The word communication is used frequently in recent years, but what is it?
This is a lecture note for "Language and Communication," a course that the author taught at Keio University at Shonan-Fujisawa (SFC) from 1990 to 2008. The objective of the course was to explore the essence of communication and the role of language as a medium of communication.
Everything in the universe engages in communication
Communication is composed of four components: the addresser, the addressee, the message, and the medium (Figure 1). It is a phenomenon or activity that occurs through these components. The addresser generates a message, to be transmitted through a medium to the addressee, who then receives it. The addressee, in turn, produces a responding message, potentially returning it to the original addresser and/or a third party through a medium. This cycle may cease at some point or theoretically continue indefinitely. Every living and non-living entity in the universe can be the addresser, the addressee, a message, or a medium at some point. In other words, everything in the universe engages in communication in some form.
How do non-living things communicate? For instance, rocks at the bottom of a river can act as the addresser, sending a message to fish (the addressee) searching for egg-laying sites that the rocks may serve as a suitable location. Once chosen, the rocks become the addressee or recipient of the message. Thus, rocks in the river are engaged in communication as both the addresser and addressee.
Communication occurs on a much larger scale in the universe. Indeed, various phenomena observed in the universe may be viewed as outcomes of ongoing communicative interactions among entities. For example, approximately 66 million years ago, a ten-kilometer asteroid struck the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, creating the Chicxulub crater—180 kilometers in diameter and 20 kilometers in depth. This largest impact event on Earth caused a global firestorm, followed by a cold snap and ultimately global warming that rapidly extinguished the existing dinosaurs. This event could be interpreted as a series of communicative events, considering the asteroid as both the addresser and the medium, the Earth as the addressee, and the impact as the message.
We readily observe all living things communicating with other living and non-living things. Trees and plants also communicate with one another. Bees collecting honey from flowers facilitate pollination. In terms of pollination, bees can be both the addresser and the medium, and the flower can be the addressee, with pollination as the message. Communication thus encompasses and involves the activities of each and every entity existing in the universe.
Communication extends infinitely in time and space, with participants numbering infinitely. The very infinite and boundless nature of communication seems to have discouraged researchers from earnestly exploring it in the past century, when objectivity dominated most sciences. For a science to be objective, an emphasis on objectivity over subjectivity, simplicity over complexity, exactness over inexactness, predictability over unpredictability, finiteness over infiniteness, and static over dynamic states of affairs prevailed. Communication, naturally involving everything and thereby all these dichotomies, was overlooked as an object of study in the past century. No one denies that language plays an important role as a medium in human communication. Linguistics is then expected to take up communication as its main subject. However, there has been no single comprehensible, not to speak of comprehensive, theory of communication presented in the field of linguistics.
Surprisingly linguistics has been avoiding communication
As a scientific study of language, linguistics developed in the 19th century. Before that century, language was not considered the object of scientific study. However, at the turn of the century, a movement emerged advocating for a scientific study of language. Heavily influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, scientific philosophy focused on historical or diachronic aspects of the object under investigation to explore its history. Linguists in that century also directed their attention to the historical development of language, a field known as historical linguistics. Exploring the history of words and grammatical items across various languages, these historical linguists discovered similarities among languages, grouping them into language families.
In the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Émile Durkheim, the pioneer and founder of modern sociology, advocated the importance of synchronic, as opposed to diachronic, aspects of society, i.e., social facts. Under his influence, Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that linguistics should examine the synchronic aspects of language or a set of linguistic signs as social facts. Around the same time, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, American psychologist John B. Watson, and another American psychologist B. F. Skinner introduced behaviorism. Following de Saussure's idea of synchronic study of language and influenced by these behaviorists' learning theory, Leonard Bloomfield set up a linguistic study called American structuralism.
Both behaviorism and American structuralism insisted that a scientific study should be experimentally and objectively carried out in laboratories. According to these perspectives, all behaviors, including language, are learned as contiguities of stimuli and responses reinforced through rewards. To objectively observe and measure stimuli-response contiguities is considered the essence of learning.
In the late 1950s, Noam Chomsky, who later became the most influential linguist in the 20th century, challenged behaviorism and American structuralism. Combining de Saussure's linguistic tradition with the innateness hypothesis proposed by French philosopher René Descartes, Chomsky postulated that language was a species-specific innate capacity with which only humans are born. According to him, language does not have to be learned through stimulus-response but is acquired through a set of innate universal rules. Chomsky argued that as an objective science, linguistics should focus on discovering a set of phonological, morphological, and grammatical rules and how they work.
