1. Language, Culture and Communication: Introduction

2. Communicative Interactions

3. Meanings transmitted through language
Situational , Social and Cultural

4. Situational Meanings:
Conveyed through the form of language depending on context
Example: formal and informal encounters

5. Social Meanings:
Transmitted by members of different social sectors through a particular use of language
Example: gender differentiation, occupation, social class position, etc

6. Cultural Meanings:
When words carry specific symbolic meaning or cultural specific meanings. Transmitted by a particular use of language
Example: language expressions

7. The act of speaking is action

8. The importance of the links between language and culture
To understand the importance of human communication
To understand social and cultural behaviors
Cultural contexts in which language is used

9. Cultural Model
A cultural model is a construction of reality that is created, shared, and transmitted by members of a group (similar to an ideology)

10. Speech Community
A group of people who speak the same language, share norms about appropriate uses of language, and share social attitudes toward language ant its use.

11. Characteristics of Human Communication
Productivity: the ability to communicate
many messages efficiently
Displacement: the ability to think in the past, the future and the present

12. The Properties of Languages
Sounds
--Phoneme: a minimal unit of sound that functions to differentiate the meaning of words
Vocabulary
Grammar: rules for combining sounds into sequences that carry meaning

13. The Origins of Languages
50,000
Started as paralanguage: non-verbal communication (body posture, voice tone, touch, smell and facial movements)
All languages equally efficient (semantically and grammatically)
Semantics: the study of meaning in language, including the analysis of meaning of words and sentences