Communication From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the term used in the game of bridge, see Glossary

of contract bridge terms#communication.

Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the sender.

Contents [hide] 1 Human communication 1.1 Nonverbal communication 1.2 Visual communication 1.3 Oral communication 1.4 Written communication and its historical development 2 Nonhuman communication 2.1 Animal communication 2.2 Plants and fungi(phapondi) 3 Communication cycle 4 Communication noise 5 Communication as academic discipline

6 See also 7 External links 8 Notes 9 References

[edit] Human communication

Human spoken and picture languages can be described as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language" also refers to common properties of languages. Language learning normally occurs most intensively during human childhood. Most of the thousands of human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them. Languages seem to share certain properties, although many of these include exceptions. There is no defined line between a language and a dialect. Constructed languages such as Esperanto, programming languages, and various mathematical formalisms are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by human languages.

A variety of verbal and non-verbal means of communicating exists such as body language, eye contact, sign language, paralanguage, haptic communication, chronemics, and media such as pictures, graphics, sound, and writing.

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also defines the communication to include the display of text, Braille, tactile communication, large print, accessible multimedia, as well as written and plain language, human reader, and accessible information and communication technology.[1] [edit]

Nonverbal communication

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Nonverbal communication describes the process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word messages. Research shows that the majority of our communication is non verbal, also known as body language. some of non verbal communication includes gesture, body language or posture; facial expression and eye contact, object communication such as clothing, hairstyles, architecture, symbols infographics, and tone of voice as well as through an aggregate of the above. Non-verbal communication is also called silent language and plays a key role in human day to day life from employment relations to romantic engagements.

Speech also contains nonverbal elements known as para-language. These include voice quality, emotion and speaking style as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress. Likewise, written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words and the use of emoticons to convey emotional expressions in pictorial form. [edit] Visual communication

Visual communication is the conveyance of ideas and information through creation of visual representations. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colours, and electronic resources, video and TV. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice. [edit] Oral communication

Oral communication, while primarily referring to spoken verbal communication, typically relies on both words, visual aids and non-verbal elements to support the conveyance of the meaning. Oral communication includes discussion, speeches, presentations, interpersonal communication and many other varieties. In face to face communication the body language and voice tonality plays a significant role and may have a greater impact on the listener than the intended content of the spoken words.

A great presenter must capture the attention of the audience and connect with them. For example, out of two persons telling the same joke one may greatly amuse the audience due to his body language and tone of voice while the second person, using exactly the same words, bores and irritates the audience.[citation needed] Visual aid can help to facilitate effective communication and is almost always used in presentations for an audience.

A widely cited and widely misinterpreted figure used to emphasize the importance of delivery states that "communication comprise 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, 7% content of words", the socalled "7%-38%-55% rule".[2] This is not however what the cited research shows rather, when conveying emotion, if body language, tone of voice, and words disagree, then body language and tone of voice will be believed more than words.[3][clarification needed] For example, a person saying "I'm delighted to meet you" while mumbling, hunched over, and looking away will be interpreted as insincere. (Further discussion at Albert Mehrabian: Three elements of communication.)' [edit] Written communication and its historical development

Over time the forms of and ideas about communication have evolved through progression of technology. Advances include communications psychology and media psychology; an emerging field of study. Researchers divides the progression of written communication into three revolutionary stages called "Information Communication Revolutions" (Source needed).

During the 1st stage written communication first emerged through the use of pictographs. The pictograms were made in stone, hence written communication was not yet mobile.

During the 2nd stage writing began to appear on paper, papyrus, clay, wax, etc. Common alphabets were introduced and allowed for the uniformity of language across large distances. A leap in technology occurred when the Gutenberg printing-press was invented in the 15th century.

The 3rd stage is characterised by the transfer of information through controlled waves and electronic signals.

Communication is thus a process by which meaning is assigned and conveyed in an attempt to create shared understanding. This process, which requires a vast repertoire of skills in interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, gestures, and evaluating enables collaboration and cooperation.[4]

Barriers to successful communication include message overload (when a person receives too many messages at the same time), and message complexity.[5]

Misunderstandings can be anticipated and solved through formulations, questions and answers, paraphrasing, examples, and stories of strategic talk. Written communication can be clear by planning follow-up talk on critical written communication as part of the normal way of doing business. Minutes spent talking now will save time later having to clear up misunderstandings later on. Then, take what was heard and reiterate in your own words, and ask them if thats what they meant. *6+ [edit] Nonhuman communication

See also: Biocommunication (science) and Interspecies communication

Every information exchange between living organisms i.e. transmission of signals that involve a living sender and receiver can be considered a form of communication; and even primitive creatures such as corals are competent to communicate. Nonhuman communication also include cell signaling, cellular communication, and chemical transmissions between primitive organisms like bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms. [edit] Animal communication

The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the issues in ethology. Animal communication can be defined as any behavior of one animal that affects the current or future behavior of another animal. The study of animal communication, called zoosemiotics' (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal cognition. Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, many prior understandings related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, have been revolutionized. [edit] Plants and fungi(phapondi)

Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within plant cells and between plant cells, between plants of the same or related species, and between plants and non-plant organisms, especially in the root zone. Plant roots communicate in parallel with rhizome bacteria, with fungi and with insects in the soil. These parallel sign-mediated interactions are governed by syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules, and are possible because of the decentralized "nervous system" of plants. The original meaning of

the word "neuron" in Greek is "vegetable fiber" and recent research has shown that most of the intraorganismic plant communication processes are neuronal-like.[7] Plants also communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior to warn neighboring plants. In parallel they produce other volatiles to attract parasites which attack these herbivores. In Stress situations plants can overwrite the genetic code they inherited from their parents and revert to that of their grand- or greatgrandparents.

Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their growth and development such as the formation of mycelia and fruiting bodies. Fungi communicate with same and related species as well as with nonfungal organisms in a great variety of symbiotic interactions, especially with bacteria, unicellular eukaryotes, plants and insects through semiochemicals of biotic origin. The semiochemicals trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific manner, while if the same chemical molecules are not part of biotic messages, they do not trigger the fungal organism to react. This implies that fungal organisms can differ between molecules taking part in biotic messages and similar molecules being irrelevant in the situation. So far five different primary signalling molecules are known to coordinate different behavioral patterns such as filamentation, mating, growth, and pathogenicity. Behavioral coordination and production of signalling substances is achieved through interpretation processes that enables the organism to differ between self or non-self, abiotic indicator, biotic message from similar, related, or non-related species, and even filter out "noise", i.e. similar molecules without biotic content. [edit] Communication cycle

Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication

Communication major dimensions scheme

Communication code scheme

Linear Communication Model

Interactional Model of Communication

Berlo's Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of Communication

Transactional Model of Communication

The first major model for communication came in 1949 by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories [8] The original model was designed to mirror the functioning of radio and telephone technologies. Their initial model consisted of three primary parts: sender, channel, and receiver. The sender was the part of a telephone a person spoke into, the channel was the telephone itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could hear the other person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often there is static that interferes with one listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise.

In a simple model, often referred to as the transmission model or standard view of communication, information or content (e.g. a message in natural language) is sent in some form (as spoken language) from an emisor/ sender/ encoder to a destination/ receiver/ decoder. This common conception of communication simply views communication as a means of sending and receiving information. The strengths of this model are simplicity, generality, and quantifiability. Social scientists Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the following elements: An information source, which produces a message. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals

A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal. A destination, where the message arrives.

Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems for communication within this theory. The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted? The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning 'conveyed'? The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received meaning affect behavior?

Daniel Chandler critiques the transmission model by stating: It assumes communicators are isolated individuals. No allowance for differing purposes. No allowance for differing interpretations. No allowance for unequal power relations. No allowance for situational contexts.

In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weavers (1949) linear model of communication and created the SMCR Model of Communication.[9] The Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of communication separated the model into clear parts and has been expanded upon by other scholars.

Communication is usually described along a few major dimensions: Message (what type of things are communicated), source / emisor / sender / encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel (through

which medium), destination / receiver / target / decoder (to whom), and Receiver. Wilbur Schram (1954) also indicated that we should also examine the impact that a message has (both desired and undesired) on the target of the message.[10] Between parties, communication includes acts that confer knowledge and experiences, give advice and commands, and ask questions. These acts may take many forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The form depends on the abilities of the group communicating. Together, communication content and form make messages that are sent towards a destination. The target can be oneself, another person or being, another entity (such as a corporation or group of beings).

Communication can be seen as processes of information transmission governed by three levels of semiotic rules: Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols), Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users) and Semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent).

Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set of semiotic rules. This commonly held rules in some sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the primary acquisition of communicative competences within social interactions.

In light of these weaknesses, Barnlund (2008) proposed a transactional model of communication.[11] The basic premise of the transactional model of communication is that individuals are simultaneously engaging in the sending and receiving of messages.

In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are linked reciprocally. This second attitude of communication, referred to as the constitutive model or constructionist view, focuses on how an

individual communicates as the determining factor of the way the message will be interpreted. Communication is viewed as a conduit; a passage in which information travels from one individual to another and this information becomes separate from the communication itself. A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. The sender's personal filters and the receiver's personal filters may vary depending upon different regional traditions, cultures, or gender; which may alter the intended meaning of message contents. In the presence of "communication noise" on the transmission channel (air, in this case), reception and decoding of content may be faulty, and thus the speech act may not achieve the desired effect. One problem with this encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the processes of encoding and decoding imply that the sender and receiver each possess something that functions as a codebook, and that these two code books are, at the very least, similar if not identical. Although something like code books is implied by the model, they are nowhere represented in the model, which creates many conceptual difficulties.

Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative and dynamic continuous process, rather than a discrete exchange of information. Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had the theory that people use different types of media to communicate and which one they choose to use will offer different possibilities for the shape and durability of society (Wark, McKenzie 1997). His famous example of this is using ancient Egypt and looking at the ways they built themselves out of media with very different properties stone and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called 'Space Binding'. it made possible the transmission of written orders across space, empires and enables the waging of distant military campaigns and colonial administration. The other is stone and 'Time Binding', through the construction of temples and the pyramids can sustain their authority generation to generation, through this media they can change and shape communication in their society (Wark, McKenzie 1997).

