Along with sound language(articulate speech) people since ancient times have used other sound means of communication - “whistle language” and “drum language” (gongs). The whistled language is heavily used on the island of La Gomera in the Canary archipelago; It is known to the Mazatecos - the indigenous people of Mexico. Drums are widespread in Western, Eastern and Central Africa. It should, however, be recalled that in the exact meaning of the term there are no special separate “drum languages”, since they recode the language of a nationality or tribe in a special way.

Civilized peoples also have additional funds communication and transmission of thoughts. These additional languages There are audio and written.

Sound signals – calls, beeps; modern technical means of communication are also included here: sound recording, telephone, etc.

Written additional means of communication are more diverse. All of them are characterized by the fact that they translate the sound form of language into a form that is perceived through the organs of vision and touch, in whole or in part.

In addition to the main form of graphic forms of speech - the general writing of a given people, they differ:

A) auxiliary languages– manual and dot alphabet;

b) specialized alarm systems: road signs, signaling with flags, flares, etc.;

c) scientific symbols – mathematical, chemical, logical.

All this is used as a means of communication.

But language is a comprehensive and universal historically established system of means of communication, serving society in all spheres of its activity. Additional systems do not have these properties. The scope of their application is very narrow.

Language and thinking

Being a tool for exchanging thoughts and consolidating them for posterity, language, as a form national culture, is directly related to consciousness and thinking.

Language is the most important stimulus for the development of society, not only because it is a means of communication, a means of transmitting accumulated knowledge, but also because it is the most convenient and modern tool of thinking.

Language cannot exist without thinking. The role of language as a tool of thinking is manifested primarily in the formation and expression of thoughts.

Thinking- this is the work of the cortex cerebral hemispheres brain, aimed at understanding the surrounding reality and consisting in all kinds of operating with sensations, perceptions, ideas and concepts built on their basis, as well as in establishing connections between them.

Sensations, perceptions and ideas are images of the external world that arise in our consciousness as a result of the influence of external objects and phenomena on our senses, which are analyzed by our consciousness, as a result new images and concepts appear. Thus, knowledge of reality becomes deeper. With the help of language, a person’s image is replaced by a word denoting it. The word, thus, organically enters into the thinking process itself; language is the main element of thinking. Thanks to this, a person gets the opportunity to think about such objects, which in this moment not surrounded. This ability is extremely underdeveloped in animals.

The word turns out to be an equally convenient means of expression and perception, and representation, and concept as various levels knowledge of reality.

However, the role of the word as an instrument of thinking is most convincingly demonstrated in the fact that the word not only names a concept or idea, but also assigns it to a certain category, and through the word we translate concepts and ideas from one category to another. In this case, the word is a link in the system linguistic means. We classify words according to morphological characteristics based on what concepts and ideas stand behind them. A general concept, contained in the root, we translate from one category to another with the help of linguistic means (morphemes).

The same ability of language is also the basis for such an important process of thought for cognition of the surrounding environment - abstraction. Distracted from an object that has many attributes separate sign, and it begins to be thought of as something separate from the object, existing independently.

Between language and thinking there is not identity, but dialectal unity: thinking is not reflected in its entirety in language; language, despite its dependence on thinking, exhibits a certain independence in its existence.

The unity of thinking and language also includes their contradiction. In thinking, i.e. in the knowledge of reality, there is a continuous accumulation of new things, and in language there are no appropriate means for their expression. New words and expressions are created in the language. The contradiction is not so easily resolved when it comes to new grammatical categories. The manifestation of something new in language as a result of overcoming the contradictions between it and thinking represents the development of language, its movement forward.

Language and thinking differ from each other in the purpose and structure of their units. The purpose of thinking is new knowledge, its systematization, while

The iconic nature of language

The most convenient form of material expression of thought for the purpose of communication was a system of sound signs, i.e. language.

But the language system is not the only way transfer of information. Researchers note that there are only seventeen such sign systems, means of information exchange, without which society cannot arise and a culture can develop. These are signs, fortune telling, omens, body plasticity and dance, art, architecture, landmarks, signals, rituals, games. Obvious special role language as a system of signs in comparison with other systems. Firstly, language, represented by speech sounds, can convey information at any time, without any conditions of use. Secondly, language is a means of communication between other sign systems.

This universality of language as a means of communication is due to the nature of the linguistic sign. Firstly, the linguistic sign is not similar to the signified. Words, with the exception of onomatopoeia, have no connection with the objects and phenomena that they designate, no similarity with their sensory perceptible features.

Secondly, a linguistic sign is usually conventional and accidental. The connection of a sound complex, a word, with the concept it denotes is conditional, random, arbitrary, and not motivated by anything. For the language community that uses it, this connection is mandatory.

A sign, in a broad sense, is a material carrier of social information.

A sign is something (spoken, written) that indicates by its presence something else. A sign is a substitute.

A sign has form and content, i.e. it means something and is necessarily expressed materially in some way.

Sign structure:

expression plan

Biplane sign. It cannot exist without one of the parties. Signs are studied by the special science of semiology or semiotics.

Language in its relation to speech is the general in relation to the individual. Speech activity is a set of psychophysiological work carried out by a person to produce speech.

The speech activity of the speaker has social and psychophysiological sides. Social nature speech activity consists, firstly, in the fact that it is part social activities person, and secondly, in the fact that both the speech act and speech situation presuppose social relations of speakers who know common language communication, general culture, general topic.

The speech act as a psychophysical process is a connection between the speaker (addressee) and the listener (addressee), which involves three components - speaking (writing), perception and understanding of speech (text).

A speech act involves establishing a connection between interlocutors. Implemented here contact speech function.

Speech communication involves the inclusion of interlocutors in the thematic and compositional situation of the speech act, in its dialogical and monological context. This situational function is to update language forms and meanings.

The speech act is the unity of conveying a message and joint thinking.

