONES

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS.

LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS. LANGUAGE
IN USE. THE NEGOTIATION OF
MEANING
TOPIC 3
TOPIC 3: THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS. LANGUAGE
FUNCTIONS. LANGUAGE IN USE. THE NEGOTIATION OF
MEANING.

1. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

2. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
2.1. MALINOWSKI
2.2. KARL BÜHLER
2.3. JAKOBSON
2.4. MICHAEL HALLIDAY
2.5. JAMES BRITTON
2.6. DESMOND MORRIS
2.7. FUNCTION AS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF LANGUAGE.
3. LANGUAGE IN USE
4. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
4.1. SENTENCE MEANING AND UTTERANCE MEANING
4.2. SYMBOL AND INDEX
4.3. NEGOTIATING PROCEDURES
4.4. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING AND LANGUAGE LEARNING
5. CONCLUSION
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Communication (from Latin "Communis"= to make common), the exchange of

meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols, has been
of concern to countless scholars since the time of ancient Greece. It is a slippery
concept, and while we may casually use the word with some frequency, it is
difficult to arrive at a precise definition that is agreeable to most scholars. Until
recently, however, the topic was usually subsumed under other disciplines and
taken for granted as a natural process inherent to each.

In 1999 R.T.Craig wrote a landmark article "Communication Theory as a Field".

Craig focused on communication theory as a practical discipline and shows how
"various traditions of communication theory can be engaged in dialogue on the
practice of communication. Basic elements of communication made the object of
study of the communication theory.

The English literary critic and author L.A. RICHARDS offered one of the first -
and in some ways still the best- definitions of communication as a discrete aspect
of human enterprise:

Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment
that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience
occurs which is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part
by that experience.

Richard's definition is both general and rough, but its application to nearly all kinds
of communications - including those between men and animals (but excluding
machines) - separated the contents of messages from the processes in human
affairs by which these messages are transmitted.

Research indicates that communication competence is most often understood

as achieving a successful balance between effectiveness and appropriateness
(Spitzberg & Cupach, 1989). Effectiveness is the extent to which you achieve
your goals in an interaction. Did you get the raise? Were you able to convince a
subordinate that timeliness is important? Appropriateness refers to fulfilling
social expectations for a particular situation. Did you assertively ask for the raise,
or was it a meek inquiry? Were you insistent or wishywashy when discussing your

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employee’s tardiness? There are many cases in which a person is effective
without being appropriate; consider a job applicant who lies on a resume to get a
job for which he or she is unqualified. That person might be very effective in
getting the job, but is such deceit appropriate?

On the other hand, many times people are appropriate to the point of failing to
achieve their goals. For example, a person who doesn’t wish to take on an
additional task at work, but says nothing because he or she fears causing conflict,
might be sacrificing effectiveness for appropriateness. The key is that when faced
with communicative decisions, the competent communicator considers how to be
both effective and appropriate.

There have been several important theories on the communication process:

Lasswell´s (1948) model, Shannon and Weaver´s model (1949), Gebner´s
(1956), D. Berlo´s (1960), Leagan´s ...

One of the most productive schematic models of a communication system

emerged from the speculations of the linguist ROMAN JAKOBSON (who
developed the traditional model of language as elucidated particularly by the
Austrian psychologist KARL BÜHLER). As originally conceived, the model
contained the following elements:

Jakobson says that in any act of verbal communication, the six constituents of
the revised model are:

1. The source, SENDER or addresser, who sends

2. a MESSAGE to

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3 the RECEIVER or addressee

4. To be operative, the message requires a CONTEXT ('referent' in another

nomenclature), shared by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being
verbalized;

5. a CODE fully, or at least partially common to the addresser and addressee (or
in other words, to the encoder and decoder of the message); and, finally,

6. a CONTACT or CHANNEL, a physical channel and psychological connection

between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and
stay in communication.

However, three more elements can be added:

• FEEDBACK - It is the main component of communication process as it

permits the sender to analyze the efficacy of the message. It helps the
sender in confirming the correct interpretation of message by the decoder.
Feedback may be verbal (through words) or non-verbal (in form of smiles,
sighs, etc.). It may take written form also in form of memos, reports, etc

• NOISE—throughout the communications process the message is subject

to noise which refers to factors that can distort or interfere with adequate
reception or comprehension. Noise can occur during the encoding,
transmission, or decoding of a message. Noise can also occur because of
a lack of common ground or understanding between the sender and
receiver.