Bernard Luskin, UCLA, 1970, advanced computer assisted instruction and began to connect media and psychology into what is now the field of media psychology. In 1998, the American Association of Psychology, Media Psychology Division 46 Task Force report on psychology and new technologies combined media and communication as pictures, graphics and sound increasingly dominate modern communication.communicati [edit]

Communication noise

In any communication model, noise is interference with the decoding of messages sent over a channel by an encoder. There are many examples of noise:

Environmental Noise: Noise that physically disrupts communication, such as standing next to loud speakers at a party, or the noise from a construction site next to a classroom making it difficult to hear the professor.

Physiological-Impairment Noise: Physical maladies that prevent effective communication, such as actual deafness or blindness preventing messages from being received as they were intended.

Semantic Noise: Different interpretations of the meanings of certain words. For example, the word "weed" can be interpreted as an undesirable plant in your yard, or as a euphemism for marijuana.

Syntactical Noise: Mistakes in grammar can disrupt communication, such as abrupt changes in verb tense during a sentence.

Organizational Noise: Poorly structured communication can prevent the receiver from accurate interpretation. For example, unclear and badly stated directions can make the receiver even more lost.

Cultural Noise: Stereotypical assumptions can cause misunderstandings, such as unintentionally offending a non-Christian person by wishing them a "Merry Christmas".

Psychological Noise: Certain attitudes can also make communication difficult. For instance, great anger or sadness may cause someone to lose focus on the present moment. Disorders such as Autism may also severely hamper effective communication.[12] [edit] Communication as academic discipline Main article: Communication theory

Communication as an academic discipline, sometimes called "communicology,"[13] relates to all the ways we communicate, so it embraces a large body of study and knowledge. The communication discipline includes both verbal and nonverbal messages. A body of scholarship all about communication is presented and explained in textbooks, electronic publications, and academic journals. In the journals, researchers report the results of studies that are the basis for an ever-expanding understanding of how we all communicate.

Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of study dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication range widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the different parameters of human symbolic interaction.

Communication theory From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

Human communication is understood in various ways by those who identify with the field. This diversity is the result of communication being a relatively young field of study, composed of a very broad constituency of disciplines. It includes work taken from scholars of Rhetoric, Journalism, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, and Semiotics, among others. Cognate areas include biocommunication, which investigates communicative processes within and among non-humans such as bacteria, animals, fungi and plants, and information theory, which provides a mathematical model for measuring communication within and among systems.

Generally, human communication is concerned with the making of meaning and the exchange of understanding. One model of communication considers it from the perspective of transmitting information from one person to another. In fact, many scholars of communication take this as a working definition, and use Lasswell's maxim, "who says what to whom in which channel with what effect," as a means of circumscribing the field of communication theory. Among those who subscribe to the transmission model are those who identify themselves with the communication sciences, and finds its roots in the studies of propaganda and mass media of the early 20th century.

A simple communication model with a sender transferring a message containing information to a receiver.

Other commentators claim that a ritual process of communication exists, one not artificially divorcible from a particular historical and social context. This tradition is largely associated with early scholars of symbolic interactionism as well as phenomenologists.Contents [hide] 1 Constructionist Models

2 History of Communication Theory 3 Communication Theory Framework 4 Mapping the theoretical landscape 4.1 Contexts 4.2 The Constitutive Metamodel 5 Some realms of communication and their theories 6 More information 7 See also 8 References 9 Bibliography

[edit] Constructionist Models

There is an additional working definition of communication to consider that authors like Richard A. Lanham (2003) and as far back as Erving Goffman (1959) have highlighted. This is a progression from Lasswells attempt to define human communication through to this century and revolutionized into the constructionist model. Constructionists believe that the process of communication is in itself the only messages that exist. The packaging can not be separated from the social and historical context from which it arose, therefore the substance to look at in communication theory is style for Richard Lanham and the performance of self for Erving Goffman.

Lanham chose to view communication as the rival to the over encompassing use of CBS model (which pursued to further the transmission model). CBS model argues that clarity, brevity, and sincerity are the

only purpose to prose discourse, therefore communication. Lanham wrote, If words matter too, if the whole range of human motive is seen as animating prose discourse, then rhetoric analysis leads us to the essential questions about prose style (Lanham 10). This is saying that rhetoric and style are fundamentally important; they are not errors to what we actually intend to transmit. The process which we construct and deconstruct meaning deserves analysis.

Erving Goffman sees the performance of self as the most important frame to understand communication. Goffman wrote, What does seem to be required of the individual is that he learn enough pieces of expression to be able to fill in and manage, more or less, any part that he is likely to be given (Goffman 73) Goffman is highlighting the significance of expression. The truth in both cases is the articulation of the message and the package as one. The construction of the message from social and historical context is the seed as is the pre-existing message is for the transmission model. Therefore any look into communication theory should include the possibilities drafted by such great scholars as Richard A. Lanham and Erving Goffman that style and performance is the whole process.

Communication stands so deeply rooted in human behaviors and the structures of society that scholars have difficulty thinking of it while excluding social or behavioral events. Because communication theory remains a relatively young field of inquiry and integrates itself with other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, and sociology, one probably cannot yet expect a consensus conceptualization of communication across disciplines.

Communication Model Terms as provided by Rothwell (11-15): Noise; interference with effective transmission and reception of a message. For example; physical noise or external noise which are environmental distractions such as poorly heated rooms, startling sounds, appearances of things, music playing some where else, and someone talking really loudly near you.

physiological noise are biological influences that distract you from communicating competently such as sweaty palms, pounding heart, butterfly in the stomach, induced by speech anxiety, or feeling sick, exhausted at work, the ringing noise in your ear, being really hungry, and if you have a runny noise or a cough. psychological noise are the preconception bias and assumptions such as thinking someone who speaks like a valley girl is dumb, or someone from a foreign country cant speak English well so you speak loudly and slowly to them. semantic noise are word choices that are confusing and distracting such as using the word tri-syllabic instead of three syllables. Sender; the initiator and encoder of a message Receiver; the one that receives the message (the listener) and the decoder of a message Decode; translates the senders spoken idea/message into something the receiver understands by using their knowledge of language from personal experience. Encode; puts the idea into spoken language while putting their own meaning into the word/message. Channel; the medium through which the message travels such as through oral communication (radio, television, phone, in person) or written communication (letters, email, text messages) Feedback; the receivers verbal and nonverbal responses to a message such as a nod for understanding (nonverbal), a raised eyebrow for being confused (nonverbal), or asking a question to clarify the message (verbal). Message; the verbal and nonverbal components of language that is sent to the receiver by the sender which conveys an idea.

Linear Model is a one way model to communicate with others. It consists of the sender encoding a message and channeling it to the receiver in the presence of noise. Draw backs the linear model assumes that there is a clear cut beginning and end to communication. It also displays no feedback from the receiver.

For example; a letter, email, text message, lecture.

The Linear Model.

Interactive Model is two linear models stacked on top of each other. The sender channels a message to the receiver and the receiver then becomes the sender and channels a message to the original sender. This model has added feedback, indicates that communication is not a one way but a two way process. It also has field of experience which includes our cultural background, ethnicity geographic location, extend of travel, and general personal experiences accumulated over the course of your lifetime. Draw backs there is feedback but it is not simultaneous.

The Interactive Model. For example instant messaging. The sender sends an IM to the receiver, then the original sender has to wait for the IM from the original receiver to react. Or a question/answer session where you just ask a question then you get an answer.

Transactional Model assumes that people are connected through communication; they engage in transaction. Firstly, it recognizes that each of us is a sender-receiver, not merely a sender or a receiver. Secondly, it recognizes that communication affects all parties involved. So communication is fluid/simultaneous. This is how most conversation are like. The transactional model also contains ellipses that symbolize the communication environment (how you interpret the data that you are given). Where the ellipses meet is the most effect communication area because both communicators share the same meaning of the message.

For example talking/listening to friends. While your friend is talking you are constantly giving them feedback on what you think through your facial expression verbal feedback without necessarily stopping your friend from talking.

The Transactional Model. [edit] History of Communication Theory

The Academic Study of Communication

Communication has existed since the beginning of human beings, but it was not until the 20th century that people began to study the process. As communication technologies developed, so did the serious study of communication. When World War I ended, the interest in studying communication intensified. The social-science study was fully recognized as a legitimate discipline after World War II.

Before becoming simply communication, or communication studies, the discipline was formed from three other major studies: psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Psychology is the study of human behavior, Sociology is the study of society and social process, and anthropology is the study of communication as a factor which develops, maintains, and changes culture. Communication studies focus on communication as central to the human experience, which involves understanding how people behave in creating, exchanging, and interpreting messages.[citation needed]

Communication Theory has one universal law posited by S. F. Scudder (1980). The Universal Communication Law states that, "All living entities, beings and creatures communicate." All life communicates through movements, sounds, reactions, physical changes, gestures, languages, and breath. Communication is a means of survival. Examples - the cry of a child (communicating that it is

hungry, hurt, or cold); the browning of a leaf (communicating that it is dehydrated, thirsty per se, or dying); the cry of an animal (communicating that it is injured, hungry, or angry). Everything living communicates in its quest for survival." [edit] Communication Theory Framework

It is helpful to examine communication and communication theory through one of the following viewpoints: Mechanistic: This view considers communication as a perfect transaction of a message from the sender to the receiver. (as seen in the diagram above) Psychological: This view considers communication as the act of sending a message to a receiver, and the feelings and thoughts of the receiver upon interpreting the message. Social Constructionist (Symbolic Interactionist): This view considers communication to be the product of the interactants sharing and creating meaning. The Constructionist View can also be defined as, how you say something determines what the message is. The Constructionist View assumes that truth and ideas are constructed or invented through the social process of communication. Robert T. Craig saw the Constructionist View or the constitutive view as its called in his article, as an ongoing process that symbolically forms and re-forms our personal identities. (Craig, 125). The other view of communication, the Transmission Model, sees communication as robotic and computer-like. The Transmission Model sees communication as a way of sending or receiving messages and the perfection of that. But, the Constructionist View sees communications as, in human life, info does not behave as simply as bits in an electronic stream. In human life, information flow is far more like an electric current running from one landmine to another (Lanham, 7). The Constructionist View is a more realistic view of communication because it involves the interacting of human beings and the free sharing of thoughts and ideas. Daniel Chandler looks to prove that the Transmission Model is a lesser way of communicating by saying The transmission model is not merely a gross over-simplification but a dangerously misleading representation of the nature of human communication (Chandler, 2). Humans do not communicate simply as computers or robots so thats why its essential to truly understand the Constructionist View of

Communication well. We do not simply send facts and data to one another, but we take facts and data and they acquire meaning through the process of communication, or through interaction with others. Systemic: This view considers communication to be the new messages created via through-put, or what happens as the message is being interpreted and re-interpreted as it travels through people. Critical: This view considers communication as a source of power and oppression of individuals and social groups.[1]

Inspection of a particular theory on this level will provide a framework on the nature of communication as seen within the confines of that theory.