Modern linguistics, in its pursuit of becoming an objective empirical science, seems to have veered away from the mainstream of communication, though it does not reject communication entirely. Chomsky divided language into two different manifestations in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965): linguistic competence and linguistic performance. Linguistic competence refers to our knowledge of language, while linguistic performance refers to the actual use of language. Chomsky concluded that the objective of linguistics as an empirical science should focus on linguistic competence, not performance. Linguistic competence, or grammar in his terms, consists of a set of rules for subsets of four components: phonological (sounds), morphological (words), syntactic (grammar), and semantic (meaning) components. According to Chomsky, these rules are definite, objective, and predictable.
However, semantics or meaning is heavily related to performance and is thus full of unstable, infinite, and unpredictable factors. In Chomsky's model of language, semantics is strictly limited to its objective aspects that are mandatory in syntactic operation and can be syntactically motivated. For example, the subject of the verb "feel" must have semantic features such as [+human]. "Furious colors feel sad," for example, is ungrammatical. Although in poetry, there are many apparently nonsensical utterances, such discussions are not taken up as they are considered matters of communication or performance, not competence. Chomsky and his followers, eventually called generative grammarians, termed their linguistic philosophy "formalism," which means studying the form of language, not content.
Chomsky's language theory has been so dominant in the field of linguistics since its debut in 1957 that other language theories attempting to analyze language from broader points of view seem to have been pushed aside from the mainstream of linguistics. Schools of sociolinguists, psycholinguistics, and pragmatics have brought in social, psychological, and non-linguistic pragmatic factors to account for various phenomena of language in the real world. At the same time, Chomsky's theories are too powerful to ignore, resulting in these schools spending much time and energy arguing with Chomsky (or his successors) to elaborate their theories taking non-linguistic factors into consideration. Ultimately, they have run out of steam without presenting any theories of communication (i.e., performance). This is why there is no single comprehensible theory of communication in the field of linguistics, against which the late Roman Jakobson warned, advocating the importance of the study of language used in communication (the speech event). The five factors of the speech event and the functions of language therein he postulated , however, still remain untouched.
So much for linguistic disputes in the past. We are now in the age of artificial intelligence that enables us to exchange ideas across geographical, social, or ideological boundaries. Exposed to a wide range of information, we soon realize that things are interrelated, and collaboration among various disciplines is key in this digital age. Such collaboration will help find a working theory of communication.
A tentative sketch of the communication process: the primary communication and the secondary communication
Given four factors as in Figure 1, how does communication work? The Addresser, first of all, creates a message by gathering information from the surrounding environment or situation. He or she then sends the message through a medium or media to the Addressee. The Addressee receives and interprets the conveyed message. Usually, as mentioned above, this cycle is repeated. In other words, the Addressee, upon receiving the message, takes on the role of the Addresser, creates a new message in response, and sends it back to the original Addresser, who, as the new Addressee, receives and interprets it. This cycle may continue until both parties decide to stop.[i] Figure 2 summarizes the discussion of the communication process thus far.
The communication process can be divided into two stages. The first stage is the portion of communication taking place within the body of a participant, and the second stage is the one taking place between participants. We tentatively call the first portion the primary communication, and the second the secondary communication. Both are equally important to complete communication, although the primary communication precedes the secondary communication. Participants first create messages within themselves, and then exchange them. Namely, the secondary communication is the process in which participants share messages processed in the primary communication within themselves. In summary, the primary communication refers to the inner individual activity within each participant, and the secondary communication refers to the outer social activity taking place between participants (Figure 3).
Before proceeding further, we would like to address a serious misunderstanding found in some literature on communication. The word "communication" is often treated as if it were a synonym for language. For example, communication disorders are often treated as if they were equivalent to language disorders. Language is not “the” but “only one” of media, although it is undoubtedly important in human communication. There are various ways of conveying messages; they can be roughly categorized corresponding to neurological sensation, which will be discussed shortly in relation to the primary communication. Therefore, communication disorders should include nonverbal as well as verbal disorders.
