This document discusses various aspects of verbal communication and language. It explores the differences between formal and informal language use. It also examines how relationships frame the meaning of language through cultural assumptions and context. Finally, it analyzes how language creates frames through naming, how words can have multiple meanings, and how speech style and narratives are used to present identity and relationships.

1. Verbal Communication
LECTURE

2. There were these three men
The first man walked into a bar
The second man walked into a bar
The third man didn’t
He ducked!

3. Focus Questions
• What are the differences between grammatical
language and talk in everyday use?
• What frames your understanding of talk and gives it
meaning?
• What values are hidden in the speech you use?
• How does everyday talk use relationships to frame
meanings?
• How do different types of talk work, and how do they
connect to relationships?
• What is talk style and how does it frame meaning?

4. Understanding Meanings
• Relationships frame the meaning of talk
– Langue – formal, grammatically structured
language use
– Parole – informal, everyday use of talk (includes
familiarity, context, and cultural assumptions)

5. Understanding Meanings
• What do we call what’s happening in this
next clip?

6. Polysemy
• Multiple meanings for the same symbol
• A feature of all communication
• Meanings are constantly changing, creating
ambiguity and uncertainty
• Frames give “clues” to meaning

7. Language Creates Frames
• Naming
– Arbitrary
– Natural
– Makes crucial distinctions
– Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• We can only know what we can name.

8. Language Creates Frames
• Naming

9. Language Creates Frames
• Naming
•
DEUTSCHER, G. (2010). Through the language glass: why the world looks
different in other languages. New York, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and
Co.

10. Types of Verbal Meanings
• Denotative – use of talk to identify or define
objects
• Connotative – use of talk to establish and
understand the implications and deeper
meanings of words

11. Intentionality Frame
• Intentionality – the belief that messages
indicate a sender’s purposeful intentions
• Relationships help us understand intentions
based on our personal knowledge of others

12. Words and Values
• Words carry evaluations and present our
values to others
– God terms – powerful terms that are viewed
positively
– Devil terms – powerful terms that are viewed
negatively

13. Functions of Talk in Relationships
• Instrumental – to make something happen;
reveals a goal
• Indexical – to indicate something about the
relationship; content and relational elements
– Hypertext – coded messages
• Essential – to create the ‘reality’ of the
relationship
– immediacy
– Politeness
– Face wants

14. Ways of Speaking
• High-code and low-code
• Speech style
– Delivering content about the topic
– Presenting yourself as a particular sort of person
– Indexing a particular sort of relationship
• Accommodation
– Convergence – moves toward others
– Divergence – moves away from others

15. Narratives
• Organized story that has a plot, an argument
or a theme
• Homo narrans – human as storyteller
• Use elaborate frames to argue an identity of
the storyteller and the relationship between
the teller and the listener
• Report events and offer justifications for “right
action”

16. Burke’s Pentad