Theories can also be studied and organized according to the ontological, epistemological, and axiological framework imposed by the theorist.

Ontology essentially poses the question of what, exactly, it is the theorist is examining. One must consider the very nature of reality. The answer usually falls in one of three realms depending on whether the theorist sees the phenomena through the lens of a realist, nominalist, or social constructionist. Realist perspective views the world objectively, believing that there is a world outside of our own experience and cognitions. Nominalists see the world subjectively, claiming that everything outside of ones cognitions is simply names and labels. Social constructionists straddle the fence between objective and subjective reality, claiming that reality is what we create together.

Epistemology is an examination of how the theorist studies the chosen phenomena. In studying epistemology, particularly from a positivist perspective, objective knowledge is said to be the result of a systematic look at the causal relationships of phenomena. This knowledge is usually attained through use of the scientific method. Scholars often think that empirical evidence collected in an objective manner is most likely to reflect truth in the findings. Theories of this ilk are usually created to predict a phenomenon. Subjective theory holds that understanding is based on situated knowledge, typically

found using interpretative methodology such as ethnography and also interviews. Subjective theories are typically developed to explain or understand phenomena in the social world.

Axiology is concerned with what values drive a theorist to develop a theory. Theorists must be mindful of potential biases so that they will not influence or skew their findings (Miller, 21-23). [edit] Mapping the theoretical landscape

A discipline gets defined in large part by its theoretical structure. Communication studies often borrow theories from other social sciences. This theoretical variation makes it difficult to come to terms with the field as a whole. That said, some common taxonomies exist that serve to divide up the range of communication research. Two common mappings involve contexts and assumptions. [edit] Contexts

Many authors and researchers divide communication by what they sometimes called "contexts" or "levels", but which more often represent institutional histories. The study of communication in the US, while occurring within departments of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology (among others), generally developed from schools of rhetoric and from schools of journalism. While many of these have become "departments of communication", they often retain their historical roots, adhering largely to theories from speech communication in the former case, and from mass media in the latter. The great divide between speech communication and mass communication becomes complicated by a number of smaller sub-areas of communication research, including intercultural and international communication, small group communication, communication technology, policy and legal studies of communication, telecommunication, and work done under a variety of other labels. Some of these departments take a largely social-scientific perspective, others tend more heavily toward the humanities, and still others gear themselves more toward production and professional preparation.

These "levels" of communication provide some way of grouping communication theories, but inevitably, some theories and concepts leak from one area to another, or fail to find a home at all. [edit] The Constitutive Metamodel Main article: Communication Theory as a Field

Another way of dividing up the communication field emphasizes the assumptions that undergird particular theories, models, and approaches. Robert T. Craig suggests that the field of communication as a whole can be understood as several different traditions who have a specific view on communication. By showing the similarities and differences between these traditions, Craig argues that the different traditions will be able to engage each other in dialogue rather than ignore each other.[2] Craig proposes seven different traditions which are: Rhetorical: views communication as the practical art of discourse.[3] Semiotic: views communication as the mediation by signs.[4] Phenomenological: communication is the experience of dialogue with others.[5] Cybernetic: communication is the flow of information.[6] Socio-psychological: communication is the interaction of individuals.[7] Socio-cultural: communication is the production and reproduction of the social order.[8] Critical: communication is the process in which all assumptions can be challenged.[9]

Craig finds each of these clearly defined against the others, and remaining cohesive approaches to describing communicative behavior. As a taxonomic aid, these labels help to organize theory by its assumptions, and help researchers to understand why some theories may seem incommensurable.

While communication theorists very commonly use these two approaches, theorists decentralize the place of language and machines as communicative technologies. The idea (as argued by Vygotsky) of communication as the primary tool of a species defined by its tools remains on the outskirts of communication theory. It finds some representation in the Toronto School of communication theory (alternatively sometimes called medium theory) as represented by the work of Innis, McLuhan, and others. It seems that the ways in which individuals and groups use the technologies of communication and in some cases are used by them remain central to what communication researchers do. The ideas that surround this, and in particular the place of persuasion, remain constants across both the "traditions" and "levels" of communication theory. [edit] Some realms of communication and their theories universal communication Law: Universal Theory, Dynamic-transactional Ansatz message production: Constructivist Theory, Action Assembly Theory message processing: Elaboration Likelihood Model, Inoculation theory discourse and interaction: Speech Acts Theory, Coordinated Management of Meaning developing relationships: Uncertainty Reduction Theory, Social Penetration Theory, Predicted Outcome Value Theory ongoing relationships: Relational Systems Theory, Relational Dialectics organizational: Structuration Theory, Unobtrusive and Concertive Control Theory small group: Functional Theory, Symbolic Convergence Theory media processing and effects: Social Cognitive Theory, Uses and Gratifications Theory media and society: Agenda Setting, Spiral of silence, Symbolic Convergence Theory culture: Speech Codes Theory, Face-saving Theory making social worlds: Coordinated Management of Meaning, Symbolic Interactionism

[edit] More information

There is a wealth of information available about communication and communication theory. Included here are some examples of texts, journals, and organizations focusing on communication theory.

The following list is a survey of Communication Theory texts: A First Look At Communication Theory by EM Griffin (Published by McGraw-Hill) Communication Theory: Epistemological Foundations by James A. Anderson Communication Theories: Origins, Methods and Uses in the Mass Media (5th Edition) by Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard Theories of Human Communication (9th Edition) by Stephen W. Littlejohn and Karen A. Foss Communication: Theories and Applications by Mark V. Redmond Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes, and Contexts by Katherine Miller Communication Theory: Media, Technology and Society by David Holmes Building Communication Theory by Dominic A. Infante, Andrew S. Rancer, and Deanna F. Womack The Communication Theory Reader by Paul Cobley Clarifying Communications Theories: A Hands-On Approach by Gerald Stone, Michael Singletary, and Virginia P. Richmond An Introduction to Communication Theory by Don W. Stacks, Sidney R. Hill, and Mark, III Hickson

Introducing Communication Theory by Richard West and Lynn H. Turner

Scholarly journals are also a great source for recent research and academic discussion of theory. Some communication journals that emphasize theory are as follows: Argumentation Asian Journal of Communication China Media Research Communication Abstracts Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Communication Education Communication Monographs Communication Quarterly Communication Research Reports Communication Research Communication Studies Communication Theory Communications and the Law Continuum - Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Critical Discourse Studies Critical Studies in Media Communication Discourse Studies Howard Journal of Communications Human Communication: A Journal of the Pacific and Asian Communication Association Human Communication Research

Intercultural Communication Studies Journal of Applied Communication Research Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media Journal of Communication Journal of Communication Inquiry Journal of Intercultural Communication Research Journal of Language Identity and Education Journal of Mass Media Ethics Journal of Multicultural Discourses Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Journal of Public Relations Research Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Journalism - Theory Practice and Criticism Journalism History Journalism Studies Keio Communication Review Language in Society Listening - Journal of Religion and Culture Mass Communication and Society Media Asia Media, Culture and Society Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication

New Media and Society Philosophy and Rhetoric : Paper for Muse Participants Political Communication PR Reporter Public Relations Quarterly Qualitative Research Reports in Communication Review of Communication Rhetoric and Public Affairs Rhetorica Southern Communication Journal Studies in Communication Sciences Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse Vital Speeches of the Day Western Journal of Communication Women's Studies in Communication Word and Image Written Communication

Communication studies From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the Community episode, see Communication Studies (Community).

Communication studies is an academic field that deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time. Hence, communication studies encompasses a wide range of topics and contexts ranging from face-to-face conversation to speeches to mass media outlets such as television broadcasting. Communication studies, as a discipline, is also often interested in how audiences interpret information and the political, cultural, economic, and social dimensions of speech and language in context.

Communication is institutionalized under many different names at different universities and in various countries, including "communication", "communication studies", "speech communication", "rhetorical studies", "communications science", "media studies", "communication arts", "mass communication", "media ecology," and sometimes even "mediology" although the latter is a different area of study. Communication studies often overlaps with academic programs in journalism, film and cinema, radio and television, advertising and public relations and performance studies. Recently, institutions have migrated towards the common term of "communication studies" to encapsulate and cohere the vast depth and breadth of the field.

In the United States, the National Communication Association (NCA) recognizes nine distinct but often overlapping sub-disciplines within the broader communication discipline: Communication & Technology, Critical-Cultural, Health, Intercultural-International, Interpersonal-Small Group, Mass Communication, Organizational, Political, and Rhetorical. The International Communication Association (ICA) recognizes a much larger and evolving list of sections, including among others Communication History; Communication Law and Policy; Ethnicity and Race in Communication; Feminist Scholarship; Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies; Global Communication and Social Change; Information Systems; Instructional/Developmental Communication; Journalism Studies; Language and Social Interaction; Organizational Communication; Philosophy of Communication; Political Communication; Popular Communication; Public Relations; and Visual Communication Studies.