Origin of language

The origin of language cannot be methodologically correctly considered in isolation from the origin of society and consciousness, as well as man himself.

Among the conditions in which language arose were factors associated with evolution human body, and factors associated with the transformation of a primitive herd into a society. Therefore, a great many statements about the origin of language can be divided into 2 main groups: 1) biological theories; 2) social theories.

Biological theories explain the origin of language by the evolution of the human body – the sense organs, speech apparatus. Among the biological ones, the two most famous are onomatopoeic and interjectional.

Social theories of the origin of language explain its appearance by social needs that arose in labor and as a result of the development of human consciousness (the theory social contract, labor theory, or theory of labor cries).

Materialistic doctrine about the origin of language is based on the following provisions:

1) the emergence of man, society and language is a very long and complex process;

2) the formation of man and language was influenced by many factors, but production activity, which can only occur in society, is recognized as the leading one;

3) the origin of language is connected with the origin of consciousness, i.e. a person’s understanding of his existence, his relationship to the outside world. Consciousness arises only in society when new properties of objects are discovered in the process of work. Language reinforces these achievements mental activity, developing consciousness;

4) the basis of mental and speech activity is the highly developed structure of the neuromuscular apparatus;

5) the emergence of the speech apparatus and the human brain in the process of conscious social-productive activity ensured the improvement of human reflex activity and led to the creation of a second signaling system.

Language as a system

The complexity and originality of a language system determine the originality of its constituent units, called language units.

Units of language are its permanent elements, differing from each other in purpose, structure and place in the language system (nominative, communicative and structural).

The tier of a language is a collection of similar units and categories of language.

The main tiers are phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical. Both units within a category and units within a tier are related to each other based on standard relationships.

The language system is formed by language units, united into categories and tiers according to standard relationships.

The relationships between tiers and parts of units form the structure of language. Consequently, the structure of language is only one of the signs of the system.

The word clearly reveals the specificity of language as a special sign system, in a word there is a connection between phonemes and morphemes, the word acts as a building material for units of the next level - phrases and sentences.

All this points to the importance and at the same time difficulty of defining the word. No wonder there is still no generally accepted definition of the word. The very differences in approaches to defining a word indicate its complexity and originality.

A word is defined through its connection with a sentence as the ultimate minimum of a sentence, the minimum syntactic unit (L.V. Shcherba, I.Ya. Baudouin de Courtenay, etc.), through its connection with a concept (philosophers), through its relationship to reality (Vinogradov). The definitions of a word emphasize its independence and integrity, the combination of grammatical, phonetic and semantic aspects.

The complexity of a word, its diversity within one language and in different languages make it important to identify the properties of a word as a unit of language. In this case, the functions of the word, the uniqueness of its relationships with other units of language, the specificity of the manifestation of the word in language and speech, and the features of its semantic, phonetic and grammatical structure must be taken into account.

Natural language- in linguistics and philosophy of language, a language used for human communication (as opposed to formal languages ​​and other types of sign systems, also called languages ​​in semiotics) and not artificially created (as opposed to artificial languages).

Dictionary and grammar rules natural language are determined by practice and are not always formally recorded.

Natural language features

Natural language as a system of signs

Currently, consistency is considered the most important characteristic of a language. The semiotic essence of natural language consists in establishing a correspondence between the universe of meanings and the universe of sounds.

Based on the nature of the plane of expression in its orally human language is an auditory sign system, while written language is a visual system.

By type of genesis natural language is classified as a cultural system, thus it is contrasted with both natural and artificial sign systems. Human language as a sign system is characterized by a combination of features of both natural and artificial sign systems.

Natural language system refers to multi-level systems, because consists of qualitatively different elements - phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences, the relationships between which are complex and multifaceted.

Regarding the structural complexity of natural language, language is called the most complex of sign systems.

By structural basis also distinguish deterministic And probabilistic semiotic systems. Natural language belongs to probabilistic systems, in which the order of elements is not rigid, but is probabilistic.

Semiotic systems are also divided into dynamic, moving and static, stationary. Elements of dynamic systems change their position relative to each other, while the state of elements in static systems is motionless and stable. Natural language is classified as a dynamic system, although it also contains static features.

Another structural characteristic of sign systems is their completeness. A complete system can be defined as a system with signs representing all theoretically possible combinations of a certain length from the elements of a given set. Accordingly, an incomplete system can be characterized as a system with a certain degree of redundancy, in which not all of the signs are used to express signs. possible combinations given elements. Natural language is an incomplete system with a high degree of redundancy.

The differences between sign systems in their ability to change make it possible to classify them into open and closed systems. Open systems in the process of their functioning can include new signs and are characterized by higher adaptability compared to closed systems that are not capable of change. The ability to change is inherent in human language.

According to V.V. Nalimov, natural language occupies a middle position between “soft” and “hard” systems. Soft systems include ambiguously coding and ambiguously interpreted sign systems, for example, the language of music, while hard systems include the language of scientific symbols.

Main function of language - constructing judgments, the possibility of determining the meaning of active reactions, organizing concepts that represent some symmetrical forms that organize the space of relations of “communicators”: [source not specified 1041 days]

communicative:

stating(for a neutral statement of fact),

interrogative(for a fact request),

appellative(to encourage action),

expressive(to express the mood and emotions of the speaker),

contact-making(to create and maintain contact between interlocutors);

metalinguistic(for interpretation of linguistic facts);

aesthetic(for aesthetic impact);

function of indicator of belonging to a certain group of people(nation, nationality, profession);

informational;

educational;

emotional.

Constructed languages- special languages, which, unlike natural ones, are designed purposefully. There are already more than a thousand such languages, and more and more are constantly being created.

Classification

The following types are distinguished: artificial languages:

Programming languages ​​and computer languages- languages ​​for automatic processing of information using a computer.

Information languages- languages ​​used in various information processing systems.

