language Archives - Mass Communication Talk

Characteristics of Language

September 13, 2012 1 Comment

What are those characteristics of language that cause problems in encoding and make communication difficult? Characteristics of Language The general semanticists were first led by Alfred Korzybski, a Polish count who emigrated to the United States. His seminal work, Science and Sanity, was popularized by Wendell Johnson. These scholars have been concerned with language and how it relates to our success in everyday living and our mental health. They argue that we run into many of our problems because we misuse language. They say we would misuse language less if we used it more the way scientists use it—so that it constantly refers to the realities it represents. The general semanticists point out several characteristics of language that make it difficult to use it carefully. These characteristics cause difficulty in encoding and make communication difficult. • Language Is Static; Reality Is Dynamic: Words themselves do not change over a […]

Language Skills & Communicative Abilities

Guidelines of precis writing

April 10, 2012 1 Comment

It was not so in Greece, where philosophers professed less, and undertook more. Parmenides pondered nebulously over the mystery of knowledge; but the pre-Socratics kept their eyes with fair consistency upon the firm earth, and sought to ferret out its secrets by observation and experience, rather than to create it by exuding dialectic; there were not many introverts among the Greeks. Picture Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher; would he not be perilous company for the desiccated scholastics who have made the disputes about the reality of the external world take the place of medieval discourses on the number of angles that could sit on the point of a pin? Picture Thales, who met the challenge that philosophers were numskulls by “cornering the market” and making a fortune in a year. Picture Anaxagoras, who did the work of Darwin for the Greeks and turned Pericles form a wire-pulling politician into a thinker […]

Language Skills & Communicative Abilities

differences between spoken and written language

April 6, 2012 1 Comment

Spoken language Spoken language is a form of human communication in which words derived from a large vocabulary (usually at least 10,000) together with a diverse variety of names are uttered through or with the mouth. All words are made up from a limited set of vowels and consonants. The spoken words they make are stringed into syntactically organized sentences and phrases. The vocabulary and syntax together with the speech sounds it uses define its identity as a Particular language. Some human languages exist with their own vocabularies and syntax that are not spoken but use sign gestures. Sign languages have the same natural origin as spoken languages, and the same grammatical complexities, but use the hands, arms, and face rather than parts of the mouth as their place of articulation. Many spoken languages are written. However, even today, there are many world languages that can be spoken but have […]