Communication studies is often considered a part of both the social sciences and the humanities, drawing heavily on fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, and

economics as well as rhetoric, literary studies, linguistics, and semiotics. The field can incorporate and overlap with the work of other disciplines as well, however, including engineering, architecture, mathematics, computer science, gender and sexuality studies.

The vast breadth and interdisciplinary nature of communication studies has understandably made it difficult for both students and institutions to place it within the broader educational system. Despite intellectual incoherence, the field attracts and sustains large numbers of students, scholarly journals, professional associations, and lively discussions across the academy for researchers, educators, lawmakers, businesses, and reformers. Broadly understood, the contemporary study of communication per se interfaces and overlaps with areas such as business, organizational development, philosophy, languages, composition, theatre, debate (often called "forensics"), literary criticism, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, semiotics, international policy, economics and political science, among others. The breadth and the primacy of communication in many areas of life is responsible for the ubiquity of communication studies, as well as for the resulting confusion about what does and does not constitute communication. Ongoing debates rage whether communication studies can best be understood as a discipline, a field, or simply a topic.

Most U.S. graduate programs in Communication today trace their history through speech to ancient rhetoric. Programs in Communication, Communication Arts or Communication Sciences often include Organizational Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Speech Communication (or Rhetoric), Mass Communication, and sometimes Journalism, Film criticism, Theatre, Political science (e.g., political campaign strategies, public speaking, effects of media on elections), or Radio, Television or Film production. Graduates of formal communication programs can be found in a wide range of fields working as university professors, marketing researchers, media editors and designers, journalists, human resources managers, corporate trainers, public relations practitioners, and media managers and consultants in a variety of fields including, media production, life coaching, public speaking, organizational, political campaign/issue management and public policy.Contents [hide] 1 History, pre-20th century 2 History, North America

2.1 1900s1920s 2.2 1930s1950s 2.3 1950s1960s 2.4 1960s1970s 2.5 1970s1980s 3 History, Germany 4 Professional associations 5 See also 6 References 7 External links 8 Bibliography

[edit] History, pre-20th century

Various aspects of communication have long been the subject of human study. In ancient Greece and Rome, the study of rhetoric, the art of oratory and persuasion, was a vital subject for students. One significant ongoing debate was whether one could be an effective speaker in a base cause (Sophists) or whether excellent rhetoric came from the excellence of the orator's character (Socrates, Plato, Cicero). Through the European Middle Ages and Renaissance grammar, rhetoric, and logic constituted the entire trivium, the base of the system of classical learning in Europe. [edit] History, North America

[edit] 1900s1920s

Though the study of communication reaches back to antiquity and beyond, early twentieth-century work by Charles Horton Cooley, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey has been of particular importance for the academic discipline as it stands today in the United States. In his 1909 Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, Cooley defines communication as "the mechanism through which human relations exist and developall the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time." This view, which has subsequently been largely marginalized in sociology, gave processes of communication a central and constitutive place in the study of social relations. Public Opinion, published in 1922 by Walter Lippmann, couples this view of the constitutive importance of communication with a fear that the rise of new technologies and institutions of mass communication allowed for the manufacture of consent and generated dissonance between what he called 'the world outside and the pictures in our heads' on a scale that made democracy as classically conceived almost impossible to realize. John Dewey's 1927 The Public and its Problems drew on the same view of communications, but coupled it instead with an optimistic progressive and democratic reform agenda, arguing famously "communication can alone create a great community".

Cooley, Lippmann, and Dewey capture themes like the central importance of communication in social life, the rise of large and potentially powerful media institutions and the development of new communications technologies in societies undergoing rapid transformation, and questions regarding the relationship between communication, democracy, and community. All these remain central to the discipline of communication studies. Many of these concerns are also central to the work of writers such as Gabriel Tarde and Theodor W. Adorno, which has been central to the development of communication studies elsewhere.

The first decades of the twentieth century also saw the development of parallel currents of cultural criticism that drew less on the social sciences and more on the humanities. Though trained as a sociologist, the work of W. E. B. Du Bois on art and spirituals stands out here.

The study of American public address began during this time frame. In 1925, Herbert A. Wichelns published the essay "The Literary Criticism of Oratory" in the book Studies in Rhetoric and Public Speaking in Honor of James Albert Winans.[1] Wicheln's essay attempted to "put rhetorical studies on par with literary studies as an area of academic interest and research."[2] Wichelns wrote that oratory should be taken as seriously as literature, and therefore, it should be subject to criticism and analysis. Although the essay is now standard reading in most rhetorical criticism courses, it had little immediate impact (from 19251935) on the field of rhetorical studies.[3] [edit] 1930s1950s

The institutionalization of communication studies in U.S. higher education and research has often been traced to Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign, where early pioneers and institutionalizers like Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Harold Lasswell, and Wilbur Schramm worked.

The Bureau of Applied Social Research was established in 1944 at Columbia University by Paul F. Lazarsfeld. It was a continuation of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Radio Project that he had led at various institutions (University of Newark, Princeton) from 1937, which had been at Columbia as the Office of Radio Research since 1939. In its various incarnations, the Radio Project had involved Lazarsfeld himself, and people like Adorno, Hadley Cantril, Herta Herzog, Gordon Allport, and Frank Stanton (who went on to be president of CBS). Lazarsfeld and the Bureau mobilized substantial sums for research, and produced, with various co-authors, a series of books and edited volumes that helped define the discipline, such as Personal Influence (1955) which remains a classic in what is called the 'media effects'tradition. At Columbia, communications studies have traditionally been closely aligned with sociology, and people like Robert Merton and others from the sociology program were at times involved. The university did only recently, in the 1990s, establish an actual degree-granting graduate program in communications, illustrating how much important research on communications continues to take place outside the discipline that carries the name. The Bureau, and Lazarsfeld's research more generally,

exemplifies the close relations that have sometimes existed between communication studies and the media industries.

From the 1940s and onwards, the University of Chicago was home to several temporary but important committees and commissions on communications, programs that also educated several leading communication scholars. In contrast to what took place at Columbia, these programs explicitly claimed the name 'communications' for themselves. The Committee on Communication and Public Opinion, also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, was staffed with, in addition to Lasswell, people such as Douglas Waples, Samuel A. Stouffer, Louis Wirth, and Herbert Blumer, all of whom held positions elsewhere at the university. They formed a committee that essentially served as a scholarly and educational extension of the federal governments increasing interest in communications during times of war, and was in particular closely linked to the Office of War Information. The committee is a reminder of connection as important as the Bureaus with the industry, namely the connection between communication studies and government interests and funding. Chicago later provided an institutional home for The Hutchins Commission on the Freedom of the Press and the Committee on Communication (19471960). The latter was a degree-granting program that counted Elihu Katz, Bernard Berelson, Edward Shils, and David Riesman amongst its faculty, and produced graduates like Herbert J. Gans and Michael Gurevitch. The committee also produced publications like Berelson and Janowitz Public Opinion and Communication (1950) and the journal Studies in Public Communication.

The Institute for Communications Research was founded at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1947 by Wilbur Schramm, who was a key figure in the post-war institutionalization of communication studies in the U.S. Like the various Chicago committees, the Illinois program claimed the name 'communications' and granted graduate degrees in the subject. Schramm, who, in contrast to the more social science-inspired figures at Columbia and Chicago, had a background in English literature, developed communication studies partly by merging existing programs in speech communication, rhetoric, and, especially, journalism under the aegis of communication. He also edited a textbook The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (1954) that helped define the field, partly by claiming the Lazarsfeld, Lasswell, Carl Hovland, and Kurt Lewin as its founding fathers. He also wrote several other manifestos for the discipline, including The Science of Human Communication 1963. Schramm and the

Institute moved on to Stanford University in 1955. Many of Schramm's students, such as Everett Rogers, went on to make important contributions of their own. [edit] 1950s1960s

From the 1950s onwards, communications studies branched out in several new and often very different directions. Numerous new programs opened up at various universities, and new journals were established.

The work of what has been called 'medium theorists', arguably defined by Harold Innis' (1950) Empire and Communications grew increasingly important, and was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in his Understanding Media (1964). This perspective informs the later work of Joshua Meyrowitz (No Sense of Place, 1986).

Two developments in the 1940s shifted the paradigm of communication studies in the 1950s and thereafter toward a more-quantitative orientation, or at least the inescapable need to consider such an orientation. One was cybernetics, as formulated by Norbert Wiener in his Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.[4] The other was information theory, as recast in quantitative terms by Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver in their Mathematical Theory of Communication.[5] These works were widely appropriated to, and offered for some the prospect of, a general theory of society.

The tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School was, as in Europe, an important source of influence for many researchers. While done out of sociology departments, the work of Jrgen Habermas, the US-based Leo Lwenthal, Herbert Marcuse, and Siegfried Kracauer, as well as earlier figures like Adorno and Max Horkheimer continued to inform a whole tradition of cultural criticism that often focused both empirically and theoretically on the culture industry.

In 1953, to address growing needs in industry, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute began offering a master of science degree in technical writing. In the 1960s, partly because of the need to represent that the degree incorporated training in oral and audiovisual communication, the degree title became technical communication. It was the brainchild of longtime RPI professor and administrator Jay R. Gould.[6] [edit] 1960s1970s

In the 1960s Gould and his colleagues experienced increasing demand for doctoral-level studies in technical and business communication. As result, in 1965 RPI began its Ph.D. program in communication and rhetoric. This Ph.D. degree program became a prototype for other technologically oriented programs in the United States and other industrialized countries.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the development of cultivation theory, pioneered by George Gerbner at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This approach shifted emphasis from the short-term effects that had been the central interest of many earlier works on the media, and instead tried to track the effect of exposure to, for instance, television over time on viewers' perceptions of reality. [edit] 1970s1980s

Neil Postman founded the media ecology program at New York University in 1971. Media ecologists draw on a wide range of inspirations in their attempts to study entire media environments in an even broader and more cultural fashion than the work done in the Canadian medium theory tradition. This perspective is the basis of a separate professional association, the Media Ecology Association.