• ENTROPIC ELEMENTS, positive and negative

2. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

The culmination of language learning is not simply in the mastery of the forms of
language but the mastery of forms in order to accomplish the communicative
functions of language. While forms are the manifestation of language, functions
are the realization of those for the pragmatic (practical) purpose of language.

Communication may be regarded as a combination of acts, a series of elements

with purpose and intention. Communication is not merely an event, something

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that happens; it is functional, purposive and designed to bring about some effect
—some change on the environment of hearers and speakers. It is a series of
communicative acts or speech acts which are used systematically to accomplish
particular purposes. We could attempt to list and classify them in some way or
other, and a number of scholars have attempted to do this, hoping to find some
fairly general framework or scheme for classifying the purposes for which people
use language.

2.1. MALINOWSKI

There are a number of familiar classifications of linguistic functions; for example,

that put forward by MALINOWSKI (1923), who classified the functions of
language into the broad categories of 'pragmatic' and 'magical'. As an
anthropologist, he was interested in practical or pragmatic uses of language,
which he further subdivided into active and narrative and on the other hand, ritual
or magical uses of language that were associated with ceremonial or religious
activities in the culture.

2.2. KARL BÜHLER

A quite different classification is that associated with the name of KARL BÜHLER
(1934), who was concerned with the functions of language from the standpoint
not so much of the culture but of the individual. Bühler made the distinction into
cognitive (representational) function (refers to its employment for the
transmission of factual information) , conative (or instrumental) function ( is used
for influencing the person one is addressing or for bringing about some practical
effect, and expressive function (refers to the mood or attitude of the speaker or
writer): the expressive being language that is oriented towards the self, the
speaker; the conative being language that is oriented towards the addressee; and
the representational being language that is oriented towards the rest of reality —
that is, anything other than speaker or addressee.

2.3. JAKOBSON

His scheme was adopted by the Prague School and later extended by R.
JAKOBSON (1960), who on the basis of the six factors of his own model of
communication distinguished six different functions of language:

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Jakobson's emotive, referential, and conative functions were like Buhler's
expressive, representational, and conative functions, but he added three more
functions to Bühler's scheme: the poetic function, oriented towards the message;
the phatic (or transactional) function, oriented towards the channel (or in
Jakobson's terms 'contact'); and the metalingual (or metalinguistic) function
oriented towards the code.

2.4. MICHAEL HALLIDAY

The British linguist MICHAEL HALLIDAY, who also belonged to the Prague
School used the term function to mean the purposive nature of communication
and outlined seven similar functions of language:

1. The instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause

certain events to happen, e.g. Don 't touch the stove.

2. The regulatory function is the control of events. Approval, disapproval,

behaviour control, setting laws and rules, are all regulatory features of language,
e.g. Upon good behaviour you will be eligible for parole in 10 months.

3. The representational function is the use of language to make statements, it

convey acts and knowledge, explain or report, i.e. to represent reality as one sees
it, e.g. The sun is hot; the President gave a speech last night.

4. The interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance.

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5. The personal function allows a speaker to express feelings, emotions,
personality, gut-level reactions. A person’s individuality is usually characterized
by his or her use of the personal function of communication.

6. The heuristic function involves language used to acquire knowledge to learn

about the environment. Heuristic functions are often conveyed in the form of
questions that will lead to answers. Children typically make good use of the
heuristic function in their incessant “why-questions" about the world around them.

7. The imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas. Telling

fairy tales, joking, or writing a novel are all uses of the imaginative function. Using
language as in poetry are also instances of imaginative functions.

These seven different functions of language are neither discrete nor exclusive. A
single sentence or conversation might incorporate many different functions
simultaneously. Yet it is the understanding of how to use linguistic forms to
achieve these functions of language that comprises the crux of L2 learning.
Halliday’s seven functions of language tend to mask the almost infinite variety
and complexity of functions that we accomplish through language. The forms of
language used to accomplish the functions must become part of the total linguistic
repertoire of the L2 learner, if learners are attempting to acquire written and
spoken competence in the language they must also discern differences in forms
and functions between spoken and written discourse.

Halliday´s functions can be grouped into 3 macro-functions: the ideational, the

interpersonal and the textual.

