Communication, experience and meaning: a theoretical perspective

• MODULE OUTLINE:
• Definition of terms
• The nature of Language and Experience
• Making meaning and creole-influenced students
• Code-switching
• Talk and Communication in the Community
• Implications for Teacher Training

HOW TO USE THIS MODULE: (1) Read each section below.(2) Go to "Links" in the nav. panel and read/browse the related links. (3) Anticipate questions you might ask during a course on this subject.(4) Join the discussion at the end of the module.

DEFINITION OF TERMS-- 1) Language: is that "ability which every normal human being has, and it allows him(her) not only to communicate with other human beings but also with himself(herself). It facilitates the transmission of ideas, emotions and desires from individual to individual and the refinement of the same within the individual. It is therefore external in the form of sound and symbol and internal as mental activity" ..."'a' language refers to one recognizable, identifiable or accepted entity used by one or more communities of speakers." (Roberts, pp. 3-4)

2) Communication: "is the process of exchanging information and ideas. An active process, it involves encoding, transmitting, and decoding intended messages. There are many means of communicating and many different language systems. Speech and language are only a portion of communication. Other aspects of communication may enhance or even eclipse the linguistic code. These aspects are paralinguistic, nonlinguistic, and metalinguistic. Paralinguistic mechanisms signal attitude or emotion and include intonation, stress, rate of delivery, and pause or hesitation. Nonlinguistic clues include gestures, body posture, facial expression, eye contact, head and body movement, and physical distance or proxemics. Metalinquistic cues signal the status of communication based on our intuitions about the acceptability of utterances. In other words, metalinguistic skills enable us to talk about language, analyze it, think about it, separate it from context, and judge it." (senate.psu.edu/curriculum_resources)

3) Experience "can be defined as acts that produce, create, and invent knowledge for effects upon the future." V. Lark (?)

4) Meaning "is a distinct level of cognitive significance that represents how people understand the world around them--literally, the reality they construct in their minds that explains the world they experience..." (Nathan Shedroff)

5) In the English-speaking Caribbean linguistic variation has been the source of much study. De Camp (1974) talked of the existence of a post-creole continuum which stretches from Standard/International English to Creole. There are many variants between these poles. Varilingualism is said to be a characteristic of the speech of West Indians (Youssef, 1992). A speaker switches back and forth along the continuum as (s)he is best able to and as the need arises. Code-switching is a fact of life in West Indian social interaction.