In 1972, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw published a path-breaking article that offered an agendasetting theory of media effects that gave new ways of conceptualizing the short-term media effects that earlier work had generally deemed limited. This approach, organized around additional ideas such as framing, priming, and gatekeeping, has been highly influential, especially in the study of political communication and news coverage.

The 1970s also saw the development of what became known as uses and gratifications research, developed by scholars such as Elihu Katz, Jay G. Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch. Instead of looking at communications processes simply as a one-way flow from senders to receivers, this approach began scrutinizing what audiences get out of communications, what they do with it, why they engage with it especially with mass media. [edit] History, Germany

Communication studies in Germany has a rich hermeneutic heritage in philology, textual interpretation, and historical studies. The post-world war II era, however, has seen the rise of a number of new paradigms.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann pioneered work on the spiral of silence in a tradition that has been widely influential across the world and has proven to be easily compatible with the dominant paradigms in, for instance, the United States.

In the 1970s, Karl Deutsch came to West Germany, and his cybernetics inspired work has been widely influential there as elsewhere.

The work of the Frankfurt School has been a cornerstone of much German work on communication, in addition to Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas, figures like Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge has been important in the development of this strand of thought.

An important competing paradigm has been the systems theory developed by Niklas Luhmann and his students, such as Dirk Baecker and others.

Finally, from the 1980s and onwards, people like Friedrich Kittler has led the development of a 'new German medium theory', aligned partly with the Canadian medium theory of Innis and McLuhan and partly with post-structuralism. [edit] Professional associations National Communication Association (NCA): The main national professional organization covering many of the areas of communication studies in the U.S. International Communication Association is the main international association for communication studies, which combines an older focus on quantitatively based social science studies with newer critical and cultural studies of communicative phenomena. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Association for Business Communication (ABC) International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Society for Technical Communication (STC) Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) is the main European association for communication studies.

European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) is the main European association for writing studies. Association for Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) International Association for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR) is a large international association for communication studies. IEEE Professional Communication Society

The way you communicate is determined by the kind of conversations you have. Conversations create companies. Listen to the kinds of conversations people are having around you in the office over the next day or so. Are they healthy or toxic? Are they respectful or dismissive? Are they curious or confrontational? Are they constructive or destructive? Are they encouraging or demoralizing? Do people listen or dismiss? Now, listen to your own conversations. Where do they range in a scale of 1 10 on each of these spectrums? You can best improve the quality of conversations that create your company or organization by improving your own. Positive conversations are the most important expressions of great selfmanagement. They are the key to positive personal influence because they are so infectious. The late Peter Drucker spent the last few years of his provocative and constructive life trying to convince leaders in all sectors of society that self-management was the key to success. Dee Hock, the legendary founder of VISA, concluded from his experience that leadership is 40% self-management. And Gallup results gathered over the past 25 years, detailed in books like First, Break All the Rules, present a powerful case that managing yourselves well in your conversations is crucial to the kind of engagement, performance, and results that you create in your companies. Heres one model for a positive conversation. It begins with curious questioning. What does your conversational partner think is going on? What are the assumptions and feelings underlying his or her take on the situation?

To really hear the answers to these questions, you also have to engage in opening listening. You have to set your own perceptions and assumptions aside and consider another point of view not necessarily accept it, but seriously consider it in that moment. Then you can move on to appreciative discovery. This is the search for what is most positive and constructive in the views being expressed. Its the search for core values and passionate purpose. Where is the common ground upon which your collaboration in what matters most can be built? Once that foundation has been created, you can provide catalytic feedback. This is where your passions and talents and insights get expressed. But they only come after you have shown respect for the other, and created an opportunity for the other to be heard. Then both of you will develop greater curiosity, listen more readily, and appreciate more deeply. Finally, the dynamics of this kind of positive conversation will create heightened engagement. You will understand and respect each other at a more profound level after this kind of conversation. That understanding and respect will infect those around you with greater engagement in performance and results. And all because of the kinds of conversations you choose to have with your colleagues. The five elements in the flow of the positive conversation just described form an acronym COACH. Its the style of leadership Daniel Goleman argued was the most effective in his survey in the late 1990s of over 4,000 leaders and least used. The leaders he interviewed claimed it took too much time.1 Goleman simply observed that it took a lot more time and energy to deal with the lack of capacity built and the disengagement created by styles of leadership that infected workplaces with negativity, than it took to have coaching conversations in the first place. And all because of the kinds of conversations you choose to have with your colleagues. Dr. Brian J. Fraser is an Associate with Tekara Organizational Effectiveness Inc in Vancouver, BC, and lead provocateur with Jazzthink Speaking and Seminars.

Humorism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about humors in ancient and medieval medicine. For the modern theory of temperament, see Four Temperaments. For humors in Ayurvedic medicine, see Ayurveda. its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2010) This article includes a list of references, but

The 4 humors

Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers. From Hippocrates onward, the humoral theory was adopted by Greek, Roman and Islamic physicians, and became the most commonly held view of the human body among European physicians until the advent of modern medical research in the nineteenth century.

The four humors of Hippocratic medicine were black bile (gr. melan chole), yellow bile (gr. chole), phlegm (gr. phlegma), and blood (lat. sanguis). A humor was also referred to as a cambium (pl. cambia or cambiums).[1]Contents [hide] 1 Four humors
2 History

2.1 Origins 2.2 Greek medicine 2.3 Islamic medicine 3 Influence and legacy 3.1 Medicine 3.2 Culture 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Four humors

Essentially, this theory held that the human body was filled with four basic substances, called four humors, which are in balance when a person is healthy. All diseases and disabilities resulted from an excess or deficit of one of these four humors. These deficits could be caused by vapors that were inhaled or absorbed by the body. The four humors were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Greeks and Romans, and the later Muslim and Western European medical establishments that adopted and adapted classical medical philosophy, believed that each of these humors would wax and wane in the body, depending on diet and activity. When a patient was suffering from a surplus or imbalance of one fluid, then his or her personality and physical health would be affected. This theory was closely related to the theory of the four elements: earth, fire, water and air; earth predominantly present in the black bile, fire in the yellow bile, water in the phlegm, and all four elements present in the blood.[2]

Paired qualities were associated with each humor and its season. The word humor is a translation of Greek ,[3] chymos (literally juice or sap, metaphorically flavor). At around the same time, ancient Indian Ayurveda medicine had developed a theory of three humours, which they linked with the five Hindu elements.[4]

The four humors, their corresponding elements, seasons, sites of formation, and resulting temperaments alongside their modern equivalents are:[5]Humour Ancient characteristics Blood amorous Yellow bile bad tempered Black bile autumn earth spleen cold & dry melancholic guardian SJ despondent, summer fire gall bladder warm & dry choleric idealist NF easily angered, spring air liver warm & moist sanguine artisan SP courageous, hopeful, Season Element Organ Qualities Ancient name Modern MBTI

sleepless, irritable Phlegm winter unemotional water brain/lungs cold & moist phlegmatic rational NT calm,

[edit] History

Although modern medical science has thoroughly discredited humorism, this "wrong-headed theory dominated medical thinking... until at least the middle of the 20th century..." [6] [edit] Origins

The concept of four humors may have origins in ancient Egypt[7] or Mesopotamia,[8] though it was not systemized until ancient Greek thinkers[9] around 400 BC who directly linked it with the popular theory of the four elements earth, fire, water and air (Empedocles).

Fhrus (1921), a Swedish physician who devised the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, suggested that the four humours were based upon the observation of blood clotting in a transparent container. When blood is drawn in a glass container and left undisturbed for about an hour, four different layers can be seen. A dark clot forms at the bottom (the "black bile"). Above the clot is a layer of red blood cells (the "blood"). Above this is a whitish layer of white blood cells (the "phlegm", now called the buffy coat). The top layer is clear yellow serum (the "yellow bile").[10]

[edit] Greek medicine

The four temperaments (Clockwise from top right: choleric; melancholic; sanguine; phlegmatic). See also: Ancient Greek medicine

Hippocrates is the one usually credited with applying this idea to medicine. Humoralism, or the doctrine of the four temperaments, as a medical theory retained its popularity for centuries largely through the influence of the writings of Galen (131201 AD) and was decisively displaced only in 1858 by Rudolf Virchow's newly published theories of cellular pathology. While Galen thought that humors were formed in the body, rather than ingested, he believed that different foods had varying potential to be acted upon by the body to produce different humors. Warm foods, for example, tended to produce yellow bile, while cold foods tended to produce phlegm. Seasons of the year, periods of life, geographic regions and occupations also influenced the nature of the humors formed.

The imbalance of humors, or dyscrasia, was thought to be the direct cause of all diseases. Health was associated with a balance of humors, or eucrasia. The qualities of the humors, in turn, influenced the nature of the diseases they caused. Yellow bile caused warm diseases and phlegm caused cold diseases.

In On the Temperaments, Galen further emphasized the importance of the qualities. An ideal temperament involved a balanced mixture of the four qualities. Galen identified four temperaments in which one of the qualities, warm, cold, moist or dry, predominated and four more in which a combination of two, warm and moist, warm and dry, cold and dry or cold and moist, dominated. These last four, named for the humors with which they were associatedthat is, sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic, eventually became better known than the others. While the term temperament came to refer just to psychological dispositions, Galen used it to refer to bodily dispositions, which determined a person's susceptibility to particular diseases as well as behavioral and emotional inclinations. [edit] Islamic medicine See also: Medicine in medieval Islam and Unani

In Islamic medicine, Avicenna (9801037) repeated the ancient theory of four humours in The Canon of Medicine (1025).

