OBJECTIVES This chapter will:
■ introduce the range and variety of human communication codes;
■ explain why we need to think of human language as a collection of multiple and overlapping codes;
■ examine the nature and scope of non-verbal communication, and its relationship with language;
■ identify practical implications for the appropriate use of language and non-verbal codes in business communication.
WHAT CODES DO WE USE TO COMMUNICATE?
There are several ways of categorizing the different codes we use to communicate with each other. For example, Ellis and Beattie (1986, p. 17) identify ‘five primary systems of commu- nication’ which occur in face-to-face interactions:
■ verbal: all the words, clauses and sentences which we use in speech and writing;
■ prosodic, i.e. all the stress and pitch patterns such as pauses and intonation which we use in speech and which are ‘linguistically determined’ – we use them to punctuate the speech and make its meaning clear. Ellis and Beattie give the simple phrase, ‘old men and women’ as an example. If you leave a silent pause after ‘men’ when you say these words, then it changes the meaning;
■ paralinguistic: all the pauses, ‘ums’, ‘ahs’ and other sounds which are not ‘real’ words and which do not have a clear linguistic function;
■ kinesic: all the ways we move our bodies during communication, including our posture, gestures and so on;
■ standing features: more static non-verbal features such as appearance, orientation (the angle at which you stand in relation to the other person) or distance.
There are two main issues with this and with other systems of classification:
■ Does this mean that the different systems ‘work’ in different ways? Do we somehow interpret or process them differently?
■ Do the different systems have different functions? For example, it is often suggested that non-verbal signals communicate our emotions better than words.
Both these issues have important practical implications. For example, what do you attend to when you are meeting someone for the first time? Do you concentrate on what they are saying or on some aspect of their non-verbal behaviour? How would you give them some clues that you liked them – what signals would you use?
As we shall see in the rest of this chapter, these issues are not easily resolved. We shall use the distinction between verbal and non-verbal codes but emphasize that the most impor- tant issue is how they work together to create a particular meaning.
EXERCISE
Compare two speakers or lecturers you have experienced – one whom you liked and one whom you disliked or who irritated you. How would you describe their verbal and non- verbal styles? Which features of their behaviour did you notice? What did you think these differences told you about their personalities?
UNDERSTANDING HUMAN LANGUAGE
Michael Clyne (1994) suggests that language has four main functions:
1 As our most important medium of human communication.
2 As a means of identification. We use language to express our membership of social groups, which may be national, ethnic, social, religious, etc.
3 As a means of intellectual development. The way that children learn and develop their language skills is very strongly related to the way they experience their surrounding environment. In adulthood, we use language to develop new ways of thinking and new concepts.
4 As an instrument of action. Much of what we say is directly linked to what we do.
When we promise or apologize, we are not simply passing on information.
Although this book concentrates on function 1, we must recognize the practical implica- tions of the other functions. People who concentrate on function 2 may have very strong views on what language use is appropriate in a given situation – see Box 2.1 for further discussion of this. Function 4 can cause difficulties if we do not recognize the action impli- cations of what we say. This may be especially important in cross-cultural encounters, as we shall see in Chapter 3 when we discuss Business English as an international language.
Codes within language
Language is not just a carrier of information – it can convey various levels of meaning depending on the situation. In even a simple conversation, there may be several different codes which we can recognize:
A: I’m getting an error message – could be a driver problem.
B: OK, Bones, what are you going to do about it? They’re all supposed to have the 3.5 upgrade.
A: Obviously you need to try it on the other two machines first.
In this brief conversation between two people trying to get a computer program to work properly for a demonstration, we can see various codes at work:
■ technical jargon as in ‘driver problem’;
■ the joke based on a Star Trekcharacter;
■ the joking over who does what – ‘you’ do this.
All of these depend upon the relationship between A and B – recognizing that they both understand the jargon, recognizing the joke and the verbal sparring. B would have adopted a very different tone with a relative stranger or a new boss. This example illustrates Kurt Danziger’s view that all communication simultaneously works on two levels:
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■ the presentation of information (he calls this representation);
■ the presentation of a particular relationship which is implied in what is said and how it is expressed (he calls this presentation) (Danziger, 1976).