2.5. JAMES BRITTON

Bühler‘s scheme was adapted and developed in a different direction by the

English educator JAMES BRITTON (1970), who proposed a framework of
transactional, expressive, and poetic language functions. Britton was
concerned with the development of writing abilities by children in school, and held
the view that writing developed first in an expressive context, and the ability was
then extended 'outward' to transactional writing on the one hand, to poetic writing
on the other.

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Transactional language was that which emphasized the participant´s role,
whereas in poetic language the writer's role was more that of spectator.

2.6. DESMOND MORRIS

DESMOND MORRIS (1967), in his entertaining study of the human species from
an animal behaviourist's point of view, came up with yet another classification of
the functions of language, which he called 'information talking', 'mood talking',
'exploratory talking' and 'grooming talking'. The first was the co-operative
exchange of information; Morris seemed to imply that that came first, although in
the life history of a human child it arises last of all. The second was like Buhler's
and Britton's 'expressive' function. The third was defined as 'talking for talking's
sake'; 'aesthetic, play functions'; while the fourth was 'the meaningless, polite
chatter of social occasions‘ — what Malinowski had referred to forty years earlier
as 'phatic communion', meaning communion through talk when people use
expressions like ’nice day, isn´t it?’ as a way of oiling the social process and
avoiding friction.

2.7. FUNCTION AS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF LANGUAGE.

What such scholars were doing was essentially constructing some kind of a
conceptual framework in non-linguistic terms, looking at language from the
outside, and using this as a grid for interpreting the different ways in which people
use language. In all these interpretations of the functions of language, we can
say that function equals use; the concept of function is synonymous with that of
use. But we have to take a further step: function will be interpreted not just as the
use of language but as a fundamental property of language itself, something that
is basic to the evolution of the semantic system. This amounts to saying that the
organization of every natural language is to be explained in terms of a functional
theory.

3. LANGUAGE IN USE

In recent years, there has been growing awareness of the importance of studying
language and language learning in its context of use. When humans use
language, they do so for a purpose; with very few exceptions, the purpose is to
communicate with other humans beings; communication always occurs in a

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context; language is created by humans who are unique not only in their language
using ability but also in their particular physical and neurological anatomy, as well
as many aspects of their social organization and culture making; and language is
inevitably shaped by the nature of human cognition and social-cultural activity. In
spite of the fact that these attributes stem from basic, common-sensical
observations, for many linguists and language acquisitionists, they have not been
of central concern. Placing this particular perspective on language at the center
of our inquiries has profound consequences in terms of the questions we ask, the
data we consider, the patterns we discover, and our interpretation of the import
of those patterns.

On the one hand, communication and language are very closely related but they
are not the same phenomenon. On the other hand language does not only enable
us to communicate with other people. It also has important mental functions and
affects how we understand and reflect on the world around us.

Our experience of language in social settings leads us to categorize the world in

similar ways to people around us and to manipulate these categories in our
thinking.

When the L2 learner encounters a new language, he is required to cope with the
new categories of experience and new ways of manipulating them. But language
is not the only means by which we communicate. In a noisy situation, for example,
we often resort to gestures to convey simple messages and in everyday
conversation non-verbal signals such as posture and eye contact play an
important part in regulating turn taking between speakers.

The most important function of language is to facilitate communication with

others. From the moment communication moves beyond the "here-and-now" it
relies for its success on the success on the resources that the language system
puts at its disposal. Today most foreign language teaching is oriented towards
the development of communication skills.

According to the linguist David Crystal, language is the most frequently used
and most highly developed form of human communication we possess. An act of
communication is basically the transmission of information of some kind of a
'message' from a source to a receiver. In the case of language, both source and

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receiver are human and the message is transmitted, either vocally, through the
air, or graphically, by marks on a surface, usually paper. Language is one form
of communication.

Someone knowing a language knows more than how to understand, speak, read,
and write sentences. He also knows how sentences are used to communicative
effect; according to Bygate, when someone acquires knowledge of language he
also acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk
about with whom, when, where, in what manner: in short he becomes able to
accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events and to value
their accomplishment by others. This competence, moreover, is integral with
attitudes, values, and motivations concerning language, its features and uses,
and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the interrelation of
language with the other code of communicative conduct.

The acquisition of such competence is of course fed by social experience, needs,

motives, and issues in action that is itself a renewed source of motives, needs
and experience. A model of language must design it with a face toward
communicative conduct and social life.