From mixture of the four [humors] in different weights, [God the most high] created different organs; one with more blood like muscle, one with more black bile like bone, one with more phlegm like brain, and one with more yellow bile like lung. [God the most high] created the souls from the softness of humors; each soul has it own weight and amalgamation. The generation and nourishment of proper soul takes place in the heart; it resides in the heart and arteries, and is transmitted from the heart to the organs through the arteries. At first, it [proper soul] enters the master organs such as the brain, liver or reproductive organs; from there it goes to other organs while the nature of the soul is being modified in each [of them]. As long as [the soul] is in the heart, it is quite warm, with the nature of fire, and the softness of bile is dominant. Then, that part which goes to the brain to keep it vital and functioning, becomes colder and wetter, and in its composition the serous softness and phlegm vapor dominate. That part, which enters the liver to keep its vitality and functions, becomes softer, warmer and sensibly wet, and in its composition the softness of air and vapor of blood dominate. In general, there are four types of proper spirit: One is brutal spirit residing in the heart and it is the origin of all spirits. Another as physicians refer to it is sensual spirit residing in the brain. The third as physicians refer to it is natural spirit residing in the liver. The fourth is generative i.e. procreative spirits residing in the gonads. These four spirits go-between the soul of absolute purity and the body of absolute impurity.

He summarized the four humors and temperaments in a table as follows:[11]Avicenna's four humors and temperaments Evidence Morbid states vigour Functional power deficient energy deficient digestive power Subjective sensations salivation, sleepiness Physical signs difficult digestion Lack of desire for fluids mucoid Hot Cold Moist Dry fevers related to serious humor, rheumatism lassitude loss of

inflammations become febrile

bitter taste, excessive thirst, burning at cardia insomnia, wakefulness

high pulse rate, lassitude flaccid joints

diarrhea, swollen eyelids, rough skin, acquired habit

rough skin, acquired habit Foods & medicines beneficial calefacients harmful, infrigidants[12] beneficial infrigidants harmful, calefacients

moist articles harmful

dry regimen harmful, humectants beneficial bad in autumn

Relation to weather

worse in summer worse in winter

[edit] Influence and legacy

[edit] Medicine

Typically "eighteenth-century" practices such as bleeding a sick person or applying hot cups to a person were, in fact, based on the humor theory of surpluses of fluids (blood and bile in those cases). Ben Jonson wrote humor plays, where types were based on their humoral complexion. Methods of treatment like bloodletting, emetics and purges were aimed at expelling a harmful surplus of a humor. Other methods used herbs and foods associated with a particular humor to counter symptoms of disease, for instance: people who had a fever and were sweating were considered hot and wet and therefore given substances associated with cold and dry. Paracelsus further developed the idea that beneficial medical substances could be found in herbs, minerals and various alchymical combinations thereof. These beliefs were the foundation of mainstream Western medicine well into the 1800s.

Central to the treatment of unbalanced humors was the use of herbs. Specific herbs were used to cure common ailments and even the plague. For example, chamomile was used to treat any sort of swelling or fever. Also, arsenic was used in a poultice bag to 'draw out' the evil vapors that caused the plague. Philip Moore, who wrote on the hope of health, and Edwards, who wrote Treatise concerning the Plague discuss how these herbs are helpful in curing physical disease. They also discuss the importance of maintaining an herb garden.

The Unani school of Indian medicine, still apparently practiced in India, is very similar to Galenic and Avicennian medicine in its emphasis on the four humors and in treatments based on controlling intake, general environment, and the use of purging as a way of relieving humoral imbalances.

There are still remnants of the theory of the four humors in the current medical language. For example, we refer to humoral immunity or humoral regulation to mean substances like hormones and antibodies that are circulated throughout the body, or use the term blooddyscrasia to refer to any blood disease or abnormality. The associated food classification survives in adjectives that are still used for food, as when we call some spices "hot" and some wine "dry". When the chilli pepper was first introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century, dieticians disputed whether it was hot or cold. [edit] Culture

Theophrastus and others developed a set of characters based on the humors. Those with too much blood were sanguine. Those with too much phlegm were phlegmatic. Those with too much yellow bile were choleric, and those

with too much black bile were melancholic. The idea of human personality based on humors contributed to the character comedies of Menander and, later, Plautus. Through the neo-classical revival in Europe, the humor theory dominated medical practice, and the theory of humoral types made periodic appearances in drama.

Because people believed that there were unreplenishable amounts of humors in the body, there were folk/medical beliefs that the loss of fluids was a form of death.

The humors can be found in Elizabethan works, such as in Taming of the Shrew, in which the character Petruchio pretends to be irritable and angry to show Katherina what it is like being around a disagreeable person. He yells at the servants for serving mutton, a "choleric" food, to two people who are already choleric.

Foods in Elizabethan times were believed all to have an affinity with one of these four humors. A sick person coughing up phlegm was believed to be too phlegmatic, and might have been served wine (a choleric drink and the direct opposite humor to phlegmatic) to balance it out. [edit] See also Four Temperaments Five Temperaments Three Doshas of Ayurveda Wu Xing (Five Elements of Chinese philosophy) [edit] Notes

Language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the properties of language in general. For other uses, see Language (disambiguation).

Cuneiform is one of the first known forms of written language, but spoken language is believed to predate writing by tens of thousands of years at least.

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.

The approximately 30006000 languages that are spoken by humans today are the most salient examples, but natural languages can also be based on visual rather than auditory stimuli, for example in sign languages and written language. Codes and other kinds of artificially constructed communication systems such as those used for computer programming can also be called languages. A language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. The English word derives ultimately from Latin lingua, "language, tongue", via Old French. This metaphoric relation between language and the tongue exists in many languages and testifies to the historical prominence of spoken languages.[1] When used as a general concept, "language" refers to the cognitive faculty that enables humans to learn and use systems of complex communication.

The human language faculty is thought to be fundamentally different from and of much higher complexity than those of other species. Human language is highly complex in that it is based on a set of rules relating symbols to their meanings, thereby forming an infinite number of possible innovative utterances from a finite number of elements. Language is thought to have originated when early hominids first started cooperating, adapting earlier systems of communication based on expressive signs to include a theory of other minds and shared intentionality. This development is thought to have coincided with an increase in brain volume. Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain, but especially in Brocas and Wernickes areas. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are around three years old. The use of language has become deeply entrenched in human culture and, apart from being used to communicate and share information, it also has social and cultural uses, such as signifying group identity, social stratification and for social grooming and entertainment. The word "language" can also be used to describe the set of rules that makes this possible, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules.

All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate a sign with a particular meaning. Spoken and signed languages contain a phonological system that governs how sounds or visual symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are used to form phrases and utterances. Written languages use visual symbols to represent the sounds of the spoken languages, but they still require syntactic rules that govern the production of meaning from sequences of words. Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had for the later stages to have occurred. A group of

languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages that are most spoken in the world today belong to the Indo-European family, which includes languages such as English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi; the Sino-Tibetan languages, which include Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and many others; Semitic languages, which include Arabic and Hebrew; and the Bantu languages, which include Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa and hundreds of other languages spoken throughout Africa.Contents [hide] 1 Definitions 1.1 A mental faculty, organ or instinct 1.2 A formal symbolic system 1.3 A tool for communication 1.4 What makes human language unique 2 The study of language 2.1 Early grammarians 2.2 Historicism 2.3 Structuralism 3 Language and its parts 3.1 Semantics 3.2 Sounds and symbols 3.3 Grammar 3.3.1 Grammatical categories 3.3.2 Word classes 3.3.3 Morphology 3.3.4 Syntax 4 Language and culture 5 Origin 6 Natural languages 7 Artificial languages 8 Animal communication

9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 12 Further reading 13 External links

[edit] Definitions

The word "language" has two meanings: language as a general concept, and "a language" (a specific linguistic system, e.g. "French"). Languages other than English often have two separate words for these distinct concepts. French for example uses the word langage for language as a concept and langue as the specific instance of language.[2]

When speaking of language as a general concept, several different definitions can be used that stress different aspects of the phenomenon.[3] [edit] A mental faculty, organ or instinct

One definition sees language primarily as the mental faculty that allows humans to undertake linguistic behaviour: to learn languages and produce and understand utterances. This definition stresses the universality of language to all humans and the biological basis of the human capacity for language as a unique development of the human brain.[4][5] This view often understands language to be largely innate, for example as in Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar or Jerry Fodors extreme innatist theory. These kinds of definitions are often applied by studies of language within a cognitive science framework and in neurolinguistics. [edit] A formal symbolic system

Another definition sees language as a formal system of symbols governed by grammatical rules combining particular signs with particular meanings. This definition stresses the fact that human languages can be described as closed structural systems consisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings. This structuralist view of language was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure. Some proponents of this view of language, such as Noam Chomsky, define language as a particular set of sentences that can be generated from a particular set of rules.[6] The structuralist viewpoint is commonly used in formal logic, semiotics, and in formal and structural theories of grammar, the most commonly used theoretical frameworks in linguistic description. In the philosophy of language these views are associated with philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, early Wittgenstein, Alfred Tarski and Gottlob Frege. [edit] A tool for communication

Yet another definition sees language as a system of communication that enables humans to cooperate. This definition stresses the social functions of language and the fact that humans use it to express themselves and to manipulate objects in their environment. This view of language is associated with the study of language in a functional or pragmatic framework, as well as in socio-linguistics and linguistic anthropology. In the Philosophy of language these views are often associated with Wittgensteins later works and with ordinary language philosophers such as G. E. Moore, Paul Grice, John Searle and J. L. Austin. [edit] What makes human language unique

Human language is unique in comparison to other forms of communication, such as those used by other animals, because it allows humans to produce an infinite set of utterances from a finite set of elements,[7] and because the symbols and grammatical rules of any particular language are largely arbitrary, so that the system can only be acquired through social interaction. The known systems of communication used by animals, on the other hand, can only express a finite number of utterances that are mostly genetically transmitted.[8] Human language is also unique in that its complex structure has evolved to serve a much wider range of functions than any other kinds of communication system. [edit] The study of language Main articles: Linguistics and History of linguistics

The study of language, linguistics, has been developing into a science since the first grammatical descriptions of particular languages in India more than 2000 years ago. Today linguistics is a science that concerns itself with all aspects relating to language, examining it from all of the theoretical viewpoints described above.

