Communication functions

These are the goals of communication. Most often there are several of them (the film can entertain, and inform, and describe, and warn, and explain). The initial reason why people need communication is the needs of a person or a group of people. The goals of communication serve certain needs: survival, cooperation with other people, personal needs, maintaining relationships with other people, convincing others to act or think in some way, exercising power over other people (this includes propaganda), uniting societies and organizations together, receiving and communicating information, understanding the world and our experience in it (what we believe in, what we think about ourselves, about relationships with other people, about what is true), the manifestation of creative nature and imagination of R. Dimbleby and G. Burton distribute our needs into four groups: personal, social, economic and creative (artistic expression).

relationship needs (love, friendship , family, belonging to a group of people);

the need for respect (self-esteem, recognition, power);

the need for self-realization (to be yourself, self-expression).

Of course, with the development of higher levels, the lower ones do not disappear, but in some ways they are even transformed (cooking, food culture, 'healthy sex', architecture and home design).

This is what Maslow's Pyramid looks like in its original form:

Communication functions are allocated only for analysis. In a real communicative process, even in one, separately taken communicative act, several functions can be combined, one or two of which will be the main, determining ones. Based on which of the functions is leading, it is possible to construct a classification of communicative acts.

Communication functions can be built on the communication model and 'attached' to its participants and elements. From the model of RO O. Yakobson six functions follow:

emotive,

conative,

referential,

poetic,

phatic,

metalanguage.

Each of its proposed functions is associated with a particular participant or element of communication.

Some researchers (A.A. Leontyev, N.B.Mechkovskaya) also add a magic or spell-casting function, an ethnic (unifying people) function, a biological function (for animal communication).

Other researchers prefer to minimize the number of functions, highlighting only the main ones and considering other types of the main ones. Thus, the well-known psychologist and linguist Karl Bühler (1879-1963) identified three functions of language that manifest themselves in any act of speech: the expression function (expressive), correlated with the speaker, the conversion function (appeal), correlated with the listener, and the message function (representative) correlated with the subject of speech. The sender of the message expresses itself, appeals to the recipient and represents the subject of communication.

Traditionally, either two or three functions of language and communication are distinguished, which, however, overlap with each other. It was believed (and everyday consciousness very easily perceives this opinion) that language primarily performs a cognitive (cognitive) or informational function: the expression of ideas, concepts, thoughts, and communication to other communicants. The second function that was usually distinguished was evaluative : the expression of personal assessments and attitudes, the third — affective : the transfer of emotions and feelings. Roger T. Bell, a well-known American author of sociolinguistics, relates three areas of the humanities to these functions of language: linguistics and philosophy (cognitive function), sociology and social psychology (evaluation function), psychology and literary criticism (affective function).

Let us consider in more detail the most famous model of R.O. Yakobson, in which six functions are distinguished, in accordance with the participants and aspects of his own communication model. The Jacobson model is applicable both for the analysis of language and communication systems in general, and for the functional study of individual speech and communication acts and communication events.

The weak points of these models are associated with both the minimization of functions (simplification) and the introduction of a large number of them; the role of the addressee has been studied very little (only in the eyes of the speaker, in his assumption about the listener's possible reaction); the general linguistic background and social character of communication are not taken into account; two minimum participants are considered (group and mass communication require separate and additional conversation). Although the addressee factor is embedded in the model, the feedback, the real echo of the message is not always taken into account, the model is unidirectional (from the sender to the receiver). In fact, each of them participates in communication on an equal footing, in addition, the participants of communication alternately play the roles of sender and recipient of the message.

The functional characteristic of the message (the communicative act) can be given depending on its focus, its main communicative task. R. Dimbleby and G. Burton distinguish six functions of messages and communicative acts:

a warning,

advice,

information,

conviction,

expression of opinion

entertainment

This classification of functions is pragmatic . that is, associated with the use of communication tools to achieve certain goals. Pragmatics will be discussed in a lecture on the semiotic aspects of the communicative process.

Another interesting model of language functions is associated with the name of the Australian linguist, the author of a number of works on functional grammar, MAK Halliday. The Halliday system contains three macro functions in which, in the process of the language development of an individual, seven initial discrete (separate) functions in the child's language behavior are connected. Each act of an adult, according to Halliday, serves more than one function at once. The three macrofunctions in the Halliday system are ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Ideational is close to the traditionally distinguished cognitive, but broader than it, includes the 'expression of experience', evaluative and affective aspects. Interpersonal function includes an index and regulatory, expressing the role of the speaker in a speech situation, his personal commitment and interaction with others. It is this function that promotes the establishment and maintenance of social relations, through which social groups are delimited, and the individual gets the opportunity to interact and develop his own personality. The textual function is associated with the structuring of speech acts - the choice of grammatically and situationally relevant sentences. No wonder that it was Halliday who called the functional grammar the grammar of choice. Halliday's model makes it possible to describe the situationally conditioned use of language, in which the semantic component is related to the social, on the one hand, and on the other, to the linguistic. According to Halliday, semantics is social at the input, and linguistic at the output. Semantics, thus, is an intermediate, intermediate level between the social (situation) and linguistic (text and language means of a specific speech act).

At the same time, the very reaction to advertising messages, which always has individual peculiarities, has been little studied. You can indirectly guess about it only from comic miniatures about advertising by Petrosyan, Zhvanetsky, Zadornov. The volume of sales, even by the admission of advertising specialists themselves, does not make it possible to judge whether the advertising message influenced the purchase decision, or any other factor. According to the well-known advertising specialist David Ogilvy (David Ogilvy), no one has yet managed to prove that advertising really influences the decision of the buyer. Other experts recognize that advertising gives no more than 5-10% increase in sales.