There is another frequently repeated misunderstanding in some literature on communication that all messages in communication are verbally delivered, i.e. in either spoken or written language. Verbal messages account for only a part of a vast body of messages; there are many other kinds of messages. The kinds of messages are reflections of the kinds of media, as they are organized, compiled, and conveyed through the media. This means that messages are also categorized into seven major kinds in correspondence with the media, as shown in Figure 5:
Importantly, in both media and messages, these categories usually appear blended. In other words, a message can be tactile, gustatory, linguistic, or for that matter, a mixture of all kinds. The same applies to media. A blended message can be produced, conveyed, perceived and interpreted in blended media. For example, a linguistic message can be conveyed with audio-visual aids, and may be perceived by the Addressee by visual and tactile means in addition to linguistic sounds.
Lastly, the availability of media differs between the primary media and the secondary media. Media in the primary communication inside the body of an organism are, as discussed shortly, rich corresponding to the auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory senses of its nervous system. However, media in the secondary communication, or interpersonal communication, are limited; starting with spoken and written language, they depend on technology. The history of the media in the secondary communication is the history of technology, and varies from one age to another and from one culture to another. This will be discussed shortly.
The body is a perfect system of the primary communication
The primary communication in humans and other living things thus takes place in the body. The body is in fact a perfect system of the primary communication. In more concrete terms, whatever is happening within the body of each individual is the primary communication. What exactly is it? Taking it into consideration that every single part of our body is under the control of the nervous system, then, the primary communication could be looked upon as the activity of the nervous system. Many medical specialists share the view. Elaine N. Marieb (1997) introduces the nervous system as the system of communication, i.e. the primary communication in our terms, as follows:
“The nervous system is the master controlling and communication system of the body. Every thought, action, and emotion reflects its activity. Its signaling device, or means of communicating with body cells, is electrical impulses, which are rapid, specific, and cause almost immediate responses. To carry out its normal role, the nervous system has three overlapping functions as in Figure 6.
(1)Much like a sentry, it uses its millions of sensory receptors to monitor changes occurring both inside and outside the body. These changes are called stimuli, and the gathered information is called sensory input. (2) It processes and interprets the sensory input and makes decisions about what should be done at each moment – a process called integration. (3) It then effects a response by activating muscles and glands; the process is called motor output. An example will illustrate how these functions work together. When you are driving and see a red light just ahead (sensory input), your nervous system integrates this information (red light means “stop”), and your foot goes for the brake pedal (motor output).”
“The structural classification, which includes all nervous system organs, has two subdivisions – the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system (Figure 6). The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and spinal cord, which occupy the dorsal body cavity and act as the integrating and command center of the nervous system. The peripheral nervous system (PNS)…consists mainly of the nerves that extend from the brain and spinal cord. Cranial nerves carry impulses to and from the brain. These nerves serve as communication lines. They link all parts of the body by carrying impulses from the sensory receptors to the CNS and from the CNS to the appropriate glands or muscles. The functional classification scheme is concerned with only PNS structures. It (PNS) subdivides them into two principal divisions (Figures 7). The sensory, or afferent, division consists of nerve fibers that convey impulses to the central nervous system from sensory receptors located in various parts of the body. Sensory fibers delivering impulses from the skin, skeletal muscles, and joints are called somatic sensory (afferent) fibers, whereas those transmitting impulses from the visceral organs are called visceral sensory fibers, or visceral afferents. The sensory division keeps the CNS constantly informed of events going on both inside and outside the body. The motor, or efferent, division carries impulses from the CNS to effector organs, the muscles and glands. These impulses activate muscles and glands; that is, they effect a motor response. The motor division in turn has two subdivisions (Figure 7). 1) The somatic nervous system allows us to consciously, or voluntarily, control our skeletal muscles. Hence, this subdivision is often referred to as the voluntary nervous system. 2) The autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates events that are automatic, or involuntary, such as the activity of smooth and cardiac muscles and glands. This subdivision, commonly called the involuntary nervous system, itself has two parts, the sympathetic and parasympathetic.”
(Quoted From Marieb 1977 pp.196-197)
Marieb’s perspective on the entire process of the nervous system as the communication system of the body convinces us to posit that the body, with its central nervous system (CNS), is in charge of the primary communication system. The nervous system initiates its primary communication cycle with the sensory, afferent division, "conveying impulses to the central nervous system from sensory receptors located in various parts of the body and thus keeping the CNS constantly informed of events going on both inside and outside the body." The CNS then completes its communication cycle with the motor, or efferent, division carrying impulses from the CNS to effector organs, the muscles, and glands. These impulses activate muscles and glands; that is, they initiate a motor response.