Attention to the social dimension is thus not restricted to occasions on which

social factors seem to interfere with or restrict the grammatical factors. The
engagement of language in social life has a positive, productive aspect. There
are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless. Just as
rules of syntax can control aspects of phonology, and just as semantic rules
perhaps control aspects of syntax, so rules of speech acts enter as a controlling
factor for linguistic form as a whole.

For our purposes in teaching and learning a second or foreign language, once
we accept the need to use language as communication, we can no longer think
of it in terms only of sentences. We must consider the nature of discourse, and
how best to teach it and to transfer from grammatical competence, a knowledge
of sentences, to what has been called communicative competence.

According to Widdowson language does not occur in words or sentences but in

connected discourse. He distinguishes two ways of looking at language beyond
the limit of the sentence. One way sees it as 'text', a collection of formal objects

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held together by cohesive devices. The other way sees language as 'discourse',
a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger
communicative units.

This linguist uses the label 'discourse analysis' to refer to the investigation into
the way sentences are put to communicative use in the performing of social
actions, discourse being roughly defined, therefore, as the use of sentences. If
we are to teach language in use, we have to shift our attention from sentences in
isolation to the manner in which they combine in text on the one hand, and to the
manner in which they are used to perform communicative acts in discourse on
the other. Text discourse and discourse analysis are different but complementary
ways of looking at language in use.

4. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING

4.1. SENTENCE MEANING AND UTTERANCE MEANING

According to Widdowson, the first thing to consider is how context acts upon
grammar so that the specific meanings of particular expressions are realized and
communicative outcomes brought about so we move from semantics to
pragmatics, from virtual to actual meanings. So we need to consider how
meanings are realized in context.

We can begin with the crucial point that understanding what people mean by what
they say is not the same as understanding the linguistic expressions they use in
saying it. Let’s consider an expression in English such as The little letter is in the
drawer. Considered as a sentence this has no problem for understanding. But as
use of language, as an utterance presented like this in isolation it is quite
incomprehensible because we cannot attach any meaning to it. We attach
meanings to linguistic expressions and we do this by invoking some pre-existing
knowledge or other or some co- existing feature of the situation or utterance.
Anybody actually producing this expression with the intention of being meaningful
would suppose that the addressee can make an attachment, can relate the
language to some shared conception or perception of the world and so achieve
the intended meaning. The letter (the one we have just been talking about or the
one that arrived by post this morning) is in the drawer (the one in the desk...)

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Every linguistic expression contains the potential for a multiplicity of meanings
and which on particular occasion is determined by non-linguistic factors of text.

A sentence has only one invariant meaning or if it has more than one as in the
case of structural or lexical ambiguity, its meanings can be exactly specified.

Utterance meanings, on the other hand, change continually to suit the

circumstances in which they are used. The multiplicity of utterance meanings
does not mean that any linguistic expression can mean anything at all in complete
disregard of what it means in a sentence.

The conventional meaning of linguistic signs and their combinations in sentence

constitute types of conceptualisation codified as linguistic knowledge while the
tokens are particular and actualised instances and must clearly be set in
correspondence with them.

The letter we are referring now to, at the moment is a particular token instance of
letter as a lexical item, a general conceptual type, and a codified abstraction. It is
clear that the type is more or less stable, established by convention, whereas the
token is not since it is conditioned by context. And language use must always be
a matter of actualising tokens as appropriate.

As Johnson Laird has pointed out it is possible to communicate successfully

with an incomplete knowledge of meaning when, for example, you read the
sentence:

After a hearty dish of spaghetti, Bernini cast a bronze of a mastiff searching for
truffles.

We may understand perfectly well even though we may not be entirely sure
exactly what alloy bronze is, or what sort of dog a mastiff is or what truffles are.

So the type of meaning that is known may be general (bronze is a kind of metal,
mastiff a kind of dog). There will be occasions when the purpose calls for
increased specificity of type: for example, in the context of a textbook on
metallurgy.

Communication, then, is a matter of the mutual accommodation of type and token

as appropriate to purpose. Our concepts of meaning provide us with bearings on

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what words mean in context and the context in turn provides us what evidence
for extending our conceptual representation of these meanings.