Formalized languages ​​of science- languages ​​intended for symbolic notation scientific facts and theories of mathematics, logic, chemistry and other sciences.

Languages ​​of non-existent peoples created for fictional or entertainment purposes, for example: the Elvish language invented by J. Tolkien, the Klingon language invented by Marc Okrand for the science fiction series Star Trek (see Fictional languages), the Na'vi language created for the film Avatar.

International auxiliary languages- languages ​​created from elements of natural languages ​​and offered as an auxiliary means of interethnic communication.

The idea of ​​​​creating a new language of international communication arose in the 17th-18th centuries as a result of the gradual decrease in the international role of Latin. Initially, these were predominantly projects of a rational language, freed from the logical errors of living languages ​​and based on the logical classification of concepts. Later, projects based on models and materials from living languages ​​appear. The first such project was the universalglot, published in 1868 in Paris by Jean Pirro. Pirro's project, which anticipated many details of later projects, went unnoticed by the public.

Next project international language became Volapuk, created in 1880 by the German linguist I. Schleyer. It caused quite a stir in society.

The most famous artificial language was Esperanto (L. Zamenhof, 1887) - the only artificial language that became widespread and united quite a lot of supporters of an international language.

The most famous artificial languages ​​are:

basic english

Esperanto

interlingua

Latin-blue-flexione

occidental

solresol

Klingon language

Elvish languages

There are also languages ​​that were specifically developed to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. For example - Linkos.

By purpose of creation artificial languages ​​can be divided into the following groups:

Philosophical and logical languages- languages ​​that have a clear logical structure of word formation and syntax: Lojban, Tokipona, Ifkuil, Ilaksh.

Supporting languages- intended for practical communication: Esperanto, Interlingua, Slovio, Slovyanski.

Artistic or aesthetic languages- created for creative and aesthetic pleasure: Quenya.

Language is also created to set up an experiment, for example, to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that the language a person speaks limits consciousness, drives it into a certain framework).

By its structure Artificial language projects can be divided into the following groups:

A priori languages- based on logical or empirical classifications of concepts: loglan, lojban, rho, solresol, ifkuil, ilaksh.

A posteriori languages- languages ​​built primarily on the basis of international vocabulary: Interlingua, Occidental

Mixed languages- words and word formation are partly borrowed from non-artificial languages, partly created on the basis of artificially invented words and word-formation elements: Volapuk, Ido, Esperanto, Neo.

The number of speakers of artificial languages ​​can only be estimated approximately, due to the fact that there is no systematic record of speakers.

According to the degree of practical use artificial languages ​​are divided into projects that have become widespread: Ido, Interlingua, Esperanto. Languages ​​like national languages, are called “socialized”; among artificial ones they are united under the term planned languages. Intermediate position occupied by artificial language projects that have a certain number of supporters, for example, Loglan (and its descendant Lojban), Slovio and others. Most artificial languages ​​have a single speaker - the author of the language (for this reason it is more correct to call them “linguistic projects” rather than languages).

Hierarchy of communication goals

Language functions

Basic functions:

Cognitive(cognitive) function consists in the accumulation of knowledge, its ordering, systematization.

Communicative the function is to ensure interaction between the sender of a verbal message and its recipient.

Private language features

Contact making (phatic)

Impacts (voluntary)

Reference- a function associated with the subject of thought with which a given linguistic expression is correlated.

Estimated

Emotive (emotionally expressive)

Rechargeable- the property of language to accumulate, accumulate people’s knowledge. Subsequently, this knowledge is perceived by descendants.

Metalinguistic

Aesthetic- The ability of language to be a means of exploration and description in terms of the language itself.

Ritual and etc.

One of the greatest assets of mankind and the greatest pleasures of man is the opportunity to communicate with his own kind. The happiness of communication is appreciated by everyone who, for one reason or another, had to be deprived of it, for a long time stay alone. Human society is unthinkable without communication between members of society, without communication. Communication– is primarily the exchange of information, communication (from lat. communication- ‘to make common’). This is the exchange of thoughts, information, ideas, etc., this is the exchange of information, information interaction.

One of the first information needs of a person is to receive information from another person or transmit information to him, i.e. information exchange. The formation of information itself often occurs in the process of information exchange between people. Information flows permeate all types of human activity - social, scientific, cognitive, etc.

Two layers of information accumulate in the consciousness of every person: scientific and everyday. There are also two types of information: information that is part of the public consciousness and information that is unique, inimitable, belonging only to a given individual.

The concept of information is applicable when there is a system and some interaction, during which certain information is transmitted. Without taking into account the consumer, even an imaginary, potential one, we cannot talk about information. Information is sometimes understood as a message. However, one cannot talk about information without regard to the process of perceiving the message. Only by connecting to the consumer does the message “highlight” the information. By itself, it does not contain information substance. The same message can provide a lot of information to one consumer and little to another.

Information has a producer and a consumer, a subject and an object. In the 20th century became widespread information model communications. Automatic (cybernetic) systems using (de)encoding devices began to be used

Through communication, the information entered is reproduced at the other end of the chain. Information is converted into code signals that are transmitted through a communication channel.

Human communication involves a sender (speaker) and a receiver (listener). The speaker and listener own the language (de)coding device and mental processors. This is a simplified understanding of human communication.

Information communication between a person and the outside world is two-way: a person receives necessary information and in turn produces it himself. Man himself as a social individual develops through the interaction of two information flows, genetic information and information that continuously comes to a person throughout his life from the environment.

Consciousness is not inherited. It is formed in the process of communicating with other people, assimilating their experience, as well as the experience accumulated by many generations. A person receives both living, momentary information, and information accumulated, stored in the form of books, paintings, sculptures and others. cultural values. The acquisition of such information makes a person a social being. Information that is inherited in this way is called social information.

Linguists are considering verbal information,information extracted from speech messages.