Danziger shows how certain individuals are very conscious of this distinction and manipu- late what they say to entrap the other person in a particular relationship. His examples include sales representatives and interrogators! This is not the same as the distinction between verbal and non-verbal codes as we can express a relationship both verbally and non-verbally. One very important practical implication here is that we need to review both whatwe communicate and howwe do it. We need to establish the appropriate relationship as well as convey the appropriate information.
BOX 2.1 LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
You can see the importance of language as a symbol of broader social identities in the following examples:
■ The campaign known as ‘US English’ has been active since the early 1980s in the USA, lobbying to ensure that English is the only language used for official functions (Crawford, 1992).
■ The French Academy has attempted to protect the French language from ‘foreign’
words and expressions. It recently tried to stop female ministers in the French government from using the feminine definite article to describe themselves (la ministre) as this departed from the traditional masculine form for the word (le ministre).
These movements suggest that some varieties of language are inherently inferior. They try to define one version of the language which can be accepted as the ideal or standard.
They face serious challenges on both these counts. All languages grow and develop. Any attempt to ‘police’ a language which does not recognize these processes is unlikely to succeed.
As another example of how strongly people feel about ‘their language’, consider the reactions to the Encarta World English Dictionary, published by Microsoft and Bloomsbury in 1999, and described in the introduction as ‘a dictionary that accurately reflects the worldwide presence of the English language today’ (p. xi). This claim was vigorously rejected by Christopher Howse (1999) who argued that ‘many of the words are merely modish slang’ and were ‘included for no more reason than they are up-to-the-minute and American’. For example, are words such as notwork and webisode just temporary slang or lasting expressions? Neither appeared in the last Oxford Dictionary of New Words (Knowles, 1998) and both were highlighted as misspellings when this paragraph was written in Microsoft Word 97! Would you use them?
Language variety
Here we need to discuss three main concepts: register, dialect and accent.
Register
The English language is not a single, coherent body. Different groups use different sub-sets of the language to suit their purposes. We can identify the characteristics of different sub- sets or registers. For example, one early study of scientific reports found common features which were very rare in everyday conversation, such as compound nouns, passives, condi- tionals, prepositional verbs and so on.
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BOX 2.2 A COMPILATION OF REGISTERS
How would you describe the register of the following extracts? Which is the closest to your idea of ‘good’ business writing?
Did you like the previous version? Did you? Well? We would have liked it a lot more if it was, um, a bit better.
Gold discoveries were like No. 11 buses yesterday. None came for ages, then three arrived at once.
ABC Industries, the financial services conglomerate which is breaking itself up, is poised to go out with more of a whimper than a bang.
Fed up with the same old job? Then it’s time for a change! Full training and uniform provided plus above average rates.
If you think we are just another high street retailer, allow us to open your eyes.
This is a company that leads the field in many different sectors of retail, from small electrical goods to toys, from jewellery to furniture. Our computer tech- nology is amongst the most sophisticated in the business, our stock control systems are the best around and we offer convenient shopping along with convenient service that keeps the customers coming back.
The first extract is from a computer games magazine; the rest are from a mass-circula- tion British newspaper – the first two from the editorial in the business section, and the last two from the job advertisements (for security guards and store managers respectively).
As far as written style is concerned, the grammar checker in our word processor (Word 97) does not like the structure of the first sentence in the last extract and also thinks that the second sentence is ‘too wordy’. Do you agree?
Without going too far into these linguistic technicalities, you can recognize main features of different registers, as in Box 2.2. The important implication is that certain registers are accepted as the norm in certain situations even if they are not very ‘efficient’, as we shall show in the discussion of Plain English in Chapter 8.
Dialect
A dialect is a language variety which is characteristic of a region or a socio-economic group.
In England, for example, there are a wide variety of regional dialects such as Cockney or Liverpool (‘Scouse’).
