Communication, Symbols, and Meaning

John A. Cagle

David Berlo (1960)

Meanings are in people Communication does not consist of the

transmission of meanings, but of the transmission of messages

Meanings are not in the message; they are in the message-users

Words do not mean at all; only people mean People can have similar meanings only to the

extent that they have had, or can anticipate having, similar experiences

Meanings are never fixed; as experience changes, so meanings change

No two people can have exactly the same meaning for anything

A few sentences

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” “Picasso enjoyed painting his models

nude.” “Visiting relatives can be boring.” “My son has grown another foot.” “I saw the man with binoculars.” “The man who hunts ducks out on

weekends.” “I cannot recommend this person too

highly.”

Ogden & Richards (1923): Symbols and Semantic Triangle

Concept

ThingSymbol“Jaguar“

Meaning

Symbol – arbitrary sign to referent associations

Denotation or referential meaning Connotation or affective meaning Context is the key to meaning –

“most words, as they pass from context to context, change their meanings”

Signs and Symbols A sign is something we directly

encounter, yet at the same time it refers to something else. Thunder is a sign of rain. A punch in the nose is a sign of anger. An arrow is a sign of whatever it points toward.

Words are also signs, but of a special kind. They are symbols. Unlike the examples cited above, most symbols have no natural connection with the things they describe. There’s nothing in the sound of the word kiss or anything visual in the letters h-u-g that signifies an embrace. One could just as easily coin the term snarf or clag to symbolize a close encounter of the romantic kind.

Language Frequencies

In the earlier part of this century, Ogden & Richards invented Basic English; a simplified vocabulary of 850 elementary English words.

It seemed to help worldwide communication, but soon was considered too rigid and boring, halting creative expression.

Peirce/Morris’s Levels of Language Analysis

Syntactics – signs to signs Semantics – signs to things Pragmatics – signs to people

Phonology – sounds in a language phones, phonemes, morphs, and morphemes

Language is Rule-Governed

Phonological rules (sounds) Syntactic rules (structure of

language) Semantic rules (specific meanings) Pragmatic rules (appropriate

interpretation within a given context)

T H E M A N B I T E S T H E D O Gspoken or written word recognition

THE MAN BITES THE DOG.syntactic processing

SNP VP

V NP Det NP Det NP

The man bites the dog.

semantic processingBITE (AGENT, EXPERIENCER)

[MAN [+ hum, -teeth ...] DOG [+ anim, +teeth]

pragmatic interpretation ???????

An Cryptic Email from My Wife

“I heard from JRC. She had to rush off to a hospital (Children's?) and will write later. Eve”

My immediate reaction was a pang of great concern— what had happened to my daughter, Jackie, and why did she have to go to the hospital?

Some seconds later I “remembered” Jackie works for the California Transplant Donor Network and her work routinely takes her to several hospitals, including Children’s Hospital.

O the layered complexity of meaning making!

Operation of a hypothetical Semantic Key Sort

Osgood’s Mediation Hypothesis

The basic S-R association is responsible for the establishment of meaning.

Three levels of response to stimuli1. Projection – simple neural pathway

system, reflexive2. Integration – associations through

experience3. Representational – stimulus leads to

internal stimulus (meaning) which leads to overt behavior

Development of a sign

A portion of response R becomes represented in internal response rm

Meaning is the internal mediating responserm sm which is connotative

AUTOMATISMS

REFLEX

Hebb’s Integration Principle

The greater the frequency with which stimulus events (S-S) or response events (R-R) have been paired in input or output experience of the organism, the greater will be the tendency for their central correlates to activate one another.

Factors of Semantic Space

Evaluative factor (good - bad) - that can be seen in the example as 'Good-Bad', 'Fresh - Stale', 'Cold - Hot')

Potency factor (strong - weak) - seen in the example as 'Weak - Strong'

Activity factor (active - passive) - in the example as 'Active - Passive', 'Tense - Relaxed'

Semantic differential measures connotative meaning

Semantic differential measures connotative meaning

Seven Ideas about LanguageGeorge A. Miller (1965): Some Preliminaries to Psycholinguistics

1. Not all physical features of speech are significant for vocal communication, and not all significant features of speech have physical representation.

2. The meaning of an utterance should not be confused with its reference.

3. The meaning of an utterance is not a linear sum of the meanings of the words that comprise it.

4. The syntactic structure of a sentence imposes groupings that govern the interactions between the meanings of the words in that sentence.

5. There is no limit to the number of sentences or the number of meanings that can be expressed.

6. A description of a language and a description of a language user must be kept distinct.

7. There is a large biological component to the human capacity for articulate speech.

Pearce & Cronen’s Coordinated Management of Meaning

“From a social constructionist perspective, good communication occurs when you and others are able to coordinate your actions sufficiently well that your conversations comprise social worlds in which you and they can lie well--that is with dignity, honor, joy and love.”

Rules in Interaction

A social constructionist ontology and an interpretive or even critical epistemology

CMM sees interaction as a rule-guided activity

Constitutive rules: Rules that specify what particular behaviors “count for” in interaction

Regulative rules: Rules that specify sequences of behavior for particular situations

Systems of Social Reality

CMM proposes that rules are interpreted within a hierarchy of meaning

This hierarchy of meaning includes six levels of interpretation: content level, speech act level, episode level, relationship level, life script level, and cultural patterns level

“Coordination” – Interaction Processes

Coordination in interaction refers to the “meshing of actions,” not the perfect sharing of interpretations

Interactions that are not well coordinated (e.g., double binds and paradoxes) indicate differences in rule usage and in levels of interpretation