Between the activities of the afferent division and those of the efferent division, the CNS undertakes a number of voluntary actions to interpret information processed from the afferent division and produce and send messages to the efferent division. Among the actions carried out in the voluntary nervous system are language-related actions. Marieb claims that the communication system of the body conducted by the nervous system includes not only higher sensory and motor activities but also lower sensory and motor activities. This can be a persuasive model of the primary communication, which can be, in other terms, considered to be the neurological foundation of communication dynamics.
The cycle of the primary communication and the secondary communication
We can now depict the continual flow of the primary communication and the secondary communication, incorporating Marieb’s discussion on the nervous system including both the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) . The activity of the nervous system occurring within Participants A and B referred to as the primary communication. Both parties exchange messages produced in their person-to-person communication, i.e. the secondary communication. Figure 8 is to show how a cycle of communication proceeds from the primary communication to the secondary communication.
Notice that in the secondary communication to be discussed below, Participant A and Participant B (often more than two individuals involved) interchangeably play the roles of the Addresser and the Addressee. For example, A, first acting as the Addresser, produces a message and sends it to B. B, acting as the Addressee, interprets the message, and then as the Addresser, produces a response to A. A receives B’s response and interprets it, as the Addressee. To further respond to B, A again produces another message and sends it to B, as the Addresser. This cycle goes on and on until A and B decide to terminate the ongoing cycle of communication.
Human limitations and ingenuity in the secondary communication
As shown in Figure 2, the secondary communication indicates the portion of the communication process that takes place among different individuals. The word “communication” has been widely used in many fields in the sense equivalent to the secondary communication, since the verb “communicate” is typically defined as means to share something with somebody or to inform someone of something. However, such interpretation accounts for only the interpersonal part of the entire communication process, which incorporates the primary communication of its participants as well. We humans always have desire to develop technologies to accurately tell others what we hear, see, smell, taste, and touch as we do. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of gap between our primary communication and our secondary communication. The former is equipped with all sensual media while the latter doesn’t. The latter is always under the social and technological restrictions of each community. Let us see briefly how the secondary communication goes and what sorts of problems it faces in relation with the primary communication.
Technological barriers in the secondary communication
In the primary communication, since all of those major sensual media illustrated in Figure 3 are available, messages created therein cover all of those major kinds of sensual messages illustrated in Figure 4. An average message created in the primary media is a mixture of different sensual percepts. The primary communication is thus mental space where all sensual media are available and all kinds of messages are freely processed. On the other hand, the secondary communication imposes much limitation on us. First of all, the media in the secondary communication heavily depend on technologies and artifacts available at a particular time in a particular community.
Language, for example, is doubtless a very important medium for humans. However, only its sounds were available before the appearance of writing systems. In order to express their sensually rich messages produced in the primary media, ancient people depended on auditory channels. The linguistic medium then must have been limited to exchanging messages real time and in real space. To convey messages fordistant time and space, humans had to wait for a long time till the earliest invention of writing system (Sumerian script, 3400 B.C.).
Written forms of language opened up the possibility of the linguistic medium to visually express their inner messages through language, and moreover convey them in distant time and space. The linguistic medium at this stage was equipped with audio-visual messages, but was still short of covering other sensual messages. Since then, humans have been trying to make up with the shortcoming.
To begin with , language, either spoken or written, is a system of signs as Ferdinand de Saussure postulated, which means it is arbitrary by nature. It is not a universal and absolute but conventional and only relative means to convey even audio-visual messages. In other words, people express things in different, not universal, ways, and is not free from miss-representations. The linguistic medium is often complementedby other sensual media such as gestures, facial expressions, drawing, actually showing things or objects appealing to gustatory, olfactory, and tactile senses. But all of these had to be done in face-to-face situations. Thence, the secondary communication heavily depends on technologies and artifacts available in a community.
Since late 19th century, humans have been attempting to invent technologies to effectively convey messages corresponding to all those major sensual media in Figure 4. In the 21st century, we are now equipped with ICT (digitized information communication technology). With the linguistic medium incorporated, it allows us to far better record, transmit, and receive audio-visual-linguistic information. Of course, other electronic technologies such as radio, motion picture, telephone, television, etc. invented in the 20th century gave a great impact to the secondary communication in terms of exchanging audio-visual-linguistic information. However, those twenty-century communication technologies such as television and radio used in mass-communication were unidirectional in terms of exchanging messages. Basically, people receive audio-visual information produced by a handful of private and public organizations, because it cost millions to operate TV and radio stations.