Perhaps a study of the real echo of the advertising message in the consciousness and practical life of its recipient would help shed light on the true causes and consequences of the impact of advertising texts and commercials on buyers of goods and consumers of services.

In linguistic pragmatics and the theory of speech influence in recent years, it has become almost a tradition to mention the addressee's factor in the creation of a speech message by the sender. Not so close attention is paid to the recipient's response to the received message. The real speech environment is formed by both participants of the dialogue: the replica (a series of replicas, text, communicative behavior) of the sender cause a certain echo in the behavior of the addressee, the expectation and observation of which corrects the communicative behavior of the sender. Thus, within the framework of the model of the communicative process, one should speak not so much about the speech influence on the addressee (one-pointedness and one-time), but rather about the speech interaction (mutual-directionality and repeatability), which is the “main reality of the language” (as M. M. Bakhtin).

In pre-election communication, the sender of the message is the candidate (or, more precisely, his mythologized image) and his PR team; the recipient is the electorate. Separate communication acts and events may cause a reciprocal reaction of consent or rejection of varying degrees on the part of the recipient, while the choice / non-selection of a candidate can be considered a global response to a campaign. Speeches of the participants of the pre-election dialogue are immersed in the intertextual environment and themselves take part in its formation. Echoing even one communicative act / event can radically affect a global decision.

In the trade communication sphere, the sender of the message is the seller (including the collegiate one — the firm, the store, the trading house, etc.); the recipient is the buyer. The very fact of selling a product is also communication, which is primarily considered by economists and marketers. However, the final global decision to buy / not buy is made as a result of the influence of a mass of factors. The impact of these factors and the buyer's backlash form the essence of the communicative process in the trade sphere. Messages are transmitted to the buyer both in the form of advertising text (a hybrid text, which also includes a visual series), and in the form of product packaging (it can be considered a type of advertising), its location in a particular department (product classification), seller’s discourse (including and through their observance of certain etiquette norms), etc. All this diversity is aimed at one global goal - the purchase of goods, the joint action of the buyer and the seller.

In the era of the Soviet anti-market economy, communication in the trade sphere reproduced the overall communicative attitude to the "dictatorship of the sender." In the absence of a choice (as in the political sphere), the so-called “unobtrusive service” was formed, which in fact was just very intrusive. Do not want - do not take it; There are many of you, and I am one - the catch phrases of "valiant workers of Soviet trade", in fact reflecting this dictatorship. The recipient of the message (the buyer) in the conditions of shortage of goods and communicative rudeness was actually forced to agree with the unidirectional nature of communication imposed on him by the distribution economy. Of course, the impact function prevailed.

A more complex communicative situation is observed in the field of scientific or educational discourse. The sender of the message here is a scientist or teacher (collegiate sender - a school or university, a team of teachers or researchers), the main recipient can be a student or a student, other scientists or teachers. At the same time, the communicative environment of scientific and educational activities is much broader, the consequences of this activity can be traced at the level of the family, production, the state, etc. The interaction of the student and the teacher - in the pedagogy of cooperation, as it is now accepted to say - is the key to the success of the global goal of communication: to teach / not to teach.

Here you can also give an example of authoritarian pedagogy, in which communication goes according to a unidirectional pattern: Listen to what the teacher says! The mass of pedagogical myths is based on this scheme. So, it is believed that the main quality of the teacher is his ability to “put things in order”; it is necessary that the students “listen to the teacher”. The second mandatory side of the communicative process: to listen and understand, understand and act - is missed by the mythologized consciousness.

It can be said that the global goal and function of communication, communication is the unification of people in single actions, the goal of the communicative process is not the transfer of information in one direction, but receiving the echo from the recipient, not the impact, but interaction .

Literature:

1. Arutyunova N.D. Addressee's factor // Izvestiya AN SSSR. SLYA. T.40. №4. 1981. p. 356-367.

1. von Humboldt V. Language and philosophy of culture. M .: Progress, 1985.

1. Mechkovskaya N.B. Communicative human activity. Functions of language and speech // Social linguistics. M .: Aspect-press, 1996. P. 7-29.

1. Rastorgueva LV, Kashkin VB. Real echo and communicative interaction (on the material of political discourse) // Language structure and social environment. Voronezh: VSTU Publishing House, 2000. p. 5-10.

1. Якобсон Р.О. Язык в отношении к другим системам коммуникации // Избранные работы. М.: Прогресс, 1985. С. 319-330.

1. Dimbleby R., Burton G. More Than Words. An Introduction to Communication. L .; NY: Routledge, 1998.

• Проведите функциональный анализ рекламной коммуникации. Раздельно рассмотрите видеоряд и звуковой ряд, изображение и текст, другие элементы разного рода рекламных сообщений. Какие функции каждый из элементов призван выполнять? Есть ли случаи полифункциональности сообщений? Есть ли случаи синкретизма средств для выполнения одной функции?

• Проведите функциональный анализ предвыборного агитационного ролика отдельного кандидата или партии на общероссийских или местных выборах. Различается ли функциональный спектр политического дискурса у различных партий (основных и маргинальных), у политиков регионального и общенационального уровня, у партий и отдельных политических деятелей?

• Проведите опрос потребителей о воздействии рекламных сообщений на принятие ими решения о покупке товара (или об отказе от покупки). Что больше всего повлияло на их выбор: информация о свойствах товара, призыв лично к ним, авторитет фирмы-производителя, молва и традиция, эстетические качества рекламы или упаковки товара, а может быть, что-то еще?

• Проведите функциональный анализ педагогического дискурса в вашем вузе (на примере группы). Какая модель (авторитарная или сотрудничества) предпочитается участниками коммуникации (студентами и преподавателями)?

• Проведите функциональный анализ семейного дискурса. Какая модель коммуникации и какие ее функции преобладают в вашей семье (в вашей будущей семье)?