A natural (though not the only) way of exchanging information is verbal communication. Speech materializes consciousness, making it the property of not just one person, but also other members of the team, transforms individual consciousness into part of the social, individual information into public information, and also reveals information of the entire society for its individual members.

A common scheme among linguists is verbal communication, described by R. Jacobson. A communicative act, according to R. Jacobson, includes the following components: 1) message, 2) addressee (sender), 3) addressee (recipient). Both partners use 4) a code that is “fully or at least partially common.” Behind the message there is a context perceived by the addressee 5) (or referent, denotation). Finally, 6) contact is needed, understood as a “physical channel and psychological connection between the sender and the addressee, which determines the possibility of “establishing and maintaining communication.”

According to R. Jacobson, each of the identified communication factors corresponds to a special function of language.

Sharing information means disseminating it. By purchasing information, we do not deprive this information of its previous owner.

Recording information in tangible media has a dual function: to remind the primary owner of the content of information and to serve as a means of transmitting information.

Speech is the materialization of information. However, speech is fleeting and short-ranged. Currently, means of transmitting information over distances and means of recording information have been invented.

The fundamental revolution in the development of means of recording and transmitting information was the transition to transmission by written means plan for the expression of linguistic signs.

Communication between people is a symbolic interaction of communicants. In the process of communication, contact is established between people, ideas, interests, and assessments are exchanged, socio-historical experience is learned, and personality is socialized.

Communication is defined as the process of interrelation and interaction of individuals and their groups, in which there is an exchange of activities, information, experience, abilities, abilities and skills, as well as the results of activities. Communication is “one of the necessary and universal conditions for the formation and development of society and personality” (Philosophical encyclopedic Dictionary, 1983). Communication includes mental contact that arises between individuals and is realized in the process of their mutual perception of each other, as well as the exchange of information through verbal or non-verbal communication. verbal communication and interaction and mutual influence on each other..

Communication is a process that occurs through many channels: sound, visual, gustatory, olfactory, tactile (smile, handshake, kiss, smell of perfume, food, etc.). War and duel are anti-communication. The exchange of activities here is aimed at mutual destruction, at ending interaction, at destroying contact. These types of interactions can be called communication with a minus sign.

For a speech act, the situation is atypical when both the transmission and reception of a message is carried out by one person (for example, in the case of memorization, rehearsal, etc.). Sometimes it is possible for the same person to communicate with himself on the time axis. Sometimes people, in search of an interlocutor, can turn to someone existing in the speaker’s imagination, or to an object, an animal. In this case, it is important for the speaker to express his thoughts in a specific address.

A typical case of communication is communication between two people. However, tuples (ordered bounded sets) communicating. In conditions of free, regulated communication, a cortege of two to four people is optimal. In the case of regulated communication (when there is a coordinator, for example, a chairperson, toastmaster, etc.), large tuples of communicating are also possible (see Suprun 1996)

Biocommunication

Human communication is qualitatively different from animal communication ( biocommunications). Animal communication is based on innate responses to certain stimuli. Animal communication takes place only when there is a stimulus; it is instinctive. The ability to communicate is inherited by animals and does not change. Animals have a signaling system with the help of which individuals of the same species or different species can communicate. Animals do not go beyond the first signal system. They respond to a sound signal as to a physical stimulus.

The sounds made by animals have no content or meaning. They communicate nothing about the outside world. They only give instructions which one possible options behavior must be chosen at the moment in order to survive.

No matter how complex the sound combination produced by this or that animal may be (for example, the speech of a parrot), it always corresponds in its psychophysiological organization to speech learned by heart. The parrot pronounces words like a tape recorder, not like a person. The cries made by the animal only add to the behavior that already exists without sound.

Do animals understand human speech? For example, a dog seems to understand a person. However, it turns out that the dog does not understand the word at all in the human sense. She does not hear all the sounds that make up a word, but reacts to the general sound appearance of the word, to the place of stress and, most importantly, to the intonation with which we speak.

American psychologists The Gardners tried to teach the Washoe chimpanzee human language. They trained Washoe sign language deaf and dumb. She learned to use 132 signs, and used these signs in situations that were less and less similar: water, liquid, drink, rain. Washoe learned to use combinations of signs. For example, to get a treat from the refrigerator, she reproduced three signs: “open - key - food.”

The sign communication activity of monkeys developed mainly on a facial-gestural background, because the larynx of monkeys is poorly adapted to pronouncing sounds. This can be confirmed by the experiments of the Gardner spouses, who taught chimpanzees the language of the deaf and dumb. Washoe the chimpanzee learned 90 shapes as symbols of objects, actions and events. The Gardners' deaf-mute acquaintances could accurately recognize up to 70% of her gestures.

The German scientist Köller described his observations of the behavior of chimpanzees. He notes that chimpanzee intelligence is a practical intelligence, it manifests itself only in direct activity. A person plans his activities. His intelligence, although related to practical activities, but is not directly woven into it, does not coincide with it. In an adult, practical thinking is combined with theoretical thinking.

Studying the behavior of elephants, researchers using highly sensitive equipment found that animals communicate using “infrasonic language.” It turned out that when “talking,” elephants, in addition to ordinary sounds, also use signals at a frequency of 14 hertz, which the human ear cannot perceive. With the help of such a language, elephants can communicate over distances at which even the most powerful roar is powerless. This immediately explains two old mysteries: how males detect a silent female who is out of sight, and how a herd can, without an obvious “audible” command, make a disciplined “turn all of a sudden,” take off, stop, and leave the area of ​​perceived danger.

Ants have a wide range of innate postures and signals that allow them to convey information. With the help of poses, ants can “tell” about hunger, food, demand help, subjugate someone, etc. Ants learn quite well and are able to grasp logical connections.

