II. Language as a Means of Communication

Passing the information in the process of communication is provided by means of a language as the basic, special instrument of human intercourse, and by non-language means as well.

A language as a means of communication has originated and formed historically in the process of development of the human society as a result of its necessities. The nature of language is of a sign one. Every word is a sign that is correlated with the objects of the outside world in a particular way. The corresponding meaning clear for understanding to the community, which uses it, was fixed to each word of a language historically.

The development of social and technical progress of a mankind caused the expansion of human necessities that resulted in the development and improvement of a language as a means of communication. The vocabularies and perfect grammatical structure of a language of the modern civilized society give possibility to pass any kind of information and the great number of its nuances and details of an object of information.

Language is a means of accumulating and passing the public experience. Owing to the communication by means of a language of reflecting the outer reality in the consciousness of one person is added by information from the other persons’ consciousness that leads to growing possibilities for information exchange.

Verbal intercourse by means of a word is the basic and the most perfect form of human communication. The level of language mastering, richness and culture of linguistic utterance determine possibilities and effectiveness of communication for each concrete person.

Parallel to a language as a means of communication by words, the non-language means such as gestures, mimicry, intonation, pauses, manners etc. are widely used. Communication as an acting process of the direct intercourse of interlocutors reveals emotion of those, who communicates, forming the non-verbal aspect of exchanging information.

The means of non-verbal communication such as «a language of senses» are the product of public development of human society, and considerably strengthen the semantic effect of verbal communication, and in particular cases can replace it.

It is known, for example, that silence sometimes is more eloquent and expressive, than the words and people can understand the content of information that is out of verbal utterance by exchanging glances.

Thus, language is a mirror of the outer world that represents reality and creates the world picture that is specific and unique for every language and, accordingly, for each nation, ethnic group and language community that uses the given language as a means of communication. Overcoming the linguistic barrier is not enough for providing the efficiency of intercourse between the representatives of the different cultures. It is necessary to overcome the cultural barrier as well. There are so called nationally biased components of cultures that create the problems of intercultural communication.

The language saves cultural values in a vocabulary, grammar, phraseology, proverbs, sayings, folklore, fiction and scientific literature, the forms of the written and verbal communication etc.

The language is a transmitter of culture that passes treasures of the national culture saved in it across the generations. Mastering the native language people accumulate the generalized cultural experience of the previous generations.

The language is an instrument of culture. It forms personality of a man, by vision of world, mentality, attitude toward people etc., through the culture, that uses the given language as a means of intercourse.

The language does not exist out of culture as the socially inherited aggregate of practical skills and ideas characterizes our way of life. As one of the types of human activity, a language turns out to be a component part of the culture conditioned as an aggregate of results of human activity in different areas of life such as production, public relationships etc. However, as a form of existence of thought and as a means of intercourse a language is in one row with culture.

Language is a mighty public instrument that forms nation through saving and passing the culture, traditions, and public consciousness of definite linguistic communities. As a branch of science of a language, directly related to the study of culture, lingvoculture acquires wide spreading.

Lingvoculture is a new philological discipline that studies the aggregate of cultural values definitely organized, explores the communicative processes of appearing and perceiving a language, the experience of linguistic personality and national mentality etc.

The native speaker owns his specific features. In the intercultural communication it is necessary to take into account the features of the national character of interlocutors, the specific of their emotional state and national specific features of their thought. That is why it is impossible to master a language as a means of communication without knowing the world of the language studied. It can be learned as a method of saving and passing the cultural values. A language exists in the world of its native speakers, and mastering it without knowing this world makes disable using this language as a means of communication. The study of the native speakers’ world is directed to the help in understanding the features of language using, additional value loading, political, cultural, historical nationally biased lexicon, as in the basis of any communication, that is in the basis of linguistic intercourse, lies «mutual code», mutual knowledge of vocabulary conditioned nationally, knowledge of the subject of communication between the participants of intercourse.