Language can be studied from many angles and for many purposes: For example, Descriptive linguistics examines the grammar of single languages so that people can learn the languages; theoretical linguistics develops theories how best to conceptualize language as a faculty; sociolinguistics studies how languages are used for social purposes, such as differentiating regional or social groups from each other; neurolinguistics studies how language is processed in the human brain; computational linguistics builds computational models of language and constructs programmes to process natural language; and historical linguistics traces the histories of languages and language families by using the comparative method. [edit] Early grammarians Main article: Philology

Ancient Tamil inscription at the Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur

The formal study of language began in India with Pini, the 5th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology. Pinis systematic classification of the sounds of Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes, such as nouns and verbs, was the first known instance of its kind. In the Middle East Sibawayh ( ) made a detailed description of Arabic in 760 AD in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw ( , The Book on Grammar), the first known author to distinguish between sounds and phonemes (sounds as units of a linguistic system).

Western interest in the study of languages began as early as in the East,[9] but the grammarians of the classical languages did not use the same methods or reach the same conclusions as their contemporaries in the Indic world. Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosophy, not of grammatical description. The first insights into semantic theory were made by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue, where he argues that words denote concepts that are eternal and exist in the world of ideas. This work is the first to use the word etymology to describe the history of a word's meaning.

Around 280 BC one of Alexander the Greats successors founded a university (see Musaeum) in Alexandria, where a school of philologists studied the ancient texts in and taught Greek to speakers of other languages. This school was

the first to use the word "grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used the word in its original meaning as "tchn grammatik" ( ), the "art of writing," which is also the title of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine school by Dionysius Thrax.[10]

Throughout the Middle Ages the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, the study of ancient languages and texts, practiced by such educators as Roger Ascham, Wolfgang Ratke and John Amos Comenius.[11] [edit] Historicism

In the 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by William Jones sparked the rise of comparative linguistics.[12] Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm, who wrote Deutsche Grammatik.[13] It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The scientific study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt, of whom Bloomfield asserts:[13]

"This study received its foundation at the hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (17671835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled ber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einflu auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (On the Variety of the Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of the Human Race)." [edit] Structuralism

Early in the 20th century, de Saussure introduced the idea of language as a "semantic code."[14] Substantial additional contributions similar to this came from Hjelmslev, mile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson,[15] which are characterized as being highly systematic.[15] [edit] Language and its parts

When described as a system of symbolic communication, language is traditionally seen as consisting of three parts: signs, meanings and a code connecting signs with their meanings. The study of how signs and meanings are

combined, used and interpreted is called semiotics. Signs can be composed of sounds, gestures, letters or symbols, depending on whether the language is spoken, signed or written, and they can be combined into complex signs such as words and phrases. When used in communication a sign is encoded and transmitted by a sender through a channel to a receiver who decodes it (a signal).

Some of the properties that define human language as opposed to other communication systems are: the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, meaning that there is no predictable connection between a linguistic sign and its meaning; the duality of the linguistic system, meaning that linguistic structures are built by combining elements into larger structures that can be seen as layered, e.g. how sounds build words and words build phrases; the discreteness of the elements of language, meaning that the elements out of which linguistic signs are constructed are discrete units, e.g. sounds and words, that can be distinguished from each other and rearranged in different patterns; and the productivity of the linguistic system, meaning that the finite number of linguistic elements can be combined into a theoretically infinite number of combinations.[16]

The rules under which signs can be combined to form words and phrases are called syntax or grammar. The meaning that is connected to individual signs, words and phrases is called semantics. The division of language into separate but connected systems of sign and meaning goes back to the first linguistic studies of de Saussure and is now used in almost all branches of linguistics. [edit] Semantics

Languages express meaning by relating a sign to a meaning. Thus languages must have a vocabulary of signs related to specific meaningthe English sign "dog" denotes, for example, a member of the genus Canis. In a language, the array of arbitrary signs connected to specific meanings is called the lexicon, and a single sign connected to a meaning is called a lexeme. Not all meanings in a language are represented by single words-often semantic concepts are embedded in the morphology or syntax of the language in the form of grammatical categories. All languages contain the semantic structure of predicationa structure that predicates a property, state or action that has truth value, i.e. it can be true or false about an entity, e.g. "[x [is y]]" or "[x [does y]]." [edit] Sounds and symbols Main article: Phonology

The ways in which spoken languages use sounds to construct meaning is studied in phonology. The study of how humans produce and perceive vocal sounds is called phonetics. In spoken language meaning is constructed when sounds become part of a system in which some sounds can contribute to expressing meaning and others do not. In any given language only a limited number of the many distinct sounds that can be created by the human vocal apparatus contribute to constructing meaning

Sounds as part of a linguistic system are called phonemes. All spoken languages have phonemes of at least two different categories: vowels and consonants that can be combined into forming syllables. Apart from segments such as consonants and vowels, some languages also use sound in other ways to convey meaning. Many languages, for example, use stress, pitch, duration and tone to distinguish meaning. Because these phenomena operate outside of the level of single segments they are called suprasegmental.

Writing systems represent the sounds of human speech using visual symbols. The Latin alphabet (and those on which it is based or that have been derived from it) is based on the representation of single sounds, so that words are constructed from letters that generally denote a single consonant or vowel in the structure of the word.

In syllabic scripts, such as the Inuktitut syllabary, each sign represents a whole syllable

In logographic scripts each sign represents an entire word. Because all languages have a very large number of words, no purely logographic scripts are known to exist. In order to represent the sounds of the worlds languages in writing, linguists have developed an International Phonetic Alphabet, designed to represent all of the discrete sounds that are known to contribute to meaning in human languages. [edit] Grammar Main article: grammar

Grammar is the study of how meaningful elements (morphemes) within a language can be combined into utterances. Morphemes can either be free or bound. If they are free to be moved around within an utterance, they are usually called words, and if they are bound to other words or morphemes, they are called affixes. The way in which meaningful elements can be combined within a language is governed by rules. In standard linguistic theory the rules of the internal structure of words is called morphology. The rules of the internal structure of the phrases and sentences is called syntax.[17] In the generativist tradition of Chomsky morphology is seen as a part of syntax. [edit]

Grammatical categories

Grammar contributes to producing meaning by encoding semantic distinctions in forms that are systematic. The predictability resulting from systematization allows language users to produce and understand new words and meanings by applying their knowledge of the languages grammatical categories.

Languages differ widely in whether categories are encoded through the use of categories or lexical units. However, several categories are so common as to be nearly universal. Such universal categories include the encoding of the grammatical relations of participants and predicates by grammatically distinguishing between their relations to a predicate, the encoding of temporal and spatial relations on predicates, and a system of grammatical person governing reference to and distinction between speakers and addressees and those about whom they are speaking. [edit] Word classes

Languages organize their parts of speech into classes according to their functions and positions relative to other parts. All languages, for instance, make a basic distinction between a group of words that prototypically denote things and concepts and a group of words that prototypically denote actions and events. The first group, which includes English words such as "dog" and "song," is usually called nouns. The second, which includes "run" and "sing," is called verbs.

Additionally, some languages have adjectives, such as "red" or "big," that describe properties or qualities of nouns, and adverbs, such as such as "quickly" and "hopefully," that modify verbs.

The word classes also carry out differing functions in grammar. Prototypically verbs are used to construct predicates, while nouns are used as arguments of predicates. In a sentence such as "Sally runs," the predicate is "runs," because it is the word that predicates a specific state about its argument "Sally." Some verbs such as "curse" can take two arguments, e.g. "Sally cursed John." A predicate that can only take a single argument is called intransitive, while a predicate that can take two arguments is called transitive.

Many other word classes exist in different languages, such as conjunctions that serve to join two sentences and articles that introduces a noun. [edit]

Morphology

Many languages use the morphological processes of inflection to modify or elaborate on the meaning of words. In some languages words are built of several meaningful units called morphemes, the English word "unexpected" can be analyzed as being composed of the three morphemes "un-", "expect" and "-ed". Morphemes can be classified according to whether they are roots to which other bound morphemes called affixes are added, and bound morphemes can be classified according to their position in relation to the root: prefixes precede the root, suffixes follow the root and infixes are inserted in the middle of a root. Affixes serve to modify or elaborate the meaning of the root. Some languages change the meaning of words by changing the phonological structure of a word, for example the English word "run" which in the past tense is "ran". Furthermore morphology distinguishes between processes of inflection which modifies or elaborates on a word, and derivation which instead creates a new word from an existing one - for example in English "sing" which can become "singer" by adding the derivational morpheme -er which derives an agentive noun from a verb. Languages differ widely in how much they rely on morphology - some languages, traditionally called polysynthetic languages depend so much on morphology that they express the equivalent of an entire English sentence in a single word. For example the Greenlandic word "oqaatiginerluppaa" "(he/she) speaks badly about him/her" which consists of the root oqaa and six suffixes.[18] [edit] Syntax

Languages that use inflection to convey meaning often do not have strict rules for word order in a sentence. For example in Latin both "dominus servos vituperabat" and "servos vituperabat dominus" mean "the master was cursing the slaves", because "servos" "slave" is in the accusative case showing that they are the grammatical object of the sentence and "dominus" "master" is in the nominative case showing that he is the subject. Other languages, however, use little or no inflectional processes and instead use the sequence of words in relation to each other to describe meaning. For example in English the two sentences "the slaves were cursing the master" and "the master was cursing the slaves" mean different things because the role of grammatical subject is encoded by the noun being in front of the verb and the role of object is encoded by the noun appearing after the verb.

