KEY TERMS & CONCEPTS
What is the term for the ability of humans to create, produce, and understand entirely new messages?
What is openness?
What is the term for the study of meaningful signs and their use in communication?
What is semiotics?
This describes the relationship between human biological abilities and the cultural meanings embedded in the languages people speak.
What is the biocultural phenomenon of language?
This feature allows humans to discuss absent or non-existent objects and events from the past or future.
What is displacement?
This type of non-verbal communication involves movements and postures, such as waving, smiling, winking, and rolling one's eyes.
What is body language?
What is the difference between language and languages? (Answer is not a question.)
Language is an abstract property belonging to the human species as a whole, while languages are the specific ways groups of people communicate.
This feature explains why there is no necessary connection between a linguistic sound and its meaning. For example, the sound /boi/ means something different in English than it does in Fulfulde.
What is arbitrariness?
This term describes the use of physical space to communicate messages, including the distinction between intimate, personal, social, and public space.
What is proxemics?
Language is an abstract property belonging to the human species as a whole, while languages are the specific ways groups of people communicate.
What is sociolinguistics?
This feature involves two levels of organization: meaningless sounds are combined into meaningful units, which are then organized into larger structures such as sentences.
What is duality of patterning?
In semiotics, what are the two components of a sign: the form that a sign takes and the concept it represents?
What are the signifier and the signified?
A person knows the grammatical rules of a language but struggles to understand when it is appropriate to speak formally, informally, or differently depending on the social situation. Which type of competence are they lacking? (Answer is not a question.)
communicative competence.
Identify and explain the remaining two design features of human language that Charles Hockett identified, including what makes each distinctive. (Answer is not a question.)
Semanticity: words and symbols refer to objects, actions, and the social, cultural, and physical world.
Prevarication: the ability to make false, nonsensical, or contradictory statements.
Explain the three types of signs in semiotics: iconicity, indexicality, and symbolic signs. What distinguishes each one? (Answer is not a question.)
Icon: resembles what it represents.
Index: is causally or directly linked to what it signifies.
Symbol: has no intrinsic connection to what it represents and must be learned.
Explain the difference between linguistic competence and communicative competence. Why does knowing the grammar of a language not necessarily mean someone knows how to communicate appropriately within a speech community? (Answer is not a question.)
Linguistic competence is mastery of adult grammar, while communicative competence is mastery of socially and culturally appropriate speech rules. Grammar alone doesn't teach someone the social expectations and cultural practices governing communication.