ICT in the 21st century available for individual use at reasonable prices allows individuals to own private sites connected worldwide. The technology enables us to exchange a huge amount of audio-visual-linguistic information. It may free us from all economical, geographical, political, and cultural barriers. As Marshall McLuhan predicted, the world may become one village in the future. It may be so, however, only ifICT is continuously confined to exchanging nothing but audio-visual-linguistic information. Even the most updated ICT is still not ready to transmit gustatory, olfactory, tactile information. It has a long way to go for that. To be precise, the term ICT as it stands now is hence misleading; instead, we should call it Lingua-Audio-Visual Information Technology.
McLuhan postulates in his Understanding Media: The Extension of Manthat the invention of an artifact (technology) much impacts our minds and societies. Since ICT dominates the secondary communication with its audio-visual-linguistic technologies, it must be giving much impact on the primary communication by reinforcing auditory sense visual sense, and linguistic faculty over other sensual media. Namely, ICT as a digital technology exceeds previous technologies: It can process an incredible amount of audio-visual-linguistic information at an unimaginable speed. On the other hand, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory messages generated in the primary communication are exchanged indirectly with much difficulty through audio-visual-linguistic channels. Such audio-visual-linguistically edited messages are ones abstracted away from their original information. In the worst case, messages found too difficult to exchange may be deleted in the secondary communication.
Overemphasis on the audio-visual-linguistic sensual media in the secondary communication nowadays seems to overly stimulate and enlarge the capacities of these three sensual media while numbing the other sensual media. What we call virtual reality is in fact the resultant reality happening not only in the secondary communication but also in the primary communication. In the world of the virtual reality, tactile, olfactory, gustatory senses are represented mainly through the audio-visual-linguistic sensual channels of ICT. What is clear here is that a gap caused by the differences in the availability of the media between the primary communication and the secondary communication results in creating some sorts of imbalance in media in communication.
Social hedges (or constrains) in the secondary communication
Besides technical barriers, there are social hedges (not barriers) that may prevent messages generated in the primary communication from being released as they are in the secondary communication. That is, we may enjoy the utmost freedom of expression within ourselves, i.e., in the primary communication. However, in our interpersonal interactions, we communicate by “editing” messages carefully selecting proper ways of expression according to social constraints, so that we do not offend our communication partners. Such editing differ in degree according to social contexts, which Martin Joos (1964) roughly classified into the following five categories; intimate, casual, informal, formal, and frozen. This is a formality scale ranging from the least formal to the utmost formal. As social contexts get higher in the scale of formality, we get more sensitive about messages and means of expression. At one extreme, intimate contexts apply to close in-group situatations where participants known to one another feel free to exchange whatever they think.
At the other extreme, frozen contexts apply to very formal ceremonial situations. Language is full of “performatives” in J. L. Austin’s terms.What is exchanged is a shared set of socio-cultural values rather than what one thinks. It is delivered in highly contextualized language accompanied with costume and performance. Language itself accounts for the main part of the entire ceremonial performance. In other words, it is no mere talk but the fulfillment of a particular act. For example, uttering words spoken for vow exchange in the wedding ceremony fulfills the act of marrying. It is hence called speech act (Austin and John Searle). There is little freedom in letting out what one feels and thinks inside in the frozen style, whereas much more freedom in the intimate and casual styles.
Paul Grice in his paper “Conversational Postulates” presented “cooperative principle,” which “describes how people achieve effective conversational communication in common social situations—that is, how listeners and speakers act cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way.(Wikipedia)” It is evident that communication here means the secondary communication. The cooperative principle then operates in the secondary communication. In brief, the secondary communication requires cooperation between the participants, since the primary communication of each participant by nature operates based on individual psychology and thereby tends to lack a sense of social cooperation.
Grice then formulated Grice’s Maxims Quantity, Quality, Relation, Manner which participants will be expected to observe to make his or her conversational contribution. Grice’s example for Relation is: "I expect a partner's contribution to be appropriate to the immediate needs at each stage of the transaction. If I am mixing ingredients for a cake, I do not expect to be handed a good book, or even an oven cloth (though this might be an appropriate contribution at a later stage)." It is interesting to notice here in passing that the examples Grice presented for the four maxims are nonverbal ones; as mentioned above, communication comprises nonverbal as well as verbal interactions. The cooperative principle is probably built in as social values in the primary communication so that the messages are therein to be edited accordingly. People are educated to acquire such principle as social beings, which mean they are not innate. Cooperative principle may differ from one speech community to another. For that matter, even within a single language, the principle may differ among its dialects or speech styles.