Syntax then, has to do with the order of words in sentences, and specifically how complex sentences are structured by grouping words together in units, called phrases, that can occupy different places in a larger syntactic structure. Below is a graphic representation of the syntactic analysis of the sentence "the cat is on the mat". The sentence is analysed as being constituted by a noun phrase, a verb and a prepositional phrase, the prepositional phrase is further divided into a preposition and a noun phrase, and the noun phrases consist of an article and a noun. Verb Phrase/Sentence / | \

/ / /

| | | | / Verb | | is

\ Prepositional Phrase / / / \ Noun \ Noun Phrase

Noun Phrase / \ |

Article Noun | the | cat

Preposition Article | | the mat

on

"The cat is on the mat" [edit] Language and culture See also: Culture

"The Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Oil on board, 1563. The Tower of Babel symbolises the division of mankind by a multitude of tongues provided through heavenly intervention.

As far back as the classical period the connection between human culture and language has been noted and probably long before. The ancient Greeks, for example, distinguished between civilized peoples and brbaros "those who babble", i.e. those who speak unintelligible languages.[19] The fact that different groups speak different, unintelligible languages is often considered more tangible evidence for cultural differences than other less obvious cultural traits.

Languages, understood as the particular set of speech norms of a particular community, are also a part of the larger culture of the community that speak them. Humans use language as a way of signalling identity with one cultural group and difference from others. Even among speakers of one language several different ways of using the language exist, and each is used to signal affiliation with particular subgroups within a larger culture. Linguists and

anthropologists, particularly sociolinguists, ethnolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have specialized in studying how ways of speaking vary between speech communities.

A community's ways of using language is a part of the community's culture, just as other shared practices are, it is way of displaying group identity. Ways of speaking function not only to facilitate communication, but also to identify the social position of the speaker. Linguists use the term varieties, a term that encompasses geographically or socioculturally defined dialects as well as the jargons or styles of subcultures, to refer to the different ways of speaking a language. Linguistic anthropologists and sociologists of language define communicative style as the ways that language is used and understood within a particular culture.[20]

Languages do not differ only in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar, but also through having different "cultures of speaking". Some cultures for example have elaborate systems of "social deixis", systems of signalling social distance through linguistic means.[21] In English, social deixis is shown mostly though distinguishing between addressing some people by first name and others by surname, but also in titles such as "Mrs.", "boy", "Doctor" or "Your Honor", but in other languages such systems may be highly complex and codified in the entire grammar and vocabulary of the language. For instance, in several languages of east Asia, such as Thai, Burmese and Javanese, different words are used according to whether a speaker is addressing someone of higher or lower rank than oneself in a ranking system with animals and children ranking the lowest and gods and members of royalty as the highest.[21] [edit] Origin

Skull of Homo Neanderthalensis discovered in La Chapelle Aux Saints, France. It is unknown whether Neanderthal humans had language. Main article: Origin of language

Theories about the origin of language can be divided according to their basic assumptions. Some theories are based on the idea that language is so complex that one can not imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form, but that it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among our pre-human ancestors. These theories can be called continuity based theories. The opposite viewpoint is that language is such a unique human trait that it cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans and that it must therefore have appeared fairly suddenly in the transition from pre-hominids to early man. These theories can be defined as discontinuity based. Similarly some theories see language mostly as an innate faculty that is largely genetically encoded, while others see it as a system that is largely cultural, that is learned through social interaction.[22] Currently the only prominent proponent of a discontinuity theory of human language is Noam Chomsky who however does not present any scenario for how

human language appeared. Continuity based theories are currently held by a majority of scholars, but they vary in how they envision this development. Those who see language as being mostly innate, for example Steven Pinker, hold the precedents to be animal cognition, whereas those who see language as a socially learned tool of communication, such as Michael Tomasello see it as having developed from animal communication, either primate gestural or vocalic communication. Other continuity based models see language as having developed from music.[23]

Because the emergence of language is located in the early prehistory of man, the relevant developments have left no direct historical traces and no comparable processes can be observed today. Theories that stress continuity often look at animals to see if, for example, primates display any traits that can be seen as analogous to what pre-human language must have been like. Alternatively early human fossils can be inspected to look for traces of physical adaptation to language use or for traces of pre-linguistic forms of symbolic behaviour.

It is mostly undisputed that pre-human australopithecines did not have communication systems significantly different from those found in great apes in general, but scholarly opinions vary as to the developments since the appearance of Homo some 2.5 million years ago. Some scholars assume the development of primitive language-like systems (proto-language) as early as Homo habilis, while others place the development of primitive symbolic communication only with Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago) or Homo heidelbergensis (0.6 million years ago) and the development of language proper with Homo sapiens sapiens less than 100,000 years ago.

Linguistic analysis, used by Johanna Nichols, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, to estimate the time required to achieve the current spread and diversity in modern languages today, indicates that vocal language arose at least 100,000 years ago.[24] [edit] Natural languages Main article: Natural language

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them falls under the purview of linguistics. A common progression for natural languages is that they are considered to be first spoken and then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar is attempted.

Languages live, die, polymorph, move from place to place, and change with time. Any language that ceases to change or develop is categorized as a dead language. Conversely, any language that is in a continuous state of change is known as a living language or modern language. It is for these reasons that the biggest challenge for a

speaker of a foreign language is to remain immersed in that language in order to keep up with the changes of that language.

Making a principled distinction between one language and another is sometimes nearly impossible.[25] For instance, there are a few dialects of German similar to some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual (see dialect continuum).

Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.)

The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

A sign language (also signed language) is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language) to convey meaningsimultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local Deaf cultures. [edit] Artificial languages

The first book ever published about Esperanto, the world's most widely spoken constructed language.

An artificial language is a language the phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary of which have been consciously devised or modified by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally. There are many possible reasons to construct a language: to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code); to bring fiction or an associated constructed world to life; for linguistic experimentation; for artistic creation; and for language games.

The expression "planned language" is sometimes used to mean international auxiliary languages and other languages designed for actual use in human communication. Some prefer it to the term "artificial" which may have pejorative connotations in some languages. Outside the Esperanto community, the term language planning means the prescriptions given to a natural language to standardize it; in this regard, even "natural languages" may be artificial in some respects. Prescriptive grammars, which date to ancient times for classical languages such as Latin, Sanskrit, and Chinese are rule-based codifications of natural languages, such codifications being a middle ground between naive natural selection and development of language and its explicit construction.

The ASCII Table, a scheme for encoding character strings.

Mathematics, Logics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, and some that are more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by a combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

A programming language is a formal language endowed with semantics that can be utilized to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks. Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.

Programming languages are employed to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors[who?] restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms; sometimes the term "computer language" is applied to artificial languages that are more limited.[citation needed] [edit] Animal communication Main article: Animal language

Figure-Eight-Shaped Waggle Dance of the Honeybee (Apis mellifera) indicating a food source to the right of the direction of the sun outside the hive. The abdomen of the dancer appears blurred because of the rapid motion from side to side

The term "animal languages" is often used for non-human systems of communication. Linguists and semioticians do not consider these to be true "language", but describe them as animal communication on the basis on non-symbolic

sign systems,[26] because the interaction between animals in such communication is fundamentally different in its underlying principles from human language. According to this approach, since animals aren't born with the ability to reason the term "culture", when applied to animal communities, is understood to refer to something qualitatively different than in human communities. Language, communication and culture are more complex amongst humans. A dog may successfully communicate an aggressive emotional state with a growl, which may or may not cause another dog to keep away or back off. Similarly, when a human screams in fear, it may or may not alert other humans of impending danger. Both of these examples communicate, but both are not what would generally be called language.

In several publicized instances, non-human animals have been taught to understand certain features of human language. Karl von Frisch received the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his proof of the sign communication and its variants of the bees.[27] Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language. The African Grey Parrot, Alex, which possesses the ability to mimic human speech with a high degree of accuracy, is suspected of having sufficient intelligence to comprehend some of the speech it mimics. Though animals can be taught to understand parts of human language, they are unable to develop a language.

While proponents of animal communication systems have debated levels of semantics, these systems have not been found to have anything approaching human language syntax.[28] [edit] See alsoStudy of language Linguistics Historical linguistics Synchronic analysis Philology Philosophy of language Universal grammar Alphabet Sentence processing Types of language and language relationships Dialect Language family

Extinct language Word game Non-spoken forms of communication Written language Reading comprehension Readability Sign language Whistled language Drum languages Non-verbal communication Visual language Origins of language Origin of language Evolutionary linguistics Biolinguistics Proto-Human language FOXP2 - gene implicated in cases of specific language impairment (SLI) Religion and mythology Adamic language Word Myth Logos Verbum Education and public policy Language education Language school

Language policy Language reform Linguistic protectionism Official language Bilingual Communication with other species Great ape language Semiotics Symbolic communication Symbolic linguistic representation Metacommunicative competence Musivisual Language Lists Category:Lists of languages Ethnologue - list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation List of basic linguistics topics List of language academies Lists of languages List of official languages Other Translation Second language Phonetic transcription Dyslexia ISO 639 - 2- and 3-letter ID codes for languages Language portal

Book: Language Wikipedia Books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

[edit] Notes ^ "language". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3rd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1992. ^ Lyons, John. 1981. Language and Linguistics. p. 2 ^ Lyons, John. 1981. Language and Linguistics. pp. 18 ^ Marc D. Hauser and W. Tecumseh Fitch (2003). "What are the uniquely human components of the language faculty?". In M.H. Christiansen and S. Kirby. Language Evolution: The States of the Art. Oxford University Press. ^ Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Perennial. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1957). Syntactic Structures. the Hague: Mouton. ^ Hauser,Marc D.; Noam Chomsky & W. Tecumseh Fitch (2002). "The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?". Science 22 298 (5598): 15691579. ^ Tomasello, Michael (2008). Origin of Human Communication. MIT Press. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 307. ^ Seuren, Pieter A. M. (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Wiley-blackwell. pp. 224. ISBN 0631208917 ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 308. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 310. ^ a b Bloomfield 1914, p. 311.