K. Firsch's observations of the so-called bee dances proved that with the help of such dances, bees transmit information about the direction and distance to the food source. Bees can recognize classes of figures regardless of their size and relative rotation, i.e. generalize figures based on their shape.

The domestic cat has many vocalizations to express its feelings. Short, abrupt sounds express readiness to communicate or a desire to get to know each other. Choked sounds indicate resentment. High tones and screams indicate aggressiveness and readiness to fight. Tender, affectionate intonations are emitted by mother cats when communicating with kittens.

An interesting and very diverse form of sign communication is the ritual communication of animals, which has reached a very wide variety in birds. Courtship poses are very complex and varied, including decorating the nest, “giving gifts,” etc. The various postures used in ritual communication represent information signals that characterize the emotional mood and intentions of the partners. When studying the “language of birds”, the imperfect human ear comes to the aid of computing machines, allowing ornithologists to instantly identify a bird's song and decipher the meaning of its message. Currently, many bird musical phrases have been understood. For example, the language of blackbirds, consisting of 26 basic phrases, which in various combinations make up different musical themes. Scientists have found that birds also have their own dialects. The finch from Luxembourg, for example, poorly understands its fellow from Central Europe.

The number of signals that animals use is limited; each animal signal conveys a complete message; the signal is inarticulate. Linguistic communication between people is based on the assimilation (spontaneous or conscious) of a particular language, not on innate, but on acquired knowledge. Human language consists of a finite set linguistic units different levels, which can be combined. Thanks to this, a person can produce an almost unlimited number of utterances. A person can talk about the same thing in different ways. Human speech is creative. She wears conscious character and is not only a direct reaction to an immediate stimulus. A person can talk about the past and future, generalize, imagine. Human speech- this is not just the reporting of any facts, but also the exchange of thoughts about these facts.

24 .Paralinguistics

Human communication can be verbal, i.e. communication using sound or graphic language signs, and non-verbal, carried out in the form of laughter, crying, body movements, facial expressions, gestures, some changes in the sound signal - tempo, timbre, etc. People use means of nonverbal communication from the first days of life. For a person who has mastered the art of verbal communication, nonverbal communication accompanies verbal communication.

Means of non-verbal communication do not allow the exchange of thoughts, abstract concepts, compose texts, etc. All non-linguistic factors only accompany speech and play an auxiliary role in communication.

Non-linguistic factors that accompany human communication and are involved in the transfer of information are studied by paralinguistics. The field of paralinguistics is non-verbal (non-verbal) human communication.

One of the branches of paralinguistics is kinesics, which studies gestures, pantomimes, i.e. expressive body movements involved in the communication process.

The involvement of paralinguistic means in communication is not dictated by the inferiority language system, but only by circumstances external order related to the nature of communication.

The use of paralinguistic means is characteristic of specific speech activity, but paralingualisms can be studied as typified extralinguistic means used in communication.

Paralinguistic phenomena include phonation. Voice timbre, manner of speaking, intonation can tell a lot about a person. The voice can be warm and soft, rough and gloomy, frightened and timid, jubilant and confident, malicious and insinuating, firm, triumphant, etc. One can distinguish hundreds of shades of voice, expressing a wide variety of feelings and moods of a person. The area of ​​expressive phonation is not part of the structure of the language; it is superstructural. In each linguistic community, a certain stereotype of prosodic characteristics of communication develops, associated with the expression of such aspects of communication as rudeness, delicacy, confidence, doubt, etc. Such stereotypical phonations are the subject of consideration in paralinguistics.

Another branch of paralinguistics is kinesics, body language. Oral communication widely uses the physical manifestations of the speaking subject, aimed at orienting the listener to unambiguously perceive the utterance. These means include, first of all, gestures (body movements) and facial expressions (the facial expression of the speaker). Gestures can have international and national character. For example, a gesture of solidarity is raising a hand clenched into a fist, a gesture of agreement/disagreement is a nod of the head. Gestures include body movements such as shrugging the shoulders, shaking the head, spreading the arms, snapping the fingers, waving the hand, etc.

The paralinguistic component of communication can acquire independent meaning and can be used without text. These are, for example, gestures that replace words: bowing, raising the hat, nodding the head, shaking the head, pointing the direction with the hand, etc. Each society (public, social group) develops its own system of paralinguistic means. They are used in conjunction with speech acts themselves. The set of independently functioning paralinguistic signs concerns mainly the following conceptual and communicative circles: greetings and farewells, indicating directions, calling for movement and indicating to stop, expressing agreement-disagreement, prohibition, approval and some others.

The letter also uses specific paralinguistic signs, for example, underscores, brackets, quotation marks, arrows.

25. Speech activity

Speech activity for the most part is the activity of transmitting information. The essence of speech activity is that it serves the communication of people and the transmission of information. Speech activity has its own specifics in relation to other types of activity. The process of speech comes down to the fact that a certain thought of one person materializes in the form of phrases spoken or written by this person, which are perceived by another person, who extracts from the material shell the ideal content embedded in it by the first participant in communication.

In the process of speech activity, the transfer of images and meanings occurs. The meaning is always personal attitude a specific individual to the content to which his activity is currently directed (Tarasov 1977). Meanings are units of language content, and meanings are units of speech (text) content. In speech activity, there is a transfer of meanings, not meanings, or rather the embodiment of meaning in meanings.

The content of speech is not reduced to the combinatorics of linguistic meanings, but is a system of images loaded with a certain meaning. These images are not fixed reflections of objective reality, assigned to some linguistic meanings that exist in the form of frozen linguistic forms (signs). These images act as reflections of some specific fragments of reality; each time they form a special dynamic system, correlating with different linguistic meanings. But there must be some universal characteristics, otherwise language communication it would be impossible.

