3 - Language as a semiotic system

Summary

Verbal and non-verbal signalling

The terms ‘verbal communication’ and ‘non-verbal communication’ are quite widely employed to distinguish language from other semiotic* systems: i.e. systems of signalling-behaviour. They are terms which, from the point of view adopted in this book, are doubly unfortunate: (i) ‘non-verbal communication’ is commonly applied to signalling behaviour in man and animals of a kind which, though it may be informative, is not necessarily communicative (cf. 2.1); (ii) ‘verbal communication’, in so far as it refers to communication by means of language, might be taken to imply that language-utterances are made up solely of words, whereas, as we shall see in this section, there is an important, and indeed essential, non-verbal component in spoken language. The use of such expressions as ‘verbal communication’ or ‘verbal behaviour’ to refer to language-behaviour is, at least potentially, misleading.

We may begin our discussion of spoken language by distinguishing between vocal* and non-vocal* signals, according to whether the signals are transmitted in the vocal-auditory channel or not. The vocal-auditory channel* is here defined it will be observed, in terms of its two endpoints and of the manner and mechanisms by means of which the signals are produced at the source and received at the destination, rather than simply in terms of the properties of the channel itself which links the terminals and along which the signal travels. This point in itself is worth noting, since there are alternative definitions to be found in the literature.