Over the years in Britain there has been considerable pressure to achieve Standard English. Despite growing acceptance of regional dialects, most people still consider some dialects ‘better’ than others. This is also true in other parts of the world with other languages. We cannot look at the way language is used without investigating the opinions people have about language variety: ‘Ordinary people (i.e. non-linguists), however, have been accustomed from time immemorial to make value judgements about language’ (Milroy and Milroy, 1999, p. 10). We can illustrate the problems this may cause by looking at the impact of different accents.
Accent
Accent is often confused with dialect because a non-standard accent is often associated with a non-standard dialect. Accent refers to the distinctive pronunciation which characterizes a group or a geographical area. In a country such as Britain, accents tend to be regional, e.g.
Scots, Welsh, Irish, Yorkshire, etc.
As with most aspects of language, people can feel very strongly about accents. For example, the British author Beryl Bainbridge caused some upset when she said in a speech that everyone should have elocution lessons to ‘wipe out’ regional accents. This remark, along with her claim that ‘You don’t take people seriously who speak badly’, was widely reported in the media. Most commentators argued in favour of diversity: ‘Accents are the thread that makes our nation such a rich and diverse cultural tapestry’ (K. Knight, 1999).
But that same newspaper article also took the opportunity to reinforce popular stereo- types of British regional accents: the ‘unintelligent’ Birmingham; the ‘warm and honest’
Lancashire; and the ‘Cockney whine’.
Research confirms that certain accents are more highly regarded than others, and some organizations are deliberately selecting staff to deal with customers on the basis of these perceptions. This regard for certain accents may vary from country to country and group to group (see Box 2.3 for an example of the search for the appropriate accent to deal with customers). Of course, many people deliberately cultivate an accent as a means of rein- forcing group or cultural identity.
The great danger in our attitude to people with an accent that differs from our own is that we stereotype them with attributes that have little or nothing to do with ways of speaking, as in the British examples above. For example, we tend to consider people to be less well (or better) educated merely because they speak with a different accent. Of course, people may also discriminate against a particular accent in order to discriminate on racial or class grounds.
LANGUAGE FEATURES
Every language has certain structural features which has implications for how we commu- nicate in (and how we learn) that language. For example, if I tell you ‘it rained last night’
then you have no way of knowing from my remark whether I know it rained because I was there, or because I heard the weather forecast or from some other source. If I were speaking to you in the Hopi language, then the source of my information would be clear from what I said. In other words, the language specifies the context as well as the event or information.
Among the most interesting features of the English language are the following:
Expanding and developing vocabulary
We can find many English words that appear in dictionaries but which are virtually extinct as far as everyday use is concerned. Does it matter if we no longer use terms such as
‘velleity’, ‘aposiopesis’, or ‘mycoclonic jerk’ (none of which is recognized by my Microsoft spell-checker)? (Bryson, 1990, p. 60). There is the regular debate in the British media over which new words should be recognized in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
As with many aspects of language, the debate can be heated.
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BOX 2.3 MARILYN MONROE – THE VOICE OF SAFETY?
According to a British newspaper report, London Undergound is considering replacing the voice on the existing recorded announcements for passengers – ‘mind the gap’, ‘mind the doors’, ‘move right down inside the cars’ and so on. The likely decision is based on its research which showed that ‘a female voice was more acceptable than a man’s for giving passengers information’ and that a synthesized version of Marilyn Monroe’s voice sounded
‘genuinely helpful’ and ‘smiling’ to most people (Hussey, 1999).
There is another, more serious aspect of this: how do we give warning messages to people in a tone which neither frightens them so much that they panic nor is so ‘soft’ that they ignore it?
The same article also commented upon rail chiefs’ concerns that announcements on trains and stations were becoming ‘too lighthearted’. New guidelines are planned, presum- ably to avoid situations like the rail driver who asked his passengers, ‘Has anyone got a spanner we can borrow?’ after a breakdown.