Indirect speech acts and the secondary communication
Searle’s indirect speech act concerns how messages in the primary communication are indirectly delivered in the secondary communication. An example is:
A: Let’s go to the movie tonight.
B: I have to study for examination.
Here A’s utterance is meant for a speech act of inviting (B to go to the movie tonight with B). B wants to reject A’s invitation because she has to study for examination.
The straight message in the primary communication could be “I have to study for examination tonight. I thereby reject your invitation.” However, in the secondary communication, she just states the “felicity condition” (have to study for examination) in which she cannot accept that invitation (going to the movie tonight). In this case, indirectness as a hedge brings forth politeness.
H.P. Grice’s “cooperative principle” also dealt with indirect speech acts. In the secondary (interpersonal) communication, participants may intentionally flout the maxims in order to convey not what a particular utterance literally means (literal meaning) but what it implies (underlying implicature) . For example, A answers, “Oh, B’s such a nice guy.” when asked about B who did a bad thing to A). It is obvious that A is cooperative making contribution to the ongoing interaction; and maxims appear to be well-kept except Quality. This remark is a lie if it is simply violated, but means something else if it is flouted. A in his primary communication, A thinks B is a nasty guy, but to deliver the message to somebody else, he flouts the maxim of quality and ironically says the opposite. It is all up to the hearer whether he can catch the underlying implicature. If the hearer knows that A does not like B, chances are that he or she notice the flout to infer A’s irony, but if doesn’t, he or she may fail to do so.
George Lakoff and David Gordon ‘s paper titled “Conversational Postulates” tried to formulate Grice’s maxims. For example, “It’s cold in here. ” is understood as an order or request for someone to close the windows, when said by a professor who came in a classroom with some windows open. In other words, how does the literal meaning of this statement come to indirectly convey a request to close the windows. A speech act is properly achieved when its “felicity conditions” are satisfied. In this example, The classroom is cold; its windows are open; the remark is addressed to students by a professor (i.e. superior to inferior, not the other way around), etc. Here, Professor spells out literally the felicity condition and indirectly conveys a speech act, a request to open the windows. This way sounds a little politer than directly requesting to close the windows.
In brief, speech acts relate to what do with language in communication. Speech acts comprise locution (the semantic or literal significance of the utterance), illocution (the intention of the speaker), and perlocution (how it was received by the listener). Searle classifies them into five major categories:
Assertives: (Committing the speaker to something being the case, as in suggesting, putting forward, swearing, boasting, concluding. Example: ``No one makes a better cake than me''.)
Directives : ( Trying to make the addressee perform an action. The different kinds are: asking, ordering, requesting, inviting, advising, begging. Example: ``Could you close the window?'')
Commisives : (Committing the speaker to doing something in the future. The different kinds are: promising, planning, vowing, betting, opposing. Example: ``I'm going to Paris tomorrow''.)
Expressives : (Expressing how the speaker feels about the situation. The different kinds are: thanking, apologising, welcoming, deploring. Example: ``I am sorry that I lied to you''.)
Declarations : (Changing the state of the world in an immediate way. Examples: ``You are fired, I swear, I beg you''.)
Indirect speech acts are employed as a rhetorical (ironical, metaphorical) device to indirectly convey these five kinds of speech acts. In any case, all are concerned with the secondary (interpersonal) communication. This makes human communication much more complicated than other living creatures’.
The primary communication is neurologically founded and its activity is psychological, while the secondary communication is technologically and socially founded. They are like the head and the tail of a coin. Both need each other and give impact on each other. If a medium (a technology) is the extension of man, the secondary communication is the extension of the primary communication. Vice versa, the primary media can be the extension of the secondary media as well.
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[i] The crucial aspect here is that the specific environment or situation in which both parties are situated plays another significant role throughout the entire communicative process. How does it influence? It functions as a sort of screen through which messages are created by the Addresser and interpreted by the Addressee. Participants first learn ways of perceiving things in their social environment or situation through education and also develop their own ways of perceiving things in their individual idiosyncratic environment. Such ways of perceiving things may be called social and individual values, or often even biases. The point is that a participant creates, perceives, and interprets messages based on these values, which will be discussed in detail in terms of the semantic notion of modality in a separate essay.
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