Thus, a language is determined as a means of human communication. This is one of the numerous possible determinations of language and is the main one as it does not characterize language from the point of its organization, structure etc, but from the point of view it is intended for.

A language is understood as a system of signs that serves a means of human communication, cogitative activity, the method of expression of person’s consciousness, storage and passing of information across generations. Language is produced by a society and is a form of reflection of its public life in the public consciousness of people. A language, formed in the process of human communication, is the product of social and historical development at the same time. One of the phenomena of language is that everybody finds the already existing language that is spoken at, and masters it in the process of own development. However, being a native language speaker, a person becomes the potential source of development and modernization of language he owns.

A language is enough difficult formation. Every language has foremost the definite system of meaningful words that is called the lexical composition of a language. In addition, a language has the particular system of different forms of words and word-combinations that makes the grammar of it, and a definite sound, or phonetic composition peculiar to the concrete language.

The basic functions of a language are:

1. A means of existing, passing and mastering the social and historical experience.

2. A means of communication.

3. An instrument of intellectual activity (perception, memory, thought, imagination etc).

Executing the first function, a language serves a means of coding information about the properties of objects and phenomena studied.

By means of a language the information about the outer world and human themselves, got from the former generations, becomes property of the next ones. Accomplishing the function of communicative means, a language allows influencing on interlocutors. The influence can be direct if a person directly point on what is necessary to do or indirect if a person reveals information important for his interlocutor’s activity to be oriented on immediately and in the proper situation. The function of a language as an instrument of intellectual activity is foremost connected with the condition that executing any activity a person consciously plans the actions. A language is the basic instrument of planning of intellectual activity and solving the cogitative tasks.

If a language is the system of signs and symbols, then a speech is the process of language usage. A speech is the form of human communication by means of language formed historically. The conversation itself is carried out by the rule of concrete language (Ukrainian, English etc.). Both a speech and a language make difficult dialectical unity. A speech is carried out by the rules of a language, and at the same time under influence of some factors that change and perfect a language, for example, under influence of public practice, scientific development etc. Mastering knowledge and forming consciousness of a person becomes impossible without a speech. If words and sentences are considered to be the basic structural units of a language, then they are utterances as units of sense in the conversation.

The large meaning for the further analysis of speech has the determination of its functions. The speech is considered to be a process of human communication and a mechanism of cogitative activity as well. Thus, there are two basic interrelated functions of speech:

1. Communicative function or function of human intercourse.

2. Speech intellectual function or function of thought.

Within the framework of communicative function it is accepted to distinguish the functions of report and motivation to action. A speech becomes the form of expression of thought owing to its peculiarity to define the objects, phenomena, actions, qualities etc. In this case the question is about the semantic function of speech.

There are several types of speech, such as external and internal, oral and written ones.

Oral speech is a verbal intercourse by language means that is perceived orally. The basic features of verbal speech are that the separate components of speech report are generated and perceived consistently. The processes of generation of verbal speech include the links of orientation, simultaneous planning, speech realization and control. Verbal speech is divided into a monologue and dialogic ones.

The written speech is a verbal intercourse by written texts. The written speech does not differ from oral speech only by using graphic arts, but in the grammatical and stylistic relation as well. It is the enough difficult compositional and structural organization, which must be specially mastered that is peculiar to the written speech.

The internal speech is a soundless verbal process, i.e. it can be presented in the form of different types of using a language out of process of the real communication. There are a few types of the internal speech. Above all things this is the internal saying or «speech to oneself». This type of speech saves the structure of external speech, but is deprived of phonation and is typical, for example, for solving tasks in the difficult conditions etc. The second type is the internal speech properly as a means of thought. In this case it uses specific units and has a specific structure. The third type of the internal speech can be presented in a form of so-called internal programming that is forming and fixing the intention of the verbal utterance, the whole text and its parts in the specific units.

Thus, a language is understood as a system of conditional symbols by which the combinations of sounds that have a particular meaning and sense for people are passed. The speech appears as a process of intercourse by means of language.