The problem for managers in this sort of situation is whether they could make cus- tomer relations worse by adopting standardized scripts for announcement. As we shall discuss later in this book, a standard script for an interaction can sound false and bureaucratic and increase customer irritation. On the other hand, there is obviously room for improvement in the information which passengers receive. One of our own favourites is the way a Scottish operator announced a breakdown: ‘This train has been declared a failure.’
The important principle for our purposes is that new expressions are appearing all the time in various ways:
■ We borrow words from other languages, such as ‘shampoo’ from India or ‘ketchup’
from China.
■ We put new meanings into old words. An obvious example here is the word ‘gay’.
■ We add or subtract parts from old words, usually by abbreviating them. So ‘exami- nation’ becomes ‘exam’, ‘television’ becomes ‘TV’ and so on. Sometimes we can take a long-standing word (such as ‘political’) and add to it to create a new expres- sion. According to Bill Bryson, the word ‘apolitical’ appeared in 1952 (ibid., p. 76).
■ We create new words, usually by making some analogy. So we now spoke of politicians talking in ‘sound-bites’ to mean short snatches of political rhetoric, a phrase that became popular during the 1988 American elections (Ayto, 1999).
Multiple meanings for words
An example of a word with multiple meanings is ‘set’; this has 58 uses as a noun, 126 uses as a verb and 10 uses as an adjective. Many other words have multiple meanings and we have to work out how they are being used from the context.
Variety in pronunciation
The English language has more sounds than many others. This can be a particular problem for many language learners, especially when we find that many spellings and pronunciations do not match (for example, how would you pronounce ‘chough’?) There are also changes in pronunciation which seem to reflect changing fashion and the obvious variations in dialect.
These variations can be quite dramatic.
Flexible syntax
English does have rules of grammar but no formal ruling body to enforce them (see Box 2.2 for related issues). As we shall see in Chapter 8, some rules are more ‘powerful’ than others and they are subject to change over time.
The important practical implication of these features is that we cannot simply rely on a dictionary to help us choose the most effective language in a given situation. We need to assess the situation and context. For example, how can we recognize when a word or expression has become sufficiently accepted that it can be used, especially in more formal situations such as a written report or a public meeting? This depends on the audience. For example, are they familiar with expressions which arise from popular culture? Would you use any of the following phrases which appeared in a recent British daily paper: ‘road rage’, ‘spin doctor’, ‘Spice boy’, ‘trend towards retro’ and ‘prosecution of spam king’?
Or do you have an audience which is openly hostile to ‘trendy catchphrases’ or to
‘Americanisms’?
Speaking versus writing
There is a long-standing academic debate about the differences between spoken and written language. Table 2.1 gives the most common distinctions. But how far are these affected by context?
OTHER BUSINESS CODES
There are other important codes to mention, especially in relation to written communica- tion. Numerical and mathematical conventions and systems can be analysed as examples of communication codes. Graphic codes, such as illustrations and diagrams, are widely used to avoid problems associated with communicating to people of different languages. Pictorial road signs (often reasonably self-evident) circumvent the need for multilingual signs.
Similarly, safety and freight-handling information is often encoded in graphic forms, but we cannot always assume that graphic symbols will be universally understood, and this can be very important, especially with health and safety information.
We shall examine issues of graphic codes in Chapter 9. For an example of how graphic and language codes interact, see Box 2.4, which looks at communication surrounding the business card.
NON-VERBAL CODES
When the media talk about non-verbal communication (NVC) or body language, they often focus on what is known as kinesics – the fourth communication system we introduced in 1111
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Table 2.1 Differences between spoken and written language
Writing is: Speech is:
Objective Interpersonal
A monologue A dialogue
Durable Ephemeral
Scannable Only linearly accessible
Planned Spontaneous
Highly structured Loosely structured
Syntactically complex Syntactically simple Concerned with the past and future Concerned with the present
Formal Informal
Expository Narrative
Argument oriented Event oriented
Decontextualized Contextualized
Abstract Concrete
Source: Baron (1999)