Chapter 1 - The Nature of Communication Flashcards
Communication
Behavior that affects the behavior of others by the transmission of information.
Code
A complex pattern of associations of the units of a communication system. In language, those units could be sound units; meaningful units, such as words; or meaningful units that are larger than words, such as phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Encode
To put a message in a code
Grammar
System (pattern) of elements (such as words) and of the rules of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics inherent in a language. The term also refers to the study of those elements and rules.
Decode
To react to it in a way that reflects the reason that the sender encoded it
Phonological system
The grammar (pattern) of sounds of that language
Lexicon
A mental dictionary, the vocabulary that one has stored in the brain
Morphological rules
The rules used to construct words from their component parts
Syntax
The set of rules a person uses to form units of language larger than words. The term also refers to the study of those rules.
Semantics
The study of meaning
Linguistic competence
The (mostly) subconscious knowledge of language that allows a speaker to create a potentially infinite number of messages.
Productivity
The ability to produce messages that one has never produced before and to understand messages that one has never heard or seen before.
Linguistic performance
The application of linguistic competence to actually producing an utterance
Delivery system of language
The way in which knowledge of language (linguistic competence) is used to send a message. The three basic ways of delivering a message linguistically are speech, writing, and sign language.
Verbal
Language: speech, writing, or sign language
Nonverbal
Any communication that is not conveyed through speech, writing, or sign language
Synchrony
The connection and relationship between two or more things that occur at the same time
Culture shock
The disorientation and anxiety that occur when social expectation are not met
Ethnocentrism
Judging other cultures by the standard of your culture; it is also the belief that your culture is superior to other cultures
Pheromone
A chemical that is secreted by one individual and acts from a distance on another individual to alter that individual’s behavior.
Redundancy
When the same message (or elements of a message) is encoded in different ways and is simultaneously sent to the receiver of the message.
Sound spectrograph
An instrument used to analyze sound by producing a visual record of the time duration of the sound, its frequency (number of occurrences within a specific unit of time), and its amplitude (degree of loudness).
Calls
Usually relatively short vocal signals that might communicate a variety of messages. A variety of other species might respond to the calls of a given species.
Songs
Longer and more complex sequences of sound that, in birds, are usually associated with attracting a mate. Songs are species specific.
Openness
The ability to add new words, phrases, or other meaningful units to a language.
Discrete signal
One that does not blend with other signals.
Arbitrary
In relationship to language, means that features of language, such as words, have no direct relationship to their meaning.
Stimulus-bound
Behavior is one that occurs only as a result of a specific environment trigger (occurrence).
Displacement
The ability to communicate about things at times other than the present and to communicate about things not directly in front of the sender and/or receiver.
Prevarication
In the linguistic sense, refers to the ability to communicate about things that are not verifiable, things for which there is no proof.
Hominin
Refers to modern humans and to the ancestors of modern humans that go back in time more than six million years.
Recursion
The process whereby any linguistic units can be made longer by embedding another unit in it.
The Clever Hans effect
The name given to the fact that a nonhuman’s or human’s behavior might be influenced or directed by subtle and often unintentional cues of others. In terms of experimentation, these cues might reflect a researcher’s expectations of what the results of the experiment should be.
Broca’s area of the brain
The area of the brain that controls the larynx, lips, tongue, and other areas of the digestive and respiratory systems involved with oral and facial fine motor skills in the production of speech.
Wernicke’s area of the brain
One of the areas of the brain that is involved with the comprehension of speech and the selection of lexical items.
Broca’s aphasia
A condition caused by damage to Broca’s area of the brain and is characterized by problems in the production of speech and loss of some grammatical understanding of language.
Wernicke’s aphasia
Caused by damage to Wernicke’s area of the brain, is characterized by speech that includes lexical errors and nonsense words.
Theory of mind
Refers to the ability to characterize and predict the mental states of others.
The looking glass self
The human characteristic of building a concept of self though interpreting the perceptions we believe that others have of us and their behavioral reactions toward us.