4.2. SYMBOL AND INDEX

We can call symbol to the linguistic sign as type. The knowledge of a language
will enable us to decipher strings of symbols as sentences and it is this
knowledge, generally referred to as linguistic competence, which is the
traditional business of linguists and language teachers. Comprehension, in the
sense of understanding sentences is, then, a semantic matter of deciphering
symbolic meanings. But this knowledge will not only enable us to understand
language in use for this is always a matter of realizing the particular token
meanings of signs in association with the context of utterance.

This is a pragmatic matter of achieving meaning by using linguistic signs as

evidence. The sign in the utterance, therefore, does not function as a symbol but
as an index: it indicates where we must look in the world we know or can perceive
in order to discover meaning. It directs our attention away from the language
itself.

Whereas symbolic meanings inhere in the signs themselves indexical meanings

must be achieved by the language user associating symbols with more relevant
aspects of the world outside language in the situation or in the mind.

People who have particular knowledge and experience in common, whose

contextual realities are closely congruent, will manage to communicate by
engaging relevant aspects.

However, we do not only communicate with people with whom we share

something. We need also to participate in wide networks of interaction. And here
we cannot rely on particular instances of shared knowledge and experience. We
need to refer to more general and conventional assumptions and beliefs which
define what is accepted as normal or typical in respect of the way reality is
structured and to the conduct of social life. This common knowledge of shared
experience and conventionally sanctioned reality can be called schematic
knowledge: it is the knowledge which is acquired as a condition of entry into a
particular culture or subculture.

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Schematic knowledge then, is a necessary source of reference in use whereby
linguistic symbols are converted into indices in the process of interpretation.

A central problem in teaching a foreign language lies in that we need to identify

areas of schematic knowledge which the learners will accept as independently
relevant and worth acquiring so that the learning of a language is seen the
necessary means to a desired end.

Now, we may say that the achievement of indexical meaning is commonly a

matter of making a connection between the linguistic sign and the relevant aspect
of schematic knowledge. We can distinguish two kinds of knowledge. If we refer
to linguistic knowledge, the internalization of the symbolic function of signs
(systemic knowledge), then we can think of the realisation of meaning in actual
language use (schematic knowledge).

4.3. NEGOTIATING PROCEDURES

This taking of bearings on systemic and schematic knowledge is the procedural

activity which converts type to token, symbol to index, and so actualises particular
meanings. It is the continuous process of plotting a position and steering an
interpretative course by adjustment and prediction. It is in this sense that
language use can be regarded as essentially a matter of the negotiation of
meanings.

It will be clear that on any particular occasion of meaning negotiation the more
familiar the schematic content or mode of communication, the less reliance
needs to be placed on systemic knowledge, and vice versa. This relates to the
point made by Johnson-Laird earlier: that an effective(i.e. indexical) use of
language does not depend on knowing precise (i.e. symbolically complete)
meanings.

It is that close attention to the language itself and reference to systemic

knowledge allows us to negotiate meaning and acquire the kind of information
which for the reader in the schematic know is provided in advance.

4.4. THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING AND LANGUAGE LEARNING

Perhaps the first point that needs to be made is that the relationship between use
and learning differs in respect to first and second language situations. In L1

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acquisition, the child learns about the world through language and through an
engagement with the world. The two processes are, so to speak, symbiotically
related. They are the mutually reinforcing determinants of development. Thus
systemic and schematic knowledge develop concurrently supporting each other.
This experience cannot be replicated in L2 acquisition. Here learners have
already been socialised into the schematic knowledge associated with their
mother tongue: they are initiated into their culture in the very process of language
learning. When they confront uses of the foreign language they are learning, their
natural inclination is to interpret them in reference to this established association,
and rely on the foreign as sparingly as possible. They will invoke as much
systemic knowledge of this language as is indexically necessary and no more,
using both their first language and the foreign language tactically as a source of
clues to meaning, while taking bearings, as usual, on their schematic knowledge.

The nature of learner errors comes up for consideration here. When learners are
called upon to use the language being learned for some communicative purpose,
a purpose other than language practice, then they will be naturally disposed to
draw upon the systemic resources which have proved serviceable in the past for
the achievement of indexical meaning. These have been predominantly those of
the mother tongue. In this respect learner errors which reveal L1 influence are
the natural reflex of procedures of meaning negotiation.

Errors have generally been attributed to cognitive causes, evidence of the

learner’s psychological process of rule formation. It is also likely, that under
communicative pressure learners will place more reliance on lexical means than
on the intuitive assumption that context can compensate for an absence of
refinement in grammatical signalling.

