The ‘Communication Concept’ and the ‘Language Concept’ in Everyday English

Abstract

This paper presents a semantic/conceptual analysis of the concepts of communication and language, as represented in the lexicon of everyday English. Section 1 gives a brief orientation to the method to be employed, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka. In the main body of the paper, I propose semantic explications for several senses of the English words communicate, communication and language, supporting these explications by reference to naturally occurring data, and, in the case of polysemy, by reference to distinctive grammatical or phraseological properties of the polysemic meanings. The paper closes with observations on how the differing semantics of the ‘communication concept’ and the ‘language concept’ may contribute to the differing orientations of linguistics and communication studies.

Keywords:

• Lexical Semantics
• Communication
• Language Concept
• NSM

*I am grateful to Anna Wierzbicka, Anna Gladkova and Zhengdao Ye for valuable input and suggestions about the explications. I would also like to thank my research assistant Vicki Knox both for her corpus work and for many helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at ConCom05 ‘Conceptualizing Human Communication’, an HCSNet conference held at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW in December 2005. Later versions were presented at the Easter NSM Semantics Workshop at the Australian National University in 2006, and at a Linguistics Department seminar at Göteborg University, Sweden, in 2007. I thank the participants of these gatherings for their many helpful comments. Two anonymous reviewers for AJL also made helpful suggestions.

*I am grateful to Anna Wierzbicka, Anna Gladkova and Zhengdao Ye for valuable input and suggestions about the explications. I would also like to thank my research assistant Vicki Knox both for her corpus work and for many helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at ConCom05 ‘Conceptualizing Human Communication’, an HCSNet conference held at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW in December 2005. Later versions were presented at the Easter NSM Semantics Workshop at the Australian National University in 2006, and at a Linguistics Department seminar at Göteborg University, Sweden, in 2007. I thank the participants of these gatherings for their many helpful comments. Two anonymous reviewers for AJL also made helpful suggestions.

Notes

*I am grateful to Anna Wierzbicka, Anna Gladkova and Zhengdao Ye for valuable input and suggestions about the explications. I would also like to thank my research assistant Vicki Knox both for her corpus work and for many helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at ConCom05 ‘Conceptualizing Human Communication’, an HCSNet conference held at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW in December 2005. Later versions were presented at the Easter NSM Semantics Workshop at the Australian National University in 2006, and at a Linguistics Department seminar at Göteborg University, Sweden, in 2007. I thank the participants of these gatherings for their many helpful comments. Two anonymous reviewers for AJL also made helpful suggestions.

¹While the numbering communicate ₁ and communicate ₂ is based on frequency in contemporary corpora, from a historical point of view, the order of priority is very likely the reverse. I don't mean to say that either of the contemporary meanings existed in the seventeenth century, for example, but rather that the antecedent of communicate ₂ most probably pre-dated the antecedent of communicate ₁. Research in historical semantics is notoriously difficult (Wierzbicka 2006; Bromhead in press), so these remarks are speculative.

²There are also a smaller number of examples like the following, in which the subject expression does not designate a person: (i) Facial expressions communicate emotions; (ii) Dogs communicate by sound, sight, touch and smell; (iii) This process controls how cells divide and communicate with each other; (iv) For two computers to communicate a modem is required. I regard these as extended, polysemic uses of the core meaning of communicate and I will not deal with them in this paper.

³It is not feasible here to trace the historical pathways by which this and related concepts arose and took hold, but it would make a fascinating study in historical semantics. Urbanization likely played a part, insofar as it accentuated interpersonal communication problems by bringing together people of different social strata and regional origins and ensuring frequent day-to-day contacts between them; cf. Brier and Finlay (1986) on mid-seventeenth century London, the cradle of Anglo modernity; see also Himmelfarb (2005), and Porter (2000). Later, free and public association between people of different social roles became one of the hallmarks of the new society of America, one of the constant themes in Tocqueville's (1840) Democracy in America.

⁴An additional polysemic sense of language is found in expressions such as the language of music (art, etc.) (Goddard to appear).

⁵Despite the way in which the role of words is backgrounded in the communication concept, it remains true that the concept is oriented around the semantic prime say, and that the normal way of saying things involves words. In other languages there may be important concepts representing cultural ideals about how one person can know the feelings, wants and thoughts of another person without saying (or words) necessarily being involved. In this connection, a reviewer points out the existence of the Chinese word xinling-goutong and Japanese word ishindenshin, normally glossed ‘heart spirit communication’ and ‘beyond heart transmission’, respectively. Clearly, however, glosses such as ‘communication’ and ‘transmission’ can only give a rough and distorted picture of the true meanings of these words.

⁶Generative linguists often manage it by confining themselves to the generalized sense language ₃.

⁷See Wierzbicka (2005) for a spirited defence of the value of the culture concept.