Speech activity presupposes that the subject of the activity must have a motive for the activity and be aware of the purpose of the activity. The purpose of speech activity is to convey to someone (more precisely, to arouse in someone’s mind) a thought, some kind of image loaded with meaning. This thought is embodied in words, in linguistic meanings. It is necessary to compare the result with the goal, i.e. see if the result corresponds to the intended goal, i.e. Is the speech action effective (effective). If the subject feels that the intended goal has not been achieved or has not been fully achieved, he can adjust the action. The subject can judge the effectiveness of an action by the recipient’s reaction to it.

So the speech action presupposes:

Setting a goal (albeit subordinate to the overall goal of the activity);

Planning (drawing internal program);

Implementation of the plan;

Comparison of goal and result.

Speech activity can occur in parallel with other activities or independently.

Like most other actions, speech activity is learned, although the ability to learn it is inherent in a person.

Speech activity is not directed towards itself: we speak, as a rule, not just to talk, but to convey some information to others. And we usually listen to someone else’s speech not just for the pleasure of listening, but in order to receive information.

Speech activity can occur together with other activities that do not require thought or concentration. This is usually a mechanical, standard activity, familiar and familiar to the speaker, and does not distract him from the conversation, i.e. a process that includes not only the actual speech act as such, but also its mental basis.

Two speech activities are incompatible. It is difficult to read one text and listen to another, or speak and listen at the same time, or participate in two dialogues at the same time. Mental activity is possible together with speech, when both of these activities proceed with very little stress.

Speech activity often occurs in conjunction with movements of the hands, eyes, and various body movements, which constitutes the paralinguistic component of speech activity.

Speech component communication is its most important integral part. But this should not deny or diminish the importance of other components of communication. Extremely important video sequence. We really lack the visual channel, for example, when communicating on the phone.

The more complete the contact, the more open the communicating to each other, the more emotional and rational prerequisites for communication they have, the more complete and exciting is the “luxury of human communication” (in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). In the polyphonic orchestra of communication, speech communication is performed by the first violin (Suprun 1996). It occupies such an undeniably leading role that sometimes communication is understood as its verbal manifestation. When communication occurs in an ensemble various means, including the speech form, it is on it that the most significant part of intersubjective interaction falls. The speech component of communication is rightfully considered the most important.

Speech activity is the object of study of the theory of speech activity, or psycholinguistics.

The minimum implementation of speech communication (communication) is speech act. The totality of speech acts constitutes speech activity. In the process of a speech act, a speech (verbal) message is transmitted from one or more participants in communication to another or other participants in communication.

The communicative nature of a speech act presupposes its bilateral nature. The speech act has two sides: the production and reception of a speech message. Accordingly, we can talk about two participants in a speech act: the speaker and the listener, the writer and the reader, the addresser and the addressee. The addressee (speaker, writer) produces voice message and transmits it to the addressee (listening, reading), who receives (perceives) it and understands. The first encodes, encrypts, and the second decodes, deciphers the message; the first turns the intent of the message into a speech chain, and the second extracts meaning from it.

In a speech act, the roles of speaker and listener (addressee and addressee) are usually inconsistent. The addressee turns into the addressee and the addressee becomes the addressee. In some cases, one of the speakers has a predominant role as a speaker, while the other has a predominant role as a listener. The more democratic the relations in a given society, in a given team, between given participants in a speech act, the more natural the change of roles and the more often it occurs (see Suprun 1996).

Speech acts are studied within the framework of the theory of speech acts developed by J. Austin, J. Searle and P. Strawson. The theory of speech acts proceeds from the fact that the main unit of communication is not a sentence or any other expression, but the performance of a certain type of activity: statements, requests, thanks, apologies, etc.

A speech act is presented within the framework of the theory of speech acts as consisting of three links:

Locational act – the act of utterance;

The illocutionary act is the manifestation of the purpose of the utterance;

Perlocution act - recognition of communicative intention, intention, by the addressee and his reaction to the speech act of the speaker.

The illocutionary force of an utterance can sometimes be expressed by an illocutionary verb, for example: I'm asking you to do this. Verb I beg expresses the illocutionary force of a request.

Statements containing illocutionary predicates like I swear, I promise, I declare etc., are called performative utterances. They seem to create a situation. Without uttering a statement I promise, there cannot be an act of promise. Such statements do not describe the situation, but express the intention of the speaker. Such predicates have performative force only if they are used in the 1st person, singular. numbers, present tense, i.e. if they are related to the I-speaker. Statement He promised to do it– does not have the performative force of a promise, it is a statement of the fact that the promise was accepted by some other person.

Some utterances have illocutionary ambiguity. Such statements are used in indirect speech acts, by which we mean such speech acts that are expressed by linguistic structures intended for another type of speech acts, for example: Could you tell me how to get to the station? Naturally, the speaker does not expect an answer: Can. The speech act has the force of a polite request, although it is in the form of a question. The addressee correctly establishes the illocutionary force of the utterance and adequately responds to the utterance as a request.

Around the globe, people speak more than 6,000 natural languages, and there are many dead ones. It would seem, what Babylonian diversity! But nevertheless, there are enthusiasts who are developing new languages. Why are they doing that?

*"All happy families each look alike unhappy family unhappy in her own way,” is the first phrase of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina” translated into Ithkuil, considered the most complex artificial language in the world. On the left is the Latin transcription, on the right is Ikhtail (iНtaФl), the writing of Ithkuil, based on a number of archetypal forms combined in different ways depending on the sound and meaning of the word

When it comes to artificial languages, the first thing that comes to mind is Esperanto. Created in 1887, Esperanto continues to thrive today, with hundreds of thousands of people speaking fluently around the world. Similar appointment artificial languages ​​- for international communication- the most obvious, but not the only and not even the most common...

Languages ​​for international communication

The popularity of Esperanto is not accidental - it is really simple (only 16 rules without a single exception) and understandable, at least for Europeans and Americans, since it contains mainly Latin and generally European roots of words, including Slavic ones.

