2013 -2014 IEC (KAU) Practical course on Speech Communication G.M. Kassymova

The Outline

Kazakh –American University HAND-OUTS Discipline – Practical work on Culture of Speech Communication Academic year : 2013-2014 Number of credits – 2 Department “General Education and Humanities” Practical lesson № 1,2 «The Theory of Communication as an Object of Modern Researches» Translation Studies Students 2-year Academic Professor- G.M. Kassymova

1. The problem of communication.

2. The definition of communication in literature.

3. Speech communication: notion, structure and functions.

The short content of the lesson

1. The problem of communication.

   1. The topicality of communication for modern society.

   2. Communication is an object of researches in different fields of sciences: philosophy, psychology and pedagogics and others (1960-s years).

In philosophy communication was considered as a) a way of realizing social relations, as a process of person’s socialization, as a way of acquiring social experience; b) as a special kind of activity such as game, learning, labor.

Communication is a special independent kind of activity and at the same time is a necessary condition of performing other activities :labour, learning, game because of social nature of a man (Bueva L.V., Cagan M.S., Sokovnin V.M.).

In social psychology a great attention was given to problems of interpersonal communication and questions of understanding between people. It also considered the questions of role of communication in some professional activities, its specifics and structure (Brudnyi A.A., Oshepkova A.P., Parigin V.D.)

In psychology communication was considered in connection of development of mental abilities in the process of individual and group activities (Behterev V.M., Mjacishev V.N., Leontjev A.A., Lomov B.F., Obozova N.N. and Sagataeva V.Z.).

The psychologists find communication as a complex, multi aspect and multifunctional process and underline such functions as informative, interactive and perceptive.

Communication is a complex process where people should understand each other, interact with each other and influence each other[1].

Communication as other activities must be organized and carefully planned one in order to get results. People should behave themselves as subjects.

So, there are different classifications of communication. It depends on the way of realizing it: direct or indirect; verbal or nonverbal; mass, group or pair communication; personal or business communication.

Theory of speech communication was started by K. Shanon (1949) till our days. K. Shanon was first to suggest a structure of speech communication:

Source of message – render or passer – channel – receiver of message

The theory was called as mathematic one, because it didn’t consider personal characteristics in communication. The positive aspects of the theory: common communication means and knowledge.

R.Yacobson revealed six factors which influence the process of speech communication:

addressee, message, context, contact and code.

All these factors have their functions in the communication: expressive, poetic, abstractive and others.

R.Yacobsonrevealed that speech depends on external factors of communication (positive).

Communicators were understood as individuals who only exchange the information but not cooperate (negative).

So, R.Yacobsonhad considered the process of speech communication out of activity, its aim and motives and also didn’t discuss the questions of common communicative means and knowledge.

Popov A.V. (1982), Stepanov (1971), Penjcov, Bobnev (1978) and R. Berlo (1960) revealed that communication was curried out thanks not only to common language system, but also thanks to common social knowledge, culture and education, and it must be taken into account while teaching a foreign language.

L.Blumfild(behavioral theory) – regulative function of speech communication without communicators internal intentions and meanings of language means.

Skinner (1938) and Morris (1946) exclude intentional aspects of communication and considering peoples behavior as adaptive behavior of animals

N Chomsky suggested another structure of speech communication: aim, intention, mechanism of dialogue communication.

He introduced the principle of creativity into the process of speech producing, confirming that normal usage of language is free from external and internal management factors. N Chomsky also introduced two levels of speech producing: deepest ( thoughts) and superficial ( formulation into grammar forms) ones. The systems of grammar structures compose the language competence. The model of speech communication is considered as interaction of ideal speaker and ideal listener.

The negative aspects of N Chomsky’ theory is included in following:

• Consideration of language competence formation apart from mental development;

• Any child is born with knowledge and skills of language structures (innatist theory1950s, Noam Chomsky.);

• The absence of mutual activity as a basis for common knowledge about the language and extralinguistic reality.

• So the concept of language capability couldn’t be placed on the base of adequate model of speech communication because there is only the fact of regular syntactical structures is indicated but there is no reasonable explanation of their appearance.

Thus, the main contribution of N Chomsky to linguistic is evaluated by not the fact of introducing the notion of “language competence” (L.V. Sherba touched first this notion in “speech organization” in 1931) but the interpretation, which brought to wide discussion and appearance of many literary sources which served the formulation of important notion of “communicative competence”. N Chomsky investigated the notion of “language ability or capability” which was a ground for formation of notion of “communicative competence” in linguistics[2].

Pragmatic turn in investigation of speech communication (60 -70 years).

J. Searle suggested such speech acts: orders, questions, promises, requests, warning which are speech rules , regulating the relations between the communicators.

So, J. Searle as N Chomsky paid much attention to internal aspects of speech communication but according to communicators.

Wunderlich took for consideration a communicative situation, including extra linguistic factors. (1970-1974).

Thus within the frame of the theory of speech communication the speech actions of communicators, speech production are analyzed but not their elements: word, sentence, language sign, structure of language units.

Speech acts must be considered in the context of speech actions of communicators.

For the development of the theory of speech communication there is necessity to point to the developed theory of non-language context – general psychological theory of activity (A.N.Leontjev 1974).

“Language, speech, activity” (1969); “Psychology of communication” (1974): theory of speech activity.

Questions for discussions:

1. What does communication mean?

2. What functions of communication do you know?

3. What types of communication do you know?

4. Who suggested the first structure of speech communication?

5. What does speech communication as activity include?

Glossary

English	Kazakh	Russian
indirect		косвенное, опосредованное
verbal		вербальное
nonverbal		невербальное
personal		личностное
business		деловое
direct		прямое

Student's individual work:

1. Investigations of communication in linguistics.

Office Hours:

1.Communication as an object of research for Interpreter and Translator.

Literature:

Main

1. Касымова Г.М. Культура профессионального общения будущего переводчика. – А., 2004г.С.5-13

2. Общение. Текст. Высказывание. – М., 1989. Под ред. Сорокина, Тарасова.

Additional

1. Соковнин В.М. О природе человеческого общения. – Ф., Мектеп, 1974.

Kazakh-American University HAND-OUTS Discipline – Practical work on Culture of Speech Communication Academic year : 2013-2014 Number of credits – 2 Practical lesson № 3,4 Department “General Education and Humanities” «The specifics of speech communication» Translation Studies Students 2-year Academic Professor- G.M. Kassymova