In view of all this, one might characterise second language pedagogy as a set of
activities designed to bring about the gradual shift of reliance from one systemic
resource to another for the achievement of indexical purposes.

The essential point is that meaning negotiation, which, in normal circumstances,

is always a matter of achieving an objective by the most economical means, will
be carried out by taking whatever short cuts are available. It does not in itself
provide for the acquisition of a systemic knowledge of the foreign language.

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The internalization of the system as a communicative resource is only likely to
happen when there is a concentration on symbol to index conversion, when the
potential value of symbols is actualised indexically in the process of discovering
new meaning.

Now we move to the central dilemma in L2 pedagogy: the conditions appropriate

for acquiring communicative resources are different from the conditions of their
use. The question then is how can we continue to induce both internalization of
language as a resource and the ability to use it?

We might say that a structural approach to language teaching lays emphasis on

systemic knowledge and makes the assumption that one this is acquired the
learners will discover for themselves how it is put to use in communication.
Classroom activities will tend to be those focusing attention on rather than on
interpretation by indexical inference.

Language difficulty will generally be measured in terms of decipherability, the

problem of which can be eased by educing the symbolic complexity of the text. A
notional/functional approach essentially seeks to establish correlation between
systemic and schematic elements. It associates concepts and communicative
acts with their most common standard expressions in the foreign language. In
this respect it focuses on lexical/grammatical co-occurrences in formulaic
phrases. Classroom activities here would prepare the learners to economise the
relevant co-occurrences and correlation as they occur in actual use. Language
difficulty will be seen in terms of non-conformity to standard or normal ways of
expressing notions and functions.

Neither approach takes as its central concern the exercise of procedures for
meaning negotiation, which require the relating and mutual adjustment of
systemic and schematic knowledge for the realisation of indexical value, and
which can provide the learner with the opportunities to learn the language through
using it. But an approach which did promote a negotiation of meaning in a natural
way, seeking to cast the learner into the role of user would itself run into problems.
For it would encourage a reliance on schematic knowledge and a corresponding
avoidance of an engagement with the systemic features of the foreign language.

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What seems to be needed is an approach which recognises the necessary
contrivance of pedagogy and seeks to guide learners through guided negotiating
tasks. These would require them to take bearings on both systemic and
schematic knowledge and would shift the focus of procedural work in a controlled
way. There seems to be no obvious reason why such tasks should not also allow
learners to refer to the systemic and schematic knowledge of their own language
and culture.

This would take pedagogic advantage of the learners’ own experience. The
purpose of such an approach would be to demonstrate that L2 has the same
potential for use as the L1 encourage learners to use on their experience of
language by applying familiar procedures to the interpretation of L2 use and so
to teach the L2 system not as an end in itself but as a resource of the
achievement of meaning.

5. CONCLUSION

Communication is a very complex phenomenon involving a number of different

variables. The role of context is essential when analysing the meaning conveyed
by any communication act.

All these ideas will influence the methodology we will follow when designing our
teaching programme.

Learning based on key competences gives communication an important role: the

LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE is based on linguistic,
pragmatical-discursive and socio-cultural knowledge and should not only be
worked by the linguistic subjects, but all the subjects should be implied. A School
Linguistic Project can be elaborated in order to organize how every subject is
going to develop this competence.

English should be taught in context so that our students will know different
meanings in different situations. For our purposes in teaching a second language,
we must consider the nature of discourse, and how best to teach it and to transfer
from grammatical competence, a knowledge of sentences, to communicative
competence. Contextualized active methodologies centered on students,

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significant learning and the use of project-based learning and cooperative work
help to develop this competence.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Bygate, M. "Speaking". OUP, 1987.

- Cowie, A.P., "Semantics", OUP, 2010.

- Crystal, D. "Linguistics". Penguin, 1971.

- Halliday, MAK. "An Introduction to Functional Gr.". E. Arnold, London 1985.

- Halliday, MAK & Hassan, R. "Language, Context and Text: Aspects of

Language in a Social Semiotic Perspective". OUP, 1990.

- Meyer, C.F., "Introducing English Linguistics", CUP, 2012.

- Widdowson, HG. "Teaching Language as Communication". OUP, 1985.

- http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/topical.html (Linguistic links)

- http://linguistlist.org/ (International linguistic community online)

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