Communication, Symbols, and Meaning

1
Communication, Symbols, and Meaning

• John A. Cagle

2
David Berlo (1960)

• Meanings are in people
• Communication does not consist of the
  transmission of meanings, but of the transmission
  of messages
• Meanings are not in the message they are in the
  message-users
• Words do not mean at all only people mean
• People can have similar meanings only to the
  extent that they have had, or can anticipate
  having, similar experiences
• Meanings are never fixed as experience changes,
  so meanings change
• No two people can have exactly the same meaning
  for anything

3
A few sentences

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Picasso enjoyed painting his models nude.
• Visiting relatives can be boring.
• My son has grown another foot.
• I saw the man with binoculars.
• The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.
• I cannot recommend this person too highly.

4
Ogden Richards (1923) Symbols and Semantic
Triangle
Jaguar
5
(No Transcript)
6
Meaning

• Symbol arbitrary sign to referent associations
• Denotation or referential meaning
• Connotation or affective meaning
• Context is the key to meaning most words, as
  they pass from context to context, change their
  meanings

7
Signs and Symbols

• A sign is something we directly encounter, yet at
  the same time it refers to something else.
  Thunder is a sign of rain. A punch in the nose is
  a sign of anger. An arrow is a sign of whatever
  it points toward.
• Words are also signs, but of a special kind. They
  are symbols. Unlike the examples cited above,
  most symbols have no natural connection with the
  things they describe. Theres nothing in the
  sound of the word kiss or anything visual in the
  letters h-u-g that signifies an embrace. One
  could just as easily coin the term snarf or clag
  to symbolize a close encounter of the romantic
  kind.

8
Language Frequencies

• In the earlier part of this century, Ogden
  Richards invented Basic English a simplified
  vocabulary of 850 elementary English words.
• It seemed to help worldwide communication,
  but soon was considered too rigid and boring,
  halting creative expression.

9
Peirce/Morriss Levels of Language Analysis

• Syntactics signs to signs
• Semantics signs to things
• Pragmatics signs to people
• Phonology sounds in a language phones,
  phonemes, morphs, and morphemes

10
Language is Rule-Governed

• Phonological rules (sounds)
• Syntactic rules (structure of language)
• Semantic rules (specific meanings)
• Pragmatic rules (appropriate interpretation
  within a given context)

11

• T H E M A N B I T E S T H E D O G
• spoken or written word recognition
• THE MAN BITES THE DOG.
• syntactic processing
• S
• NP VP
• V NP
• Det NP Det NP
• The man bites the dog.
• semantic processing
• BITE (AGENT, EXPERIENCER)
• MAN hum, -teeth ... DOG anim, teeth
• pragmatic interpretation

???????
12
An Cryptic Email from My Wife

• I heard from JRC. She had to rush off to a
  hospital (Children's?) and will write later. Eve

• My immediate reaction was a pang of great
  concern what had happened to my daughter,
  Jackie, and why did she have to go to the
  hospital?
• Some seconds later I remembered Jackie works
  for the California Transplant Donor Network and
  her work routinely takes her to several
  hospitals, including Childrens Hospital.
• O the layered complexity of meaning making!

13
Operation of a hypothetical Semantic Key Sort
14
(No Transcript)
15
Osgoods Mediation Hypothesis

• The basic S-R association is responsible for the
  establishment of meaning.
• Three levels of response to stimuli
• Projection simple neural pathway system,
  reflexive
• Integration associations through experience
• Representational stimulus leads to internal
  stimulus (meaning) which leads to overt behavior

16
Development of a sign

• A portion of response R becomes represented in
  internal response rm
• Meaning is the internal mediating responserm
  sm which is connotative

17
AUTOMATISMS
REFLEX
18
(No Transcript)
19
Hebbs Integration Principle
The greater the frequency with which stimulus
events (S-S) or response events (R-R) have been
paired in input or output experience of the
organism, the greater will be the tendency for
their central correlates to activate one another.
20
Factors of Semantic Space

• Evaluative factor (good - bad) - that can be seen
  in the example as 'Good-Bad', 'Fresh - Stale',
  'Cold - Hot')
• Potency factor (strong - weak) - seen in the
  example as 'Weak - Strong'
• Activity factor (active - passive) - in the
  example as 'Active - Passive', 'Tense - Relaxed'

21
(No Transcript)
22
Semantic differential measures connotative meaning
23
Semantic Space
24
Semantic differential measures connotative meaning
25
Seven Ideas about LanguageGeorge A. Miller
(1965) Some Preliminaries to Psycholinguistics

1. Not all physical features of speech are
   significant for vocal communication, and not all
   significant features of speech have physical
   representation.
2. The meaning of an utterance should not be
   confused with its reference.
3. The meaning of an utterance is not a linear sum
   of the meanings of the words that comprise it.

26

• The syntactic structure of a sentence imposes
  groupings that govern the interactions between
  the meanings of the words in that sentence.
• There is no limit to the number of sentences or
  the number of meanings that can be expressed.
• A description of a language and a description of
  a language user must be kept distinct.
• There is a large biological component to the
  human capacity for articulate speech.

27
Pearce Cronens Coordinated Management of
Meaning

• From a social constructionist perspective, good
  communication occurs when you and others are able
  to coordinate your actions sufficiently well that
  your conversations comprise social worlds in
  which you and they can lie well--that is with
  dignity, honor, joy and love.

28
Rules in Interaction

• A social constructionist ontology and an
  interpretive or even critical epistemology
• CMM sees interaction as a rule-guided activity
• Constitutive rules Rules that specify what
  particular behaviors count for in interaction
• Regulative rules Rules that specify sequences of
  behavior for particular situations

29
Systems of Social Reality

• CMM proposes that rules are interpreted within a
  hierarchy of meaning
• This hierarchy of meaning includes six levels of
  interpretation
• content level,
• speech act level,
• episode level,
• relationship level,
• life script level, and
• cultural patterns level

30
Coordination Interaction Processes

• Coordination in interaction refers to the
  meshing of actions, not the perfect sharing of
  interpretations
• Interactions that are not well coordinated (e.g.,
  double binds and paradoxes) indicate differences
  in rule usage and in levels of interpretation