Similar languages, with their own grammar and roots taken from natural languages, are called “a posteriori” (Latin “from what follows”), in contrast to “a priori”, for which words were invented artificially. Languages ​​for international communication are often called "auxiliary" languages, since they do not aim to replace primary languages ​​(although such ambitions were once encountered); sometimes the word “artificial” is replaced with the word “planned” to avoid negative connotations; finally, only those that have become quite widespread are considered to be languages ​​themselves, and if only the author himself and a couple of his friends speak fluently, and those with a dictionary, then this is not a language, but a “linguistic project.”

Esperanto quickly became widespread, but it was not the first of its kind - the second half of the 19th century was marked by intense interest in artificial "universal" languages, so the fruit of Lazar Zamenhof's labors was nurtured in fertile soil. And the first recorded artificial language - Lingua Ignota ("unknown speech") - was created and described by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen back in the 12th century, who considered it to be sent from above. Lingua Ignota had its own written language and a glossary of a thousand words, ranging from divine concepts to the lowest word"cricket". There was also an artificial language in the Muslim East - it was called “bala-ibalan” and was developed on the basis of Arabic, Persian and Turkish by Sheikh Muhieddin.

In 1817, the Frenchman Jean François Sudre presented to the public an extremely strange invention: the Solresol language, the words of which (there were 2,660 of them in the main dictionary) consisted of the names of musical notes. It’s hard to believe that the original idea was something more than an intellectual game, but the new language turned out to be suitable for international communication (musical notation is international) and therefore received awards and recognition from its contemporaries. The words of solresol could be pronounced in the usual way, played on musical instruments, write (initially with just seven letters or numbers; later enthusiasts developed a special alphabet), draw with seven primary colors, wave semaphore flags, etc.

In the second half of the 19th century, the popularity of Solresol faded away and was replaced by other artificial languages, less pretentious and more convenient for communication. There were quite a lot of them: universalglot (1868), Volapuk (1880), pasilingua (1885), Esperanto (1887), lingua catholica (1890), neutral idiom (1893−1898) ... Volapuk was quite strange: it contained roots derived from Europeans - highly distorted, but still recognizable, and therefore to most Europeans speech in Volapuk seemed funny (to this day this word is figuratively means gibberish). However, he found his fans and was popular in Germany until the Nazis came to power. In contrast, the neutral idiom was built from pure lexemes of the main languages ​​of Europe (Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Latin) in order to be understandable to “any educated person.” Esperanto was created according to a similar principle.

The creation of new languages ​​continued in the 20th century - Omo (1910), Occidental (1922), Interlingua (1936 - 1951) and others - but none of them even came close to Esperanto in popularity and distribution. It is interesting to note that at the same time, derivative “dialects” sprang from Esperanto itself. The fact is that at the first congress of Esperantists in 1905, it was decided to consider the rules included by Zamenhof in the book “Fundamentals of Esperanto” as unshakable - and from that moment on, the language could only expand, but the basic grammar remained unchanged. Those who were not satisfied with these rules had only one thing to do - create their own language project. Already in 1907, the first split occurred, associated with the emergence of a highly revised version of Esperanto - Ido. About 10% of the then Esperantist community followed the creators of the new language. Other clones of Esperanto also appeared: universal, Esperantido, Novial, Neo, but they did not gain significant popularity.

Concluding the story about international artificial languages, one cannot fail to mention such a phenomenon as “zonally constructed languages”, understandable to representatives related peoples or limited geographical region. As an example, we can name the Africhili (peoples of Africa) and the pan-Slavic linguistic projects Slovio and Slovyanski. Here is an example of text in Slovio from the official website of the developers: “What is Slovio? Slovio es novyu mezhdunarodyu yazika ktor razumiyut nearly hundred million people on the whole earth!” Funny, but understandable.

Fantastic languages

Connoisseurs of the work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien know that his Middle-earth began not with the mythology of the elves, not with geography, and not at all with the plot of the Ring, but with fictitious dialects. A linguist and polyglot who knew more than ten languages, Tolkien from childhood found pleasure in the sound of speech - native and foreign. As a hobby he free time began to construct languages, guided by perfection and euphony, and only then aesthetic process flowed into creation fantasy world and creatures for whom invented languages ​​might be natural.

Nowadays, many authors writing in the genre of escapist fantasy, imitating Tolkien, create adverbs for their fictional peoples, usually developed very superficially - solely to convey exoticism.

However, the function of fictional languages ​​in works of art can be not only ambience. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Popular Mechanics wrote about it in No. 2, 2012) suggests that speakers of languages, especially those belonging to cultures distant from each other, think differently, and elements of such languages ​​are not always translated into each other without distortion. Thus in fantastic work it is possible to convey a different mindset of a non-humanoid race or social formation.

George Orwell, for his dystopia “1984,” invented (although he did not develop it entirely) “newspeak” - an artificial language created on the basis of English and aimed at influencing people’s thinking, shaping it in a certain way, in particular, making the oppositional way of thinking impossible . In general, dystopias and social science fiction directed toward the future are fertile ground for such linguistic experiments. To artificial language concepts addressed by Evgeny Zamyatin (“We”) and Anthony Burgess (“A Clockwork Orange”). Robert Heinlein described in his story “The Abyss” an artificial language called “speed talk,” which uses many sounds and a very limited set of words.

American linguist Marc Okrand, commissioned by Paramount Pictures, developed a language for one of the alien races of the Star Trek series - the Klingons. He took several Indian languages ​​as a basis North America and Sanskrit. Klingon has many sounds that are uncharacteristic of English: “tlh”, “kh”, “y”, glottal stop; writing is based on the Tibetan alphabet. The grammar of the language is also very specific, making it truly perceived as foreign. The Klingon language has become widespread among fans of the series - currently several hundred people can speak it, there is an Institute of the Klingon Language, which publishes periodicals and translations of literary classics, there is Klingon-language rock music and theatrical performances, as well as section search engine Google.

Another linguist, professor at the University of Southern California Paul Frommer, based on Polynesian languages, created Na'vi - the language of the blue-skinned aborigines of the planet Pandora from the film "Avatar". Fans of the film eagerly study the Na'vi and form groups to communicate with each other. And such examples when for work of art a full-fledged language is being constructed, quite a lot: David Peterson developed the Pre-Catrian language for the series “Game of Thrones” based on the novels of George Martin - and fans immediately became interested in it; D'ni language, created for computer games Myst by Richard Watson also went beyond the fictional universe.

Constructing languages ​​as a hobby

There are people for whom inventing languages ​​has no meaning applied value It's just a hobby, a game. More often, linguists are prone to such a pastime, but sometimes mere mortals without special education suddenly begin to pronounce strange combinations of sounds, and then bury themselves in works on comparative linguistics. Still, in order to create any kind of full-fledged language, you need to understand how languages ​​function in general, how they develop, what techniques are found in exotic dialects that are not native to you - and in general, in order to have a taste for anything, you need to be good at this.

The hobby is strange, but the community of people who create “conlangs” (from constructed languages, “constructed languages”; they call themselves, respectively, “conlangers”) is very numerous. The American Language Construction Society (LCS) alone has thousands of members (by the way, the president of the LCS is the already mentioned David Peterson, and another member of the society, Bill Welden, advised the creators of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy). Similar associations exist all over the world. The number of artificial languages ​​also goes into the thousands. Of course, the vast majority of them can be freely used only by authors and a small circle of people close to them - that is, terminologically, these are not languages, but linguistic projects.

Languages ​​for experimentation

Artificial languages ​​are devoid of the complexities, contradictions, exceptions and other shortcomings inherent in spontaneously developing natural languages, and therefore can be a platform for all kinds of linguistic, psychological, philosophical and other experiments. In fact, an artificial language is a kind of programmable environment into which its creator can insert any functions and variable values.

The simplest, and most interesting, of the artificial languages ​​is called “Tokipona”, its creator is the polyglot Sonya Helen Kisa. Toki Pona has only 120 roots of 14 letters, and the grammar and syntax are simple. Because of this simplicity, most words have a very wide range of meanings; people who speak this language (and there are now several hundred of them) have to creatively approach the construction of phrases and, depending on the context, choose certain definitions necessary for understanding. For example, in Toki Pona there is no word for "dog", there is only common word soweli for all terrestrial mammals, so depending on the situation you will have to clarify who exactly we're talking about: about a cute puppy (“a funny little animal”), about a biting and gibbering watchdog (“a bad loud animal”), etc.

If tokipona - extremely polysemous language, then Loglan, created in 1955-1960, is its complete opposite. It is a language absolutely devoid of ambiguity, completely logical, as its name suggests (loglan = logical language). At first it is not easy to master, it requires a certain mindset and habits, but subsequently speakers of this language show a tendency to unusual comparisons and characteristics, to word creation. In 1987, as a result of disagreements among linguists, a new language, Lojban, appeared, almost similar to Loglan in grammar, but with a different vocabulary. When will it finally be created artificial intelligence, these two languages ​​are most suitable for interacting with it.

But the Linkos language, created by mathematics professor Hans Freudenthal, is intended for contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Like loglan, it is strictly logical, it also does not contain contradictions and exceptions, but it also has no sounds. Information is encoded by any in a convenient way(for example, binary code). When developing Linkos, Professor Freudenthal proceeded from two assumptions: that other civilizations may differ from humans in anything except the presence of intelligence, and that mathematics is universal.

And finally, let's return to Robert Heinlein, or rather, to his idea of ​​a language that is close in speed to thinking. If the science fiction writer outlined the basic principles of such a language, then the linguist John Quijada gave them further development and brought it to life. The Ithkuil language he created to increase the information capacity of speech uses not only an extensive set of sounds (its alphabet has 136 letters), but also a complex unusual grammar and many organizational principles borrowed from linguistics, mathematics and psychology. Thus, the Ithkuil phrase oumpea ax'aaluktex is translated into Russian as “on the contrary, I have a feeling that it may turn out that this uneven high chain of mountains in question ends somewhere there”; the very name of the language, itkuil, means “a hypothetical composition of diverse utterances coexisting in a cooperative unity.” This same long phrase can be used to describe this article.

| Lesson planning and lesson materials | 7th grade | Planning lessons for the academic year (FSES) | Presentation of information

Lesson 6
Presentation of information

1.4.1. Signs and sign systems

Keywords:

Information obtained by a person from experience, observation or through reflection must be recorded in some way in material form for saving and communicating (transferring) to another person.

Throughout its history, humanity has used various signs to preserve and transmit information.

A sign is a substitute for an object - an object, phenomenon, action, property or relationship. A sign (set of signs) allows the transmitter of information to evoke an image of an object in the mind of the recipient of the information.

A sign is an explicit or implicit agreement to attribute a certain meaning to a sensory object.. An agreement is explicit if the form of the sign allows one to guess its meaning; the signs in this case are called pictograms (Fig. 1.6). If the connection between the form and meaning of a sign is established by agreement (implicit agreement), then such signs are called symbols (Fig. 1.7).

If the conventions relating the form and meaning of signs are unknown, then it is impossible to ascertain the meaning of the messages represented by such signs. The letters of Easter Island, the inscriptions on the Phaistos disc and others have not yet been solved archaeological finds. But scientists were still able to decipher some ancient writings. How they managed to do this can be found in the electronic educational resource“Cuneiform and hieroglyphs” (191729), posted on the website http://sc.edu.ru/.

People use individual signs and sign systems.

A sign system is determined by the set of all signs included in it (the alphabet) and the rules for operating these signs.

An example of a sign system is the language that a person uses to express